Captain America's Original Name Would Have Changed Pop-Culture History
Every aspect surrounding the character of Captain America is iconic — from his shield to his uniform to his Golden Age-inspired optimistic attitude — but his name, while no exception to the rule, could have been quite different had the writers decided to use the original version. Created in a time before the rise and eventual dominance of Marvel Comics, Steve Rogers would become a symbol of hope and patriotism to American soldiers fighting on both fronts of World War II. But writer Joe Simon admits in his autobiography that the name «Captain America» was not his first choice for the superhero.
The creation of Captain America is just as inspiring a tale as any mission he would undertake during the war. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, two Jewish artists, were frustrated with America's steadfast determination to avoid a war, even as their fellow Jews were being rounded up and exterminated by Hitler and his Nazi regime. Thus, Captain America was created, the product of Jewish science (Dr. Joseph Reinstein, later Abraham Erskine to hammer the point home) on a Jewish mission: to take the fight to Hitler. The first issue memorably debuted in March of 1941: months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th of that year. Simon and Kirby even received death threats from American sympathizers to the Nazi war machine — but come December 7th, those threats suddenly disappeared.
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In Simon's autobiography entitledThe Comic Book Makers, the writer reveals he initially envisioned a different name for Steve Rogers: Super American. «I wrote the name 'Super American' at the bottom of the page,» recalls Simon. «No, that didn't work. There were too many
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