Meanwhile, the guy with second billing - the black guy - was the star of the show. This was also new ground for the time. But Sam Wilson, the Falcon, had established his own storyline in the book and carried on without missing a beat. In this case, as I said at the time, we all knew Cap would be back someday - but it's an interesting preview of GREEN LANTERN, where a very similar situation was in play when I took over, and I came up with a completely different outcome.

The renewed relevance of the CAPTAIN AMERICA run led to my presenting a paper on the series at the Convention of the Modern Language Association.

And the renewed popularity led to two TV movies. Unlike the Dr Strange film, these were "Let's buy the name and make up a whole new character" dogs, but it was still gratifying to get Hollywood to buy the name. That makes four Hollywood productions I've helped get made to this point (Guardians of the Galaxy, Justice League and UltraForce are the others), in addition to the five I've generated directly (Dr Strange, Batman, NightMan, Batman: The Animated Series/The Adventures of Batman & Robin, and The Silver Surfer).

I

180: Steve Rogers decides he should still fight crime - just not as a symbol of America. He takes the name of "Nomad" - the man without a country. The name, in real life, was suggested by my then-girlfriend, Martha Dukeshire.

181: He goes against the Serpent Squad, who represented the Symbionese Liberation Army, a domestic revolutionary group of the time. I was excited about writing an ongoing journal of contemporary American reality - but soon realized that as immediate as comics were, they weren't immediate enough to stay up with current events.

183: Someone else has "picked up the flag." Steve Rogers realizes that Captain America will exist in men's minds no matter what he does, and men will die trying to take his place.

184: Captain America returns - now determined to be the symbol of American ideals that the government no longer is.

185: At this point I was offered a new series - the long-form, mythological adventures of Thor, in a black & white magazine. I reluctantly decided to that this was a good place to drop my longest-running series...

186: I plotted this issue for new writer John Warner to script, but he asked me to write half of it since it involved a lot of history. Unfortunately, John didn't stick with the series long thereafter, and it went back into a long period of decline.