How Many Fighting Styles Does Captain America Know in Captain America Comics #1 by Jack Kirby (1941)

Welcome to the first episode of a special feature on Comic-Jutsu, entitled "Comic Book Dojo", where we breakdown the fighting styles and skills of your favorite superheroes and mine! Up first, Captain America! We're taking a look at Captain America Comics #1 at an attempt to pinpoint the original fighting style of the star-spangled avenger as presented by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon.

Captain America is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by cartoonists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 (cover dated March 1941) from Timely Comics, a predecessor of Marvel Comics. Captain America was designed as a patriotic supersoldier who often fought the Axis powers of World War II and was Timely Comics' most popular character during the wartime period. The popularity of superheroes waned following the war, and the Captain America comic book was discontinued in 1950, with a short-lived revival in 1953. Since Marvel Comics revived the character in 1964, Captain America has remained in publication. A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and written narrative, usually, dialogue contained in word balloons emblematic of the comics art form. Although comics have some origins in 18th century in Eastern Asia, comic books were first popularized[disputed – discuss] in the United States and the United Kingdom during the 1930s. The first modern comic book, Famous Funnies, was released in the US in 1933 and was a reprinting of earlier newspaper humor comic strips, which had established many of the story-telling devices used in comics. The term comic book derives from American comic books once being a compilation of comic strips of a humorous tone; however, this practice was replaced by featuring stories of all genres, usually not humorous in tone.