The Archie Comics superheroes died several times in the last 80 years, but they never stayed dead.
Take Captain Flag, for example. He debuted in September 1941’s Blue Ribbon Comics 16, six months after his obvious inspiration, Timely’s wildly popular Captain America, first appeared.
Flag’s was one of the sillier origin stories. He was “…a hard-drinking wastrel named Tommy Townsend who donned the colors of Old Glory after months of training himself in the wilderness to avenge his father’s murder,” noted Kurt F. Mitchell in American Comic Book Chronicles. “One of several characters with bird sidekicks introduced this year, Flag’s bald eagle pal, Yank, was gone after the second episode.”
The supervillain Black Hand was in the process of choking young Townsend to death when something odd happened.
“At that point, inexplicably, an eagle appeared, grabbed Tommy by the belt, and made off with him,” noted Lou Mougin in his book Secondary Superheroes of Golden Age Comics. “The bird carried his burden to a nearby mountaintop, which enraged the Hand so much he went on a rampage of murder and sabotage, finally culminating in the theft of the bombsight plans.
“Meanwhile, Tom Townsend was recovering, with help from the eagle who brought him food. Clean living and exercise transformed Tom’s body. Then, the eagle brought a different payload: an American flag. Inspired, Tom said, ‘This is a symbol of my destiny … a destiny I vow to fulfill!’ A panel later, he stood in a white-winged helmet, red mask, a red-and-white-striped cape, a blue short-sleeved shirt with a large white star on the chest, blue trunks, purple leggings, and red boots. ‘The eagle brought me a flag … a flag I’ll protect with my very life!’”
Captain Flag’s wildly illogical origin story proceeds with dream logic — American dream logic, you might say. That eagle that rescues Townsend, feeds him, builds him to peak strength, and finally brings him a flag is, obviously, no eagle. It is, in some unexplained sense, the embodied spirit of America itself.
Even though the United States has a secular government, its patriotic superheroes often have a mythic feel, similar to the thunder gods, Amazons, and super-magicians who share the comic book pages with them.
Mothballed in March 1942, Archie’s caped Cap returned briefly in 1966 alongside the Web and the Fox as one of the Ultra-Men. He turned up again as a joke in Archie’s Mad House Glads in 1973, then in the revamped Mighty Crusaders in 1983 and 1984. In 1990, he and other MLJ superheroes were busy fighting illiteracy in an Archie Digest house ad.
In fact, the Riverdale gang’s colorfully compact and ubiquitous digest editions, available at supermarkets and elsewhere across the country, gave the good captain a new lease on life. He starred in new stories there in 2022 and 2023.
In Flagging Resolve (World of Betty and Veronica Jumbo Comics Digest 26, Aug. 2023), Captain Flag gives the teenagers a rather emphatic lesson in flag etiquette, with the assistance of his long-lost old pal Yank the Eagle.
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