The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker Read Online Free PDF Page A

beside her.
    “Last, but the furthest from least you can get,” she said, “is the Avengers’ leader, whom I hardly need name. He’s known not only to the younger people of today, but to all of you of the previous generation some twenty years ago. Captain America is unique among us—he’s had two glorious careers as a fighting hero upholding American ideals!”
    Cap’s face was dreamy, as his own thoughts flew back to those former days…
    “It’s a strange story,” resumed the Wasp. “At the start of World War II, a young Mr. A—for anonymous—was rejected by the army as being too puny and in poor health. But it so happened some scientists were looking for just such a 4-F specimen of manhood, to use the last term loosely. Mr. A was then given a special hormone injection, and before their eyes he changed like a Jekyll-Hyde into a big, brawny, powerful man—the ideal soldier—and more.”
    Cap glowed, reliving that grand and glorious moment of his transformation from the proverbial “90-pound weakling” of the ads into a 190-pound mass of fighting flesh.
    “Mr. A now passed the army tests with flying colors; and soon after, Sergeant A ran into Nazi saboteurs and laid the whole gang low with his pile-driving fists. He then adopted his colorful uniform in order to work as a mysterious champion against democracy’s foes. The fame of Captain America became a byword to the world all during the war years, as he and his young pal, Bucky, smashed spy and saboteur rings right and left.”
    At the name “Bucky,” Cap’s eyes had gone bleak with painful memories.
    “Unfortunately,” added the Wasp, and her tone went down sympathetically, “Bucky one day gave his life to stop a Nazi plot involving high-flying planes. Cap seemingly fell to his death too, landing at sea and sinking, never to come up again. They finally gave up the search and pronounced Captain America dead.”
    The Wasp paused dramatically.
    “They were dead wrong. By an amazing twist of fate, Cap sank and was frozen in suspended animation for twenty years. A block of ice holding his preserved body finally drifted ashore and was worshiped by Eskimos as some kind of ‘ice god.’ But one day the ice block was broken, probably during a violent storm. Later, as the ice melted, others found a figure in a spangled costume coming to life. Captain America lived again!”
    Cap looked bewildered, in memory of that utterly unbelievable moment when he had opened his eyes to find out he had not met his end…but faced a whole new life ahead.
    “Amazingly,” continued the Wasp, “a physical examination showed that despite his twenty-year frozen sleep, Captain America retained his full physical powers and his same youthful vigors. He had not aged a day in those twenty years. Time had stood still for him. So, although he was an ‘old-timer’ chronologically, he soon proved he was far from an ‘old man’ ready to be retired. He froze at sea at the peak of his fighting career—and he was revived at the peak of his powers to resume his fighting career. After a ‘rude interruption’ of twenty years, we might say.”
    Everybody smiled, except Cap himself. The Wasp intuitively knew what he was thinking.
    “But don’t think it was all glory for the two-time hero. Behind him, lost forever, lay the world and the times he knew…the people he loved…and Bucky. He was in a new and strange world, almost terrifyingly different at first. And though Captain America was invited into the Avengers and quickly gave ample proof that his fighting prowess was undiminished, there at times came nagging thoughts—would his age suddenly catch up with him? Would he slip sometime and endanger all the Avengers during a crucial moment? Could a man from the past really live up to his role as the world’s greatest fighting man… twice in a row? Yes, doubts gnawed at him constantly.”
    Cap tried to smile, or at least to look blank before the pitiless TV camera’s eye, but