70 Years of Marvel - 1945

Created by Simon and Kirby, who would shortly thereafter head over the street to DC Comics and create the spookily similar Newsboy Legion, the Young Allies were a group of children who decided to join in the war effort. Consisting of "the fat kid", "the smart kid", "the tough kid" and, um, "the black kid", the Allies were joined by teen superheroes, Bucky and Toro for most of their adventures, which saw them beat merry hell out of any number of Axis leaders. Good on you, lads!

In the real world, of course, WWII was reaching its conclusion, Hitler was killing himself, Roosevelt was winning a 4th term as President, before dying, and America was demonstrating the power of the atom in order to persuade Japan to give up.

70 Years of Marvel - 1941

Years before Quentin Tarantino played fast and loose with the history of the Second World War, American comics were presenting youthful readers with the imaginstive sight of Captain America punching out Der Fuhrer. Take that, Fritz!

Captain America, almost the longest-standing Marvel hero, and almost the most successful, was the creation of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, a couple of youngsters with a promising career in front of them. Both Simon and Kirby would soon fall out with Timely publisher, Martin Goodman, quit the company, which in turn would give another promising youngster his big break. Yes, true believers, 1941 was the year that Stanley "The Manley" Lieber broke into comics. The rest, as they say, is history, with a smidgeon of hype.

Meanwhile, in the real world, America wasn't quite ready to enter the war. That would change, in November, when Japanese forces attacked a US naval base in Hawaii. Pearl Harbour would finally provoke America into taking sides, which would make things a lot harder for the Axis powers.

Meantime, in showbiz news, Citizen Kane and Dumbo were out at the pictures, as was The Maltese Falcon. And Woody Woodpecker was making his first appearance.