By Dan Brown

As you likely heard, our neighbours to the south celebrated their country’s 250th birthday over the weekend.

That got me thinking about a comic that came out the last time the U.S. had a big anniversary – 50 years ago. 

The 1976 bicentennial was approaching fast. To capitalize on the occasion, Marvel – the comic company that tried to cash in on every trend or craze, no matter how silly or solemn – published a seven-issue arc of Captain America revolving around a plot to destroy the country.

Jack Kirby – who had invented the Marvel Universe in the 1960s, then fled to DC to create the Fourth World, then returned to Marvel – was the artist, writer, and editor of that storyline. I also remember the Captain America letters columns at the time explaining how his bosses were allowing Kirby a lot of leeway with how closely he adhered to the Marvel continuity of the day.

So Captain America: Madbomb reads like it was always meant to be digested as a single graphic novel. It collects issues No. 193 through No. 200 of Captain America and the Falcon, one of the first extended comic story arcs I would read as a boy. The climax was published to coincide with the July 4 festivities of 1976.

The plot: A group of conspirators led by modern aristocrat William Taurey believe that “America’s outmoded Constitution” should be thrown on the scrap heap.

“So that’s their new America – soldiers and workers in the service of a ruling elite,” the Falcon, Cap’s soaring sidekick, thinks at one point.

These traitors have already created a microcosm of their new society in a sprawling secret underground complex under the Badlands. The device that will allow these Royalist Forces of America to overthrow the federal government is the Madbomb.

When triggered, the Madbomb sends out sonic “brain waves” that drive ordinary citizens insane, reducing them to gibbering crowds of animal-minded rioters pitted against their neighbours. “A simulated brain, encased to broadcast madness. It’s a frightening weapon!” one of cap’s allies, General Argyle Fist,” declares.
Steve Rogers, as you may know, is America’s super soldier who was injected with a secret serum during the Second World War that turned him into a one-man wrecking crew. 

He was frozen for decades in suspended animation at the close of the war, and I especially like Captain America issues that emphasize how he is a man out of time. Kirby, who co-created the character back in the day, doesn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on that aspect of Cap’s backstory here.

More than once in this book, Cap compares the traitors to the Nazis he (and Kirby in real life) fought in Europe. 

And if you’re looking for parallels with the current political situation south of the border, you’ll find them: The bomb is hidden in the Taurey Towers Building in Philadelphia, for instance (shades of Trump Tower). And I’m sure extremists on either side of the political spectrum in the U.S. would argue followers on the other side are unthinking nutbars. 

That’s the thing making the Madbomb itself feel like an outdated sci-fi plot device from the past: Does anyone hoping to harm America in 2026 even need a fanciful explosive to drive the country’s residents crazy? In the modern world, can’t reason be defeated just as effectively with online propaganda alone?

That sure feels like the lesson of the past few years to me.

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.