"The Thing From the Black Hole Star"
Captain America Annual #3 was the third annual for Captain America, published in 1976. It was written, drawn and edited by Jack Kirby, with two of those things being good news.
Our story starts in extreme in medias res. Captain America, his face showing the blocky proportions that Kirby was famous for, is being embraced in a bear hug by a lumpy purple monster. Behind him, an overall-clad farmer promises to find a weapon. A lot going on, already! Over the next few pages, the backstory is revealed to us: this farmer (named Hendricks) found a fugitive who is being pursued by strange monsters and robots. The local police don't believe a farmer who has found a fugitive from a "black hole star", and so a quick call to Captain America, luckily passing through town, is the only way to protect the fugitive, who was trapped in a black hole for a million years. We then get scenes above the orbiting alien ship, where classic Kirby aliens are deploying monsters and robots down to earth to hunt down the fugitive. Captain America, of course, dispatches them all. At a few points, Captain America questions the fugitive, wondering: "why would a thousand warships be dispatched to comb the vast sea of space" for him? But Captain America's job is to protect the rights of the individual, and he thinks to himself: "Even if he's wanted for a crime--he still deserves his day in court". The exact "why" of the story can be ignored, as we see fight after fight, all drawn in Kirby's inimitable style. It is only after a successful fight that Captain America returns to find that the fugitive, left alone with Hendricks, has drained him of his life force. The fugitive is an energy vampire of some sort. Unfortunately for him, he mistook Captain America's kindness for weakness, and quickly is defeated, and condemned by the galactic policemen back to imprisonment in a black hole. The final page of the story has Captain America being interviewed by military officers, saying that incidents like this have to be hidden from the rest of earth. Incidentally, this last page is the only page that mentions other cosmic parts of the Marvel Universe, mentioning Galactus and The Watcher, among others.
I bought this comic book for $4 and in poor condition, not realizing it was created by Jack Kirby. Any comic book by Jack Kirby is a bargain at $4. On the first read-through, I first noticed the style, full of contorted fighting poses, bulbously baroque spaceships, and ornate headgear. It was only on the second reading that I got the substance of the story. This is in a way a story of "reverse hubris"---a common farmer and Captain America spend all of the story fighting for what they think is justice, only to find out they are protecting a monster. Rereading, the splash balloon introducing the story with the idea that people make mistakes---so what happens when it is a vital mistake? With that in mind, the entire story is full of dramatic irony as we see Captain America heroically pursuing a mistaken decision. And this is where it is unfortunate that Kirby didn't have an editor. Even though the creativity and message of the story are great, it would have been nice to have an editor to pace and frame the story just a little bit better.
It was also interesting to me from the external history of the Marvel Universe because at the time this was written, galactic empires and the cosmology of Marvel were still in flux. The aliens we see in this issue are not a previously established group, as far as I could tell. This issue has a fairy tale logic, where the aliens are introduced as mysterious outsiders for the purpose of the story and its moral message. They also appear to Captain America, a hero not primarily involved in cosmic storylines. At the time, it was still possible to publish a one-off adventure story where Captain America meets aliens---by the 1980s, this story would probably have been part of a crossover storyline, and would have had to have placed itself into continuity, explaining the allegiances of the aliens.