steve rogers, born to irish american immigrant parents on july 4th, 1917, also known as captain america, dead at age 66 (in comic book years).

they killed captain america. which probably isn’t that big a deal to you, but for me it’s at least a year of my childhood going right out the window. I can’t remember which year, but there was one where my next door neighbor willie and my friend leo and I would play superheroes in my yard for hours and hours. I think it was somewhere between five and seven. superheroes was the only time that willie and I were friends. he was a year younger than me which means a lot more at that age and we just weren’t really alike or going to be friends, but we had both started reading comic books and we’d trade them sometimes. willie was always spiderman when we played because he could climb like a monkey. we had a huge tree in our front yard that was perfect for climbing and when it had been planted someone had stuck a metal pole in the ground to hold it up that the tree grown around. you could run at the tree and grab the pole and launch yourself up to the first couple branches and then decide which way to go.

for a little while I was green lantern, but eventually I settled on being captain america. this meant I had to have a shield and since my father was a painter we had paint in the garage. the first shield was a metal garbage can lid, but it didn’t work for a couple reasons. the handle was on the wrong side which made it hard to hold onto as you ran at the tree. this meant I spent way too much time running around the tree instead of being up in it. we had three other large trees at the other end of the front yard, but they weren’t good climbing trees so most of the action when we played superheroes happened at the one end of the yard. the driveway was at that end as well and it was handy for us to pretend it was molten lava that you couldn’t stand in or if someone was lame and wanted to be aquaman for a while we’d pretend it was the ocean. the last problem with the metal lid was that it was too heavy to throw. willie would be up in the tree and I’d throw it at him and it would never quite have the velocity I wanted. I hit him with it a couple times when we were on the ground, but I felt bad even though willie was the kind of kid you could hit with a lid and it was okay somehow. he might get mad or go into a crying rage, but eventually he seemed to pop up and be ready to go again. I can’t remember him ever quitting even though captain america basically dominated superheroes. every once in a while he’d even be captain america’s sidekick bucky if I bugged him enough or just threatened not to play.

the captain america shield 2.0 was a rubber lid from a trash can that had no handle. it looked good after it had been painted and I poked holes in it and tied in a piece of rope and knotted the rope and it was basically perfect. it flew like a frisbee and it didn’t maim willie when it hit him. I was never green lantern or daredevil or the flash after that even though I liked them all. leo settled on the flash and ran like crazy most of the time we played and I can’t really remember what the rules were or much else. I do remember that it was mostly willie and I really playing even though leo and I were better friends and would be friends for years. when we stopped playing I never really hung out or talked to willie much ever again and I also stopped reading comic books as well and moved on to sports books and baseball cards.