Marvel Hopes Aging Superheroes Come to Comics Industry's Rescue

NEW YORK — Intolerance is on the rise this fall. A sinister, neo-Nazi group is whipping up support in the cities. Hatred reigns supreme.

Sounds like a job for Captain America.

Trouble is, the star-spangled warhorse has forgotten who he is when the good guys come calling.

"I'm not a captain of anything. I've never even been on a boat," insists Steve Rogers, a loving, mild-mannered husband and father hurrying to his steelworker job in Philadelphia.

The amnesia-ridden Captain is the latest attempt by Marvel Comics to reintroduce more than a dozen of their classic superheroes with spanking new origins, stronger female characters and deeper emotional baggage.

"You're needed again, you know," one man pleads. "Now. More than ever."

Apparently, Marvel Comics still needs the Captain, too.

As the country's top comics seller, Marvel is gambling that fans will snap up the '90s version of Captain America and three other flagging vintage titles, thereby repositioning both the company and the heroes for a new market.

So Captain America, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and Iron Man--a total of 13 heroes in all--are being overhauled after having met their apparent doom this summer at the hands of the supervillain Onslaught.

The apocalyptic final panels of the battle seemed to result in the largest mass cartoon slaying in comics history. But have no fear, the brightly clad heroes return this month, each beginning with a No. 1 issue.

But Marvel promises they'll be a far cry from the one-dimensional characters who first emerged during the Cold War.

The new Captain America will be a hero-as-metaphor, a superpower who has forgotten his former greatness and wanders a dark world, desperate to recover the ideals he personifies--patriotism, loyalty and equality.

Jazzing up the dusty heroes already seems to be paying off. The final showdown against Onslaught has been flying off comic shelves since its debut on Aug. 7.

A heroic death is hardly a new phenomenon in comics history. DC Comics, the No. 2 publisher behind Marvel, killed--gasp!--Superman in November 1992, only to bring him back to Metropolis after a nine-month hiatus.

The gambit worked. According to the trade publication Comic Buyer's Guide, DC shipped 4 million copies of the comic detailing the Man of Steel's demise. In some places, the price leaped to $30 that same day.