MY CAPTAIN AMERICA

*My Captain America* is a finely wrought coming-of-age memoir about the author’s relationship with her beloved grandfather Joe Simon, cartoonist and co-creator of Captain America.

Evoking New York City both in the 1980s and ’90s and during the Golden Age of comics in the 1930s and ’40s, *My Captain America* flashes back from Megan’s story to chart the life and career of Rochester-native Joe Simon, from his early days retouching publicity photos and doing spot art for magazines, to his partnership with Jack Kirby at Timely Comics (the forerunner of Marvel Comics), which resulted in the creation of beloved characters like Captain America, the Boy Commandos, and Fighting American.

*My Captain America* offers a tender and sharply observed account of Megan’s life with Daddy Joe—and an intimate portrait of the creative genius who gave us one of the most enduring superheroes of all time.

2021 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist

“A tender and heart-aching account of coming-of-age, and of aging, and of a vanishing New York City, as well as a much-needed corrective to myths concerning the origins of some of our most iconographic pieces of twentieth-century popular culture. Thank you, Megan Margulies, for getting it all so right.”

—Jonathan Lethem, New York Times bestselling author and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

“My Captain America is the best and truest kind of love story: one with a thousand tendrils that come together to create a rich symphony of love letters to family, a city, history, and—maybe most importantly—the author herself….Megan Margulies deftly explores familial bonds, the lasting power of the smallest (and deceptively simplest) of acts, and the way in which the deepest and most transformative grief forms from the most profound of bonds.”

—Eva Hagberg, author of How to Be Loved: A Memoir of Lifesaving Friendship

“It is a peculiar thing to belong to someone who belongs to everyone, but in My Captain America, Megan Margulies accomplishes a telescopic feat: This is at once an intimate, finely observed rendering of a single, beloved man and a compelling portrait of a public figure and his legendary work. Even with a larger-than-life, possibly immortal Nazi-fighting superhero in nearly every frame, Margulies shows, through confidently drawn and lovingly rendered scenes, that true heroes are the altogether mortal, everyday humans who love us generously, quietly, and durably.”

—Andrea Avery, author of Sonata

“There are too few books that explore the importance of a loving relationship between a grandchild and grandparent….A tender story about what we inherit, what we hope to pass on, and how the man who created the superhero Captain America plays a real-life guardian angel to his granddaughter. A book to cherish.”

—Tory Bilski, author of Wild Horses of the Summer Sun

“Margulies has crafted a touching and relatable coming-of-age story, a nuanced and accurate portrait of New York City in the 1990s, and, most importantly, a beautiful heart at the center of the book—Daddy Joe, Joe Simon, creator of Captain America. At turns moving, funny, and cinematic, I tore through these pages and enjoyed every moment.”

—Erin Khar, author of Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies that Nearly Killed Me

“Episodic memoir recounting the close relationship between grandfather and grandchild—and an unusual grandfather at that. [Joe] Simon was always ready for adventure, and he emerges as quite a character. Fans of comic book history will enjoy this affectionate look backward.”

—Kirkus Reviews

  “Megan Margulies’s beautifully rendered chronicle of a charmed friendship brims with the illustrative skills that she so admired in her grandfather….she brings to marvelous life the bonds of three generations of restless, complicated New Yorkers, with and without their shields.”

—Sean Howe, author of Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, a New York Times bestseller

“Megan Margulies tells the story of a national treasure through the loving eyes of a granddaughter. In Daddy Joe, as she called him, Megan had a true champion and a loving reflection of the grown up she could become. Margulies writes her story with vulnerability and honesty….She helps us see that this creator of a superhero, actually kind of was one.”

—Joselin Linder, author of The Family Gene

“With writing by turns gritty, raw, and poignant, Megan Margulies’ memoir interweaves stories from the Golden Age of comics, New York City in two iconic eras, and a girl's love for her grandfather. It’s a compelling read, and a testament to how family bonds so often shape us into the person we will become.”

—Teresa Lust, author of A Blissful Feast and Pass the Polenta

“….a poignant and touching portrait of not just a seminal practitioner of the art form of comics, but a loving and unconventional grandfather.”

—Al Roker, Today Show co-host