The first issue of Marvel Comics, dated November 1939, introduced several original superhero characters, at least two of whom found a lasting audience. The Human Torch, created by Carl Burgos, was actually not a human but an android with the rather terrifying ability to burst into flames and set objects and people ablaze. The Sub-Mariner, created by Bill Everett, was the son of an interracial marriage between an American sea captain and a princess from the undersea kingdom of Atlantis. Possessing superhuman strength and the ability to breathe on land as well as in water, the Sub-Mariner also harbored a fierce antipathy towards the dwellers of the surface world, thereby qualifying him as perhaps the first comic book anti-hero.
Neither the Human Torch nor the Sub-Mariner were about to rival the likes of Superman, Batman, or Captain Marvel, but they helped to give Marvel a significant share of the rapidly expanding comic book market. That share increased in 1941 when Marvel debuted Captain America. The creation of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, Captain America became the definitive comic book super-patriot of World War II and Marvel's most popular "star." The cover of Captain America Comics number one brashly portrayed the red-white-and-blue costumed hero socking Adolf Hitler in the mouth.
