Co-creator of Captain America Joe Simon has died at the age of 98.

Simon collaborated with Jack Kirby who worked together on countless characters, heroes, villains during the Golden Age of comic books.

Simon was also the first editor of Timely Comics, which evolved into Marvel Comics.

Captain America appeared for the first time in December 1940 (the issue was dated March 1941), a year before the United States entered World War II. On the cover he was pictured delivering a right cross to Adolf Hitler.

“The comics that were doing really well at the time were ones with clever villains in them, so I started by looking around for the perfect villain,” Mr. Simon wrote in his autobiography, “Joe Simon: My Life in Comics.” “I thought to myself, Let’s get a real live villain. Adolf Hitler would be the perfect foil for our next new character, what with his hair and that stupid-looking mustache and his goose-stepping. He was like a cartoon anyway.”

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