Captain America lives once more and this time he's packing a pistol, unlike the Cap'n who made his debut punching out Hitler in 1941.

Less than a year after the legendary star-spangled superhero was killed off in his comic book, his former teenage sidekick is being promoted to fill those big red boots in the latest issue, out Wednesday.

Fans were devastated when Steve Rogers - a 1941 creation of artists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby - was gunned down on the steps of a courthouse last March. It was the industry's biggest shocker since Superman temporarily went up, up and away to the great Fortress of Solitude in the sky in 1992.

Many pundits believed the death of a character draped in the American flag was a thinly veiled political allegory.

There's bound to be a backlash when fans see Bucky Barnes, the new Cap, toss the famous shield and whip out a firearm.

"It's a little jarring for some people to see that," said the book's writer, Ed Brubaker. "But people forget that Captain America carried a gun a lot in World War II. Every three covers there was a shot of Captain America with a machine gun or a flamethrower - or an atom bomb."

Some fans still haven't gotten over the shock of seeing one of their all-time favorites get assassinated in a plot hatched by his archnemesis, the Red Skull. "They're icons - leave 'em alone," says Hector Rambla, a 61-year-old Vietnam vet who has been reading Captain America since the '60s. 

After all, Captain America has appeared in an estimated 210 million copies in 75 countries and will be featured in an upcoming movie.

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