Did you know that Rob Liefeld took a crack at redesigning the costume for Captain America rip-off "The Fighting American"? And it's so blatant and awful, I thought it was Cap when I wrote this article? Well, it's true. You might want to put on some sunglasses with anti-Suck-Glare coating before looking at this, I warn you:
Besides looking like he's been kicked in the nuts with the way the pants lines are bunching up (a Liefeld staple), and the fact that his head has apparently been ripped off then repositioned on top of a wombat neck (I don't even know what that means but I can't bear to delete it now that it's all written down), the actual costume design itself is a failure for me.
I'll start with the helmet and the odd white bird motif. I suppose that's supposed to be an eagle, though it's hard to tell. On the one hand, I'm glad he did away with the little wings, which I never particularly cared for, but I don't think spreading it all around his face like a little kid immediately after diving into a butter-slathered cob of corn was the solution.
Moving onto the chest, we again have the bird (eagle?) head on top of the star, which is utterly superfluous. The idea of the white star melding into flag stripes is an interesting one, but so poorly executed we have to include black outlines to differentiate the two.
In general the proportions of white to blue to red in the upper torso feel out of balance to me. But, I suppose if you're going to rip off Wonder Woman's design, that's the kind of thing you have to live with:
Still don't believe me? Check out this alternate Liefeld drawing of Cap, complete with Wonder Boobs:
In this one, not only does he have Wonder Woman's breasts, he's got her logo stamped on his forehead. But come on, they're from two different companies, it's not like anyone would notice!
Back to this redesign, though. I can't let it go without commenting on the pouch attached to the shield straps. I know we've all seen Liefeld put pouches on belts, thighs, ankles, bicepts, wrists, and bandoliers, but this one takes the cake. I can't wait to see what happens when Cap whips his shield off of his back to fling at the Red Skull, only to have it wobble furiously out of line due to the multiple rolls of Lifesavers he's packing in the attached man purse.
I'm glad that in the meantime we've had actual professionals design Cap's costume for the movies. It's good to see the difference between good design like this:
And the unholy abomination Liefeld wanted to foist on the world.
I saw this the other day, but didn’t realize it was Liefeld’s. The one aspect I like about the design is the bird on the chest, but as you stated the execution is off.
I hate to correct you, oh Fearless Leader, but that’s not Cap. It’s actually Liefeld’s update of Jack Kirby’s Fighting American. After Marvel dumped him off of the Heroes Reborn project, Liefeld bought the rights for Fighting American and introduced him into his Awesome Comics universe. There were rumors that he just used the unpublished Captain America pages and switched them up to make them Fighting American, so in essence your are correct.
Thanks for the heads-up, Dan. Good to know, although in a way that’s even worse — it’s bad enough he was redesigning a Cap style rip-off, but he designed it to mirror Cap so closely you can’t help but think “This is Captain America”. Ugh.
Liefeld is just scary. Someone should take a photo of him and post his pic on every art store in America and tell them not to let this guy purchase another pencil or art computer ever again!
I second that! Anyone know where I can find such a picture? 😀
Jeff, I hear ya. Plus, I’m pretty sure I figured out The Fighting American’s secret identity.
Jeff did you ever see the anatomical version of that second Liefeld drawing? I won’t post a link because it features a bit of male nudity, but just type “Rob Liefeld Captain Amercia” into Google images. Right now it’s both the 4th and 9th picture in the results. Basically, an artist re-drew the picture without the suit on, to show how screwed up Liefeldian anatomy really is. I have no idea how this man keeps getting work…
I have indeed seen it, and in fact I want to say I posted about it before. Just … horrifying.
Did anyone else notice that there’s a pouch on the shield handle? Can’t this fraud of an artist keep himself from putting pouches on any available strap?
How about the simple fact that the belt buckle is on top of the pouches on the belt? When I was in the military, I wore duty belt with pouches and a holster. If the buckle was hovering above the pouches like this one, the front one would have been completely inaccessible. Not only that, but how does it keep the belt fastened anyway?
Here you go Kaylin. I mocked it up as a motivational poster for that specific intent. http://i685.photobucket.com/albums/vv217/Myrowire/Liefeld_motivational.jpg
You ask that question, sir, as though the inimitable Mr. Liefeld actually thinks about such things. P’shaw, I say! P’shaw!
Marvel actually sued over this, especially since Fighting American never had a shield. One of the terms of the settlement was that he wouldn’t ever throw said shield.
Here is a fix for the atrocious Captain America pinup…
http://fixedart.com/captain-america-by-rob-liefeld/
i love how he’s muscles that don’t exist like the apparent “12 pack ” abs
I hope I don’t get hurt for saying this but I…actually…kinda…sorta…like that costume design.
I mean, obviously it’s far from perfect, but if Marvel was in the mood to do a major redesign of Captain America’s costume they could do a lot worse than this. Really the biggest problem is Liefeld’s typical tenuous grasp on the basics of human anatomy. The arms both look like two huge lumps of clay that have been mashed together, the fists are each about half the size of his head, and the torso is as flat as a pancake. In fact the longer I look at it, his chest almost looks concave.
But if you look past the atrocious anatomy, the costume is not half bad IMO. In fact if Liefeld had done sort of a rough sketch of this costume design and then asked a more talented artist (who knows how to properly draw the human body) to draw Cap in this outfit, I think it might have come out pretty good.
Don’t feel to bad, because you can give most of the credit for the costume to Jack Kirby. Here’s the original. I will give Liefeld some credit for cleaning it up, as far as getting rid of the yellow parts. They don’t really flow with the rest of the costume. But it’s Kirby, so we can let it slide.
Was his sidekick named Sucky?
The Cap is one of my fav all time characters, this man just needs a good kick in the balls for starters, you guys can get second hits
I hear a lot of people hating on this Liefield guy. His art is pretty laughable.
😮