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.
