People in >>95339456 were wondering why in the 90's reboot of Fighting American...

People in were wondering why in the 90's reboot of Fighting American, there were so many errors in which it looked like someone thought Soviet soldiers would wear German uniforms. It was explained in that thread later but I think it'd help to illustrate things if you see the examples.

As we already know, back around 1995 or so, Marvel decided to farm out comics to Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee for Heroes Reborn. Liefeld got Captain America and Avengers, Jim Lee got Iron Man and Fantastic Four. The plan was that they and their studios would work on the books for 12 issues, modernizing the characters without affecting the rest of the ongoing Marvel universe.

Wizard #67 had an article about the upcoming plans Lee and Liefeld had. The magazine was cover dated March 1997 so it was probably actually published February 1997 (which might've been published at the same time Heroes Reborn Captain America #5 was published as well). Here's Liefeld's intended plans after the first Captain America arc.

Notice the part where an arc with Stephen Platt drawing is mentioned, and how it was going to involve Fury and the Howling Commandos, and involve an alien landing That's important for later. Also keep in mind that even though this article says it was going to be the third arc, supposedly solicitation catalogs around this time had the Platt arc listed already, so Liefeld probably moved it up earlier.

But for whatever reason, Liefeld and his crew got dropped from the book after the sixth issue. Remember that at this time, Liefeld had also split from Image months before and trying to keep his own publishing company going with Loeb, Stephenson, and others, and Alan Moore writing Supreme, and all that.

Texas user here, thanks OP. Pretty much everything surrounding Liefeld's mid to late 90's career has absolutely fascinated me the past few days.

Gonna be posting Fighting American: Rules of the Game later.

Some time after, Liefeld announced an Agent America project, with a preview. What people didn't know at the time was that Liefeld was trying to get a deal going to get the rights to Fighting American and that didn't go well, so he went and did this preview (but then eventually got the rights).

Looks like somebody nailed his crotch to the wall and he's trying to pull himself free while trying to act cool so nobody notices.

What are the odds you can get through talking about this Liefeld/Cap history lesson without posting THE picture?

I'll save y'all the trouble.

Here's more pages from the preview. This page I think also ran in an issue of Wizard. Notice at this time the Iron Cross was still a Nazi.

Another image, this time with an alien in there (which isn't exactly surprising if you read )

And it was also announced that Stephen Platt would be drawing Agent America. But if you look closely, you can see the mask eagle being separate unlike how it overlaps most of the mask in I assume you can guess why.

Another preview of Platt's pages. Notice the villains are still Nazis.

And the last Fighting American related image in the preview.

>Spend years learning anatomy, coloring, shading, inking
>Get a job in the industry
>???
>Devolve into that shitheap
What happened?

I mean Agent America. But anyway, on to actual Fighting American!

This was a Comicon Preview. I don't know exactly when or which con is was released at but I'm guessing probably in the summer cause that was around when it was announced Liefeld got the rights to Fighting American and so changed things again.

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This probably was published before the Marvel lawsuit (and settlement) happened. When this scene finally got published, he had a different shield.

Pencils.

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Sketches.

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Get fucked.

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Go to bed, Rob.

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This is pretty much the same as the Agent America cover in

And now more Platt pages.

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Since this preview was pre-settlement you can see that Fighting American was going to throw his shield. This page got eventually edited in the final version, though.

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This is the penciled version of Platt's variant for Fighting American #1. Notice that the eagle on Fighting American's mask doesn't cover the lower part of his mask and looks like the HR Cap's mask. And how his shield looks like it has what appears to be stripes. And the picture in the top right with "Bory" which was obviously intended to be "Fury" originally. This was probably intended as a cover to Captain America #7 at first.

This eventually was the variant for Fighting American #2. Notice the mask eagle and the slight hint of stripes on the shield. This might've been intended as the cover to HR Cap #8.

More Platt pages.

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Also notice the villains were still Nazis.

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This is a team that Liefeld came up with that never got used in the Fighting American comic. If you remember in Liefeld planned to do a story where Cap goes to England and teams up with the Invaders. I don't believe he ever got around to drawing that arc (otherwise we'd have seen images of it) but it's more likely that he had some ideas that he wanted to do that he could incorporate in.

Words from Rob.

He is partly right, what eventually got published wasn't all redrawn/retouched Captain America pages; Liefeld himself drew new stuff. But the Platt ones definitely were retouched.

Compare the published image here with

And this page with

Compare this to

This page was new but still had to be edited due to the Marvel settlement, and you can compare with

Compare this with

And this with Notice how he's throwing the bomb with the wrong hand? It's because he wasn't originally supposed to throw a bomb, he was supposed to throw his shield. But then then Marvel settlement happened and they had to quickly alter it.

This page I bring up not just to compare with but also to compare with the original art...

...Right here. Yes, it may say "Fighting American" at the top, but it was very obviously supposed to be a page for the unpublished Captain America.

Platt's pages in #1 and 2 of Fighting American total up to about 21 pages (counting splash pages as two pages), which probably makes up one issue's worth of work. It's likely that Platt already drew up all or most of one issue, along with two covers, and Liefeld may have paid him in advance for it and needed to find a use for it once he was no longer on Captain America.

One more thing, I don't know if it was Alan Moore or Jeph Loeb or whoever that came up with the names for the Howling Commandos analogues. But there's an issue of Moore's Judgment Day in which they showed a WWII flashback, with Battlin' Baron mentioning Agent America so he probably knew of it/created the names before Liefeld officially got the Fighting American rights.

As for why the changes from Nazis to Soviets, it's likely because Fighting American was first published in the 50's and the character was never associated with WWII in the first place. So on top of modifying the costume to make it look less like Cap and removing scenes where he's throwing his shield, all the more obvious Nazi references were removed, yet there's still unchanged things like the uniforms, cars, and such. Problem is they couldn't outright redraw things since the whole purpose was to repurpose the unpublished Cap pages.

I thought Liefeld didn't really learn those things, and inkers he worked with early on compensated for his shortcomings?

Wha