Rob Liefeld's hackery continued: Agent America

Here's a reprint of a segment of an Advanced Iron article I wrote back in late 2004:

In what I could dub “It Came From the Rip-Off Bin,” I actually got for free what is essentially an advertisement for totally lame comic “creator” Rob Liefeld’s AGENT: AMERICA (see below).

Cripes, the utter gall it took to “create” such a rip-off of CAPTAIN AMERICA must’ve known no bounds. After Liefeld was axed by Marvel for his pathetic job on volume 2 CAPT. AMERICA, he founded a co. called “Awesome Entertainment.” There, he acquired the rights to a Jack Kirby character called “Fighting American” who Jack created with Joe Simon in the 50s as an American “Cold Warrior.” Liefeld used his never-realized “ideas” from vol. 2 CAP in AGENT: AMERICA … wait, check that – he ultimately decided to use the old Kirby moniker of FIGHTING AMERICAN. Because …

… considering how pathetically close an imitation AGENT: AMERICA was to CAPTAIN AMERICA, Marvel sued Liefeld. The court’s decision was that Liefeld and Awesome Entertainment could keep FIGHTING AMERICAN (seen at left) but not AGENT, and he could never be seen throwing his shield. In addition, Rob had to alter FA’s costume to make it less “Cap-like.”

Yeesh. Doing online research about this story got me pretty confused. I think the above nails down pretty well what transpired. However, I did discover that DC had once revived FIGHTING AMERICAN in 1994 as a pretty straightforward revamp of Kirby and Simon’s character. Thanks to the UK International Hero website and Christopher Vanette for their valuable insight.

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Again, if you haven't yet checked out this site dedicated to Liefeld's lameness, be sure to stop by.

(A slightly modified post of this was published at The Colossus of Rhodey a year ago.)