10 Shocking Cover Ups Marvel Comics Wants You To Forget

3. The Reign Of The America Men

Marville Cover Greg Horn
DC Comics

Rob Liefeld is no stranger to controversy within the comics community. As one of the rabble-rousing troublemakers who shook up the entire industry when he came up with the idea for Image Comics, he commands respect from all struggling creatives. However, he has been involved in enough scandals and troubles that his name can also send a shiver down the spine of those same creatives.

When Liefeld, alongside Jeph Loeb, was commissioned to revamp Captain America for Marvel Comics, the results were terrible. Marvel cancelled the series, acting as if it had never happened.

Liefeld and Loeb still had untold Captain America stories that they had been planning, so they decided to continue these stories with a different hero: Fighting American. Fighting American was a Cap clone created by Cap's actual creators, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, back when Marvel had put them in a very similar situation over forty years prior.

However, even this didn't work, as Simon and Kirby's widow Roz demanded too much money for Fighting American's rights. So, Liefeld went ahead and created a clone of both Captain America and Fighting American named Agent America. Now with three characters in comics who all looked and acted almost exactly the same, the ensuing legal shenanigans were messy to say the least.

Contributor
Contributor

Jimmy Kavanagh is an Irish writer and co-founder of Club Valentine Comedy, a Dublin-based comedy collective. You can hear him talk to his favourite comedians about their favourite comics on his podcast, Comics Swapping Comics.