Fan Art: Captain America’s movie costume rundown!

On May 28th of this year, JoBlo.com reported having seen what could be Captain America’s battle attire for his first feature film. No pictures were provided but they stated a full list of descriptions for our mental picturing delight. Although the descriptions weren’t elaborate enough for everyone to gain the same glimpse, there were enough of them to get the “big picture” and establish a few key standards for avid artists to dazzle us all prior to Marvel’s release of official costume. Here are the descriptions listed below in no particular order:

1) No head wings for you!!! (The… the head wing Nazi… get it? Nazi… no? Oh just forget about it!) The hero’s hood has been completely replaced by a “muted blue” traditional M1 Army helmet that actually comes down over the eyes in the shape of a domino mask. The “A” is still present front and center, and a black strap comes over and covers the ears to connect under the chin.

Now if we all “Google” what an M1 Helmet looks like, we would see that it is NOT the same helmet as what is shown in the Captain America Reborn comic books but more along the lines of what Ultimate Cap wears to war in the WW2 era. I pray to god that Jo Blo was mistaken! Making the front of one of those helmets “go down” over the eyes with a welded domino mask, although historically accurate, looks completely ridiculous.

2) Cap sports what appears to be a turtleneck type of neck piece along with a leather fabric uniform that you would see on one of the x-men. My guess is he meant to say “one of the movie x-men”. In regards to the sleeves of the outfit, I quote: “The sleeves, for lack of a better word, are white with fairly standard brown gloves.”

Here’s another prayer to the almighty: I really hope that those gloves go up to elbow height because tight white sleeves with small brown gloves in war trenches can look very unmanly. The neck piece JoBlo said they weren’t too sure about so I’m going to go with a somewhat military uniform collar that could have been tightly closed. And as for the fashion sense used with the fabric leather, this is WW2, not 2002. If what he says is accurate and that Cap’s costume looks very similar to the uniforms the X-men wore in their films, he will look incredibly out of place within his era. Contrary to the awesomely talented artists that already rendered their own versions of this costume, I went with a more “standard” issued fashion style for that time. This means that not only will their sketches seem “cooler” than mine, but also to modern for the film’s timeline.

This detail begs to question just how many costumes are there for this film. If you remember correctly, Johnston said that there would be more than one. And since the film will be a book end type of story, it could very well mean that we could see three different types of costumes. The initial theatrical one reported to be worn in the U.S.O. show, a second battle-ready uniform for the trenches and maybe… a more modern one for the film’s ending where we could see our thawed out Captain suit up for the credits. So here’s hoping that, by what JoBlo reported as a response to what seemed to be accurately rendered sketches from our fellow artists, those sketched uniforms would be for the more modern issued version. Not that I would support such a highly modernised to not say completely changed version of Cap’s costume for the Avengers but for his first feature film, the last thing he needs is a time discrepancy.

3) For Cap’s chest piece, the star is present yet not as prominent as it should be. The torso accurately horizontally separates the blue portion from the white… “What, no red?” I’ll get right on that. Instead of red stripes to accompany the white, they have been replaced by two red utility straps with each a metal loop at the midpoint of the chest. Black straps are said to extend from that loop to the shoulders. Because lets face it, nothing says “battle-ready” like freaking suspenders… There was no specification given as to if the straps are actually utility extensions of the belt to give them a better purpose than merely flapping suspenders. Cap is also said to be sporting shoulder pads that extend to mid-bicep level and are affixed by a brown strap under the arm.

So what happened to the triumphant ol’ red, white and blue? It apparently morphed into the great… strapped, predominant white and muted blue? I tried, oh god how I tried, to make the suspenders less campy by giving them a seam at midpoint where it separates the blue from the white. But alas… they are still suspenders. As for the shoulder pads, I had no idea what shoulder pads could look like in WW2. So I based them off of their other form of protection… their helmets. I couldn’t make them too high tech looking because it wouldn’t have been accurate with the times. So I went with the rounded metal shoulder pads and put stars on them because there should be some. I also gave him longer gloves because enough is enough with the white! I thought the accurate dominant star on his chest from the comics was a big enough target to begin with. So my drawing might not be a completely accurate representation of the descriptions we were given but in my defence, they were pretty vague.

4) Cap has a brown utility belt with a silver buckle followed by a pair of blue military pants tucked in brown boots.

So there you have it! These are the facts of the case and they are undisputed. We can’t fully judge the costume until we’ve actually seen it but from whatever tidbits of description we were given, I think I made my opinion of it perfectly clear. This costume will apparently be a battle-ready “spare time in the garage” produced mish-mash of a historically iconic costume. Comic purists ran for their torches and forks when they saw what Marvel did to the classic WW2 era costume that Cap wore in their Ultimate Universe comic line, but honestly I think it would have been oceans better had they chosen to go with that since it was a very accurate military fashioned battle ready fatigue that sported all the essential elements that made the first avenger what he always represented.

I’m sorry for the people that expected some color to my sketch since I had previously said I would color it but apparently my Adobe Photoshop software decided to flip me the bird yesterday and didn’t allow me to color it as I had wished. So here is my inked sketch of the costume. I apologise for the shading only being present for the facial features since I had intended to work my magic with straight up colors only on the rest of it. If any of you talented colorists have any time to kill, feel free to take a shot at it and post it in full color in the comments section. The awesome sketches that were previously done by our other fellow artists will follow mine as you scroll down. Keep in mind that I am not a comic book professional artist, I mostly do portraits. So let’s keep the discussion about the suit and not the so called art ;)