Captain America Suited in Heavy Mech-Style Armor — Print & Oil Painting

The picture has been rained on with its own paint. Against a near black ground the artist has let dozens of thin dark runs travel from the top edge to the bottom, over the figure as readily as over the background, and has flicked spatter across the whole surface on top of that. Underneath it the drawing is nervous scratchy ink, hatched rather than modelled, with every plate outlined twice.

The armour is heavy and it is mechanical. A hard shelled helmet carries a white A on the brow, two small swept wings at the temples and a ribbed disc set over the ear like a housing for something. Below it comes a plated collar, a segmented blue cuirass with a white star, and on his right shoulder a rig of cylinders and pistons running down the outside of the arm. Strapped diagonally across the chest is a long plated scabbard scored with small marks, with a crossguard and grip showing at its lower end.

Everything below the ribs is equipment. Red and white banding crosses the abdomen, a wide segmented belt carries a rectangular case at the buckle with smaller pouches either side, two red plated tassets hang at the hips, and the hands disappear into gauntlets built out of overlapping strips. The head is tilted down and the mouth is set flat, so the face gives away nothing at all.

The shield is not being carried. It shows only as a large red disc behind his shoulders, its rings blocked in roughly, with a cold cyan halo burning around the silhouette of the head and upper body. The measurement leans cyan with saturation low, which is that halo and the grey of all the runs outweighing the red and blue of the costume.

Dressing this particular figure as a soldier rather than as a symbol has history behind it. His first issue went on sale in December 1940, a full year before the United States entered the war, with a cover showing him punching Adolf Hitler in the jaw. It sold a million copies and it brought death threats to the publisher's office from pro Nazi organisations, so the staff worked under a police guard, and the mayor of New York telephoned the artists personally to tell them to keep going. From our Marvel collection, alongside the wartime uniform charging a cannon tank through snow and both hands resting on a lowered, battered shield.