TRULY GONE & FORGOTTEN FOES : THE AMERIDROID

So dumb.

The Ameridroid

Evil duplicates are a dime a dozen in comics, and where would we be without a Bizarro, a Sinestro or a Crimson Dynamo to offset the heroes who headline their own titles? For Captain America, his opposite number might realistically be expected to be The Red Skull, a would-be fascist tyrant whose monomaniacal drive for the reinstatement of the Nazi Reich is itself a twisted mirror of Captain America’s own vision as a free American?

But then again, there’s the Ameridroid.

An absolutely perfect duplicate of America’s premiere patriot – except that he stands 3.5 meters tall - the android duplicate of Captain America is powered by the mind of Lyle Dekker, a minor league Nazi double agent whose prominent achievement is to have failed to derail the Captain America serial filmed during World War II. Stewing in his own resentment for decades, Dekker manages to build the titanic duplicate of super-soldier Steve Rogers – complete with chain mail costume and red-white-and-blue shield, upscaled for husky boys of his size.

So build yourself a giant woman, idiot. And a big seat.

Using a complicated device to steal Cap’s super powers, Dekker inserts his own mind into the titanic android and sets about rampaging around a modest village, hollering about a new world order like an idiot. Considering that the Ameridroid’s primary characteristics are that he (a) has the proportional strength and abilities of a Captain America and (b) is taller than a Captain America, he seems to have an exaggerated idea of his own abilities. Surely just being the biggest guy on the block doesn’t make you the de facto leader of a new tyranny, if that were the case we would’ve been ruled by Andre the Giant as soon as he showed up on American shores.

In fact, it’s the Ameridroid’s oversized status that ends p as his undoing, realizing at the end that he‘s basically ruined himself for riding merry-go-rounds or fitting on a single seat on the bus. Yep, all of life’s joys denied him, he’s convinced by Captain America to go live in the woods until he feels better or wants to come back and murder Nomad, which was the ending of a three-issue arc, if you can believe it.