Classic superheroes look weird in heavily-armored costumes. Take someone like Superman or maybe The Flash and add a bunch of joints and ridges to their iconic looks, and it loses some of what made them so historically cool to look at.
Dredd producer Adi Shankar must have been thinking the same thing when he dreamed up this costume test reel for a pre-New 52 version of the Flash (along with some of his enemies). Keep an eye out for Mirror Master, Cheetah, Solomon Grundy, and Wonder Woman as the video takes a quick lap through Wally West’s corner of the DCU.
The minute and a half clip – part of what Shankar calls his “Bootleg Universe” – gets a good look at body-hugging costumes based on the designs of illustrator, painter, and cover artist Alex Ross (Kingdom Come, Marvels). Ross’ hyperrealistic illustrations typically plug in real humans into the original costumes of his subjects, with textures that seem to shine and gleam for the reader, a mix of cloth and some material that doesn’t yet exist in the entire world that made Bucky Barnes’ Captain America costume look right.
For this project, Shankar teamed up with the folks at Frontline Designs (Man of Steel, Spider-Man 3). The costume shop also helped bring Frank Miller’s The Spirit and the live-action Tekken to the screen.
So what do you think? How does this compare to the CW’s take on the Flash? Am I being an old crank about the armored costume thing or are they just really cool and I’m missing out? Let us know in the comments.
Image:Â Adi ShankarÂ
Alex Ross styled costumes where he did nothing to the costumes? So basically spandex big belts and the daisyest of dukes. (Nice mom jeans Bruce) Sucks to say but these are pretty bad.Although this is done with designers behind MoS and Spider-Man 3 actually trying to stay true to the comics; so that explains a lot. The need to mention Bucky in a DC blurb is still a mystery.
Those are amateurishly awful, sub-cosplay quality outfits. I’m sure Alex Ross is cringing to hear his name being used in conjunction with anything this hideous; the Flash headpiece cowl is especially egregious. Terrible work all around.
That is one ugly costume.
Why does he make Flash sound like a douchebag? Flash is one of, if not the nicest dude in DC. Even Batman says if his parents hadn’t died that he’s the kind of guy he would have wanted to be when he grew up.
Looking forward to his formal apology for the use of the derogatory term ‘broad’ to describe Wonder Woman.
True! I hope this guy has absolutely no input into the DCU movies. Wally would never refer to a woman as a ‘broad’.
Especially not someone who could literally kill me aka Wonder Woman
This Flash is Wally West not Barry Allen. So the personality isn’t so off base. The opening reference to Wally is clever but not clear enough. The lightning footage is looped so that the same bolt strikes twice(Wally’s origin).Cool idea but its lost in the text on the video and dialogue. Stats on lightning striking twice might have work better?