Thoughts on the TV FLASH costume

The internet released the first shot of the upcoming FLASH TV show. It reminded me of the last time DC tried this.

The Flash has one thing going for him:

Carmine Infantino was a great costume designer.

There have been all sorts of fast comic book dudes.  Hurricane, Quicksilver, Lightning, Johnny Quick, even The Whizzer (god help us).  The Flash stands out amongst this fast crowd because of his super suit.

As a kid, I liked FLASH comics.  The original Flash, Jay Garrick, had a cool helmet like the Roman god Mercury, the second Flash, Barry Allen, was a police scientist, and Kid Flash , a.k.a. Wally West, had the coolest costume ever, thanks again to Carmine Infantino.  Eventually, Barry Allen died in the line of duty in the comics and Wally grew up and assumed the mantle.

In the wake of the 1989 BATMAN success and Disney’s DICK TRACY (I guess), Warner Brothers thought to try a FLASH TV show.  It featured a BATMAN-like soundtrack (done by BATMAN’s Danny Elfman), color-saturated effects (a la DICK TRACY), and a Barry Allen who was motived by a gunman who murdered his parents and then he swore to be a bat  older brother.  The show was a weird mix of plots and had the very unfortunate co-incidence of emerging on the TV scene at the same time as THE SIMPSONS, so THE FLASH lasted about one season.  Perhaps the best part was watching a pre-BATMAN Mark Hamill tear it up as The Trickster.

The Flash super-suit was wild to watch.  It really took the muscle-sculpted look from Michael Keaton’s BATMAN and ramped it to 100.  I think they got it all wrong: runners aren’t huge hulking muscle heads: they’re lean.  The padded suit looked like a ton of bricks.  On top of that, they decided he didn’t need his trademark gold boots.

It took forever to search out someone in Los Angeles who had the resin model of the TV FLASH.

I had a blast making it and, of course, fixed the boots.

Those early DC movies and shows were… interesting.  Here’s to interesting times.

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