Tag Archives: Costume

Speed Reading: Sales, Humor, TPBs, Movies

Rounding up a week of links:

Major Spoilers has the Top 300 Comics for August 2009, and Flash: Rebirth #4 is #14. They’re also holding a costume contest.

Dan Didio’s latest 20 questions explains how Geoff Johns & Francis Manapul moved from Adventure Comics to The Flash. He adds, “my goal now is to get those guys going on Flash as soon as possible.”

High Five! Comics lists their top ten second-string couples, featuring both Barry & Iris Allen and Ralph & Sue Dibny. Their latest Things I Learned From Comics feature covers How to Gain Superpowers.

Collected Editions has updated their DC Comics Trade Paperback Timeline and moved to its new, post-GeoCities home.

Humor

The Onion brings the “news” that melting ice caps are exposing hundreds of secret arctic lairs. Does anyone remember whether Dr. Impossible had one?

Noah Van Sciver continues his comic-strip Flash: Rebirth Recaps with issue #4.

Movies

We Are Movie Geeks has made a list of five projects for DC Entertainment to jump on, starting with the Flash.

And finally, Crimson Lightning has the results of the casting poll. Fans cast Neil Patrick Harris as the Scarlet Speedster. Next up: Who’s your favorite Reverse Flash?

Cosplay Photos: Flashes & Rogues at Dragon*Con

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Just from what I’ve seen on Flickr, there were a ton of Flash-related costumes at Dragon*Con this year.

Looking through these photos, be sure to notice:

The Flash’s secret revealed: Red Bull!
The Grail Knight (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) asks the Flash to choose wisely.
Smallville-style Impulse
The entire frakking Rogues’ Gallery!

The Rogues’ Gallery group not only did an incredible job on their costumes, but got together for an extended photo shoot…and hung out at a bar afterward, in full costume. You can read all about it, with dozens of photos, in xanykaos’ (Trickster II) post on flash_rogues, A Meeting of Rogues. (Thanks to Lia for the link!)

Speed Reading: Dezago on Casper, Undead Allies, Marvel vs. DC, and More

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Some Friday linkblogging:

Former Impulse writer Todd Dezago is working on a Casper the Friendly Ghost miniseries. Update: Newsarama has an interview.

Again with the Comics considers other times that DC’s heroes have had to face undead former allies.

Being Carter Hall posts a sketch of Hawkman and the Golden Age Flash by classic artist Sheldon Moldoff.

Silver Age Comics looks back at the Great Price Increase of 1961.

Grumpy Old Fan considers the essential difference between Marvel and DC and how it impacts continuity, long-form storytelling and relentless pursuit of imperfection.

Comic Book Heroes profiles the Flash.

Flash Paper Figure Update: The Nerdy Bird has located a sexy Flash costume (and a scary Batman one). Update 2: The first woman in the SDCC Flash Sighting post appears to be wearing this costume.

Update: Custom Paper Toys’ paper JLA figures will be available at Arby’s (via Robot 6)

Golden-Age Flash Costume: Boots and Shirt Construction

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Katie again, as promised, with details on the making of the boots and shirt for Kelson’s Comic-Con Golden Age Flash costume. This shouldn’t be nearly as long as the helmet post, I promise. My aim here is to show the entire process from design to display, as an aid to anyone else who might want to try something similar.

The Boots

Our original intention with the boots was to get cheap boots and make boot covers. I’d picked up a pair of costume boots for myself at Payless at a huge discount a few years ago, which was surprising given that anything in a size 10 or over is hard to find in women’s shoes. However, men’s fashion boots are even harder to find, let alone with a price restriction, and in the sale room of DSW we reformulated our plan. We thought about permanently attaching semi-rigid covers to an old pair of sneakers, but realized that tying laces would prove impossible inside a boot. So it came down to slip-ons, and we located a pair at (surprise!) Payless that fit pretty well. The only question was whether to make them permanent or removable, and the material made the decision for us.

I tend to be a cheapskate when it comes to crafts that I’m going to keep for myself. For gifts, sales, or commissions, I spare little expense; but for my own use it’s Red Heart Super Saver and Westrim beads, because I’m willing to undertake for myself the maintenance that will make the piece look like more than it is. We went to Jo-Ann with no idea what we wanted beyond “shiny bright red.” Luckily, this was during a huge fabric clearance and we found some less-than-half-price red vinyl, which settled the question of what to make the boots from. I also picked up some E-6000 cement, which claimed it would bond vinyl, and some muslin for making patterns and test covers. I didn’t intend to sew the final covers, as it would punch holes in the vinyl. But something else happened then that I did not intend: the E-6000 not only wouldn’t hold up to much pulling (even when I roughed up the shiny vinyl lightly with sandpaper), but flat-out refused to bond to the back side of the vinyl. It didn’t matter that the suggested temperature range meant I’d waited until nearly sunset to be able to use it at all. It just beaded up, dried, and fell off. So, since I didn’t want to mess with mass quantities of hot glue that I’d need to shepherd along definite “seam” lines, it was going to have to be sewing.

Continue reading →

Golden-Age Flash Costume: Helmet Construction

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Hi! This is Katie, the wife Kelson’s mentioned a few times. I’m not nearly as involved with comics as he is, but I appreciate a good convention costume and have made a point of wearing at least one a year for a while now. My interests in effects makeup, jewelrymaking, and general arts and crafts really come in handy for this, though it had been a long time since I’d been able to persuade Kelson to dress up for a con. When he mentioned that he’d wear a Jay Garrick Flash costume if he could get all the pieces, my ears pricked up. When he said something about how a really determined person would make a paper-mache hat, I said, “I could do that.” In the end, I did quite a bit more.

The helmet is made from paper mache, Crayola Model Magic, glue, felt, cardboard, a few gap-filling pastes of varying efficacy, and both brush-on and spray-on paint and clear-coat spray acrylic. The boots are vinyl covers glued (again, with a sort of tiered success) to a pair of $20 Payless slip-on shoes, with stuffed plush wings made from felt and sewn on. And the shirt, which we originally thought would be taken care of by Graphitti Designs, involved some last-minute Amazon ordering, masking tape, and several applications of fabric paint. I was heat-setting the thing at midnight the Tuesday before the con; we have yet to see what washing will do to it.

The Helmet

I started with the helmet, figuring it would take a while to dry at the thicknesses I’d be creating, even in dry heat. (One thing California summer weather is good for!) Continue reading →

Flash Costume Sightings at Comic-Con 2009

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If the number of Flash costumes at Comic-Con International last week is any indication, the fan base is energized. Most years I only see one or two Flashes, if any. This year there were at least three Jay Garricks including myself, two women who made variations on the costume, one man in a Black Flash costume, a Kid Flash, and a Captain Cold.

Here’s a gallery of photos from Flickr.

Golden Age

I don’t think I’d ever seen a Golden Age Flash costume at a convention until I saw some photos from HeroesCon and Wizard World Philadelphia in June. There seemed to be one Jay Garrick at each. So I figured I’d probably be the only one at San Diego. Imagine my surprise when I ran into not one other, but two!

The photo on the left shows me and a cosplayer who was part of a Justice Society of America group I spotted in line for the DC Nation panel on Friday. I asked the person behind me to save my place in line, walked along the line to where they were, and we did the obligatory “Nice costume!” exchange, then ended up posing for a bunch of photos. We did at least two poss, this one and one just standing and crossing our arms like the Alex Ross poster. Someone got an interesting shot with a blur effect, also.

I ran into the guy on the right on Saturday, when I wasn’t in costume. He actually used an original World War I helmet, polished it up, and made wings for it…then the first day in town the wings broke, so he needed to come up with a substitute fast. He ended up gluing popsicle sticks together and spray painting them gold.

Update: Speaking of the helmet, here’s how my helmet was made. Update 2: and here’s how we made the boots and shirt.

Variations

I didn’t manage to see any of these three in person during the con. But they’re really cool variations.

The two things that usually impress me the most with character costumes are:

Authenticity – costumes that match the source very well, especially if the person wearing it is a good fit for the character. (That especially helps with costumes from movies and TV shows. If you resemble an actor, seriously look at their roles for ideas!)
Creative variation – costumes that take a concept and put a deliberate spin on them. The Steampunk Flash from the League of Justice-Minded Citizens, for instance. Or either of the female Flash costumes here.

The Flash is well-suited for variations, because there have been so many of them in canon. You’ve got the basics: Jay Garrick’s Golden Age costume, the Barry Allen/Wally West Flash costume, and the Kid Flash costume (each with its own variations). Then you’ve got Professor Zoom, Johnny Quick, a half-dozen Jesse Quick costumes, Impulse, Max Mercury, Walter West, Iris West II, John Fox’s three costumes…and that’s not counting all the possible future Flashes from “Chain Lightning.”

So it’s not a problem to take the basic red-and-yellow lightning motif and build on it. People will still know who you are, especially if you keep the white circle around the lightning bolt.

Well, except for the dimwits who mistake you for Flash Gordon. 🙁

Update August 28: The woman on the left appears to be wearing an off-the-rack costume rather than a custom variation.

Cold and the Kid

I almost missed Captain Cold here. It was late Saturday afternoon, and I was on the phone with my wife trying to work out dinner plans. I saw him through the window, said, “Hang on, I need to get a picture of Captain Cold” and ducked outside into Sails Pavilion.

Kid Flash was there on Sunday. Sterling Gates, who had been announced the day before as the writer of an upcoming Kid Flash series, posted, “I just met Kid Flash! He’s here!” I kept looking for him the rest of the day, but had no luck. Fortunately, Comic Con has a lot of people with cameras!

Bonus: Cheetara!

She may not be a Flash character, but here are two women dressed as Cheetara from Thundercats. Hey, she is a speedster, after all!

Who Else?

I saw at least one, possibly two guys in off-the-rack Flash Halloween costumes during the weekend, and one kid who was probably about 6 or 7.

So…did you see any of these people at the con? Did you see another Flash that I’ve missed?

Speed Force

Tracking the Flash – the Fastest Man Alive