Redesigning the Redesign: Part One

Hey friendly friends! As I mentioned on my radio interview a few weeks back, in a matter of days DC Comics will be turning back the clock, and renumbering (and in many cases, rebooting) their entire Superhero comics line. As I said on the radio show, like most people, I’m a bit torn about the whole thing. On one level, it’s terribly exciting to have my favourite characters making such big front page news, and it will indeed be a wonderful jumping on point for new fans, something the industry sorely needs. Many of the titles are being handled by some of the top talent in comics, and perhaps most interestingly, DC is promoting the relaunch with a national television campaign, adding to the unprecedented nature of the relaunch.

Some of the changes being brought about are, in my opinion, long overdue (like the controversial decision to allow the original Batgirl to recover from injuries sustained in Alan Moore’s excessively dark, mean-spirited The Killing Joke) and are both genuinely surprising (Sinestro as the Green Lantern of Earth?!) and exciting.

But as a lifelong comics fan, there are certain things I’m a bit bummed about, like the magical annulment of Superman’s marriage to Lois Lane, certainly my all-time favourite comics romance.

But the element that seems to be causing the most debate is the redesigning of many of DC’s core characters. Changing costumes, on some level, is nothing new, even the very first comic book superhero’s look has developed slowly over the years, while still retaining a familiarity that lets you know, yup, that’s Superman.

When it comes to redesigning existing characters, I tend to agree with local comics legend Tom Grummett, who says that he doesn’t think it’s his place to redesign someone else’s character. They look how they look, and that’s what makes them that character.

But, since redesign blog entries are all the rage right now, I thought I’d try my hand at a few of the redesigns that most jumped out at me. In the coming weeks, I’ll tackle a few more.

Redesigning the Redesign: Part One

Saturday, August 13, 2011

The thing I most loved about McKone’s design was the red-on-black Superman shield, which has come to define Conner in a way. In a lot of ways, Superboy is a much more brooding character than Superman, both because he wasn’t raised by the Kents, but also because he has that shadow of his “parent” Lex Luthor looming over him, a la Luke Skywalker. So in my design, I took the traditional Superman costume and swapped out black for blue, to show that Conner is both fully a member of the Superman family, but with a slightly darker tinge to him. And I lost the cape because in all his incarnations, the closest Conner ever came to having a cape was with Grummett’s leather jacket look, so going without it is just what we’re used to. I also played up Conner’s hairline a bit, as a subtle hint that maybe, like Lex Luthor, Conner might be losing his hair.

So what do you think? Love it? Hate it? Let me know your thoughts. More re-designs to follow, including Batman, Green Lantern and Supergirl.

Thanks for reading, I love you.

Redesign #1: Superboy

It should be noted that I’m a tremendous fan of the existing Superboy. I grew up on the Death of Superman storyline, and have always had a soft spot for the clone Superboy, (this version was co-created by the aforementioned Mr. Grummett) who we later came to know as Conner Kent. Especially after the great Geoff Johns tweaked his origins slightly, to reveal that he was not only cloned using Superman’s DNA, but also that of Lex Luthor, giving him the potential to become Earth’s greatest hero, or its worst villain (Johns’ work on Adventure Comics, featuring Superboy was one of the best storylines I’ve ever read, in fact).

Even though I love the Conner Kent Superboy, I’ve never been fully on board with his costume. Don’t get me wrong, Tom Grummett’s 1993 design was perfect--for 1993, and the non-costume costume Mike McKone came up with was also an interesting take. But to me, it never seemed quite Super-hero-y enough, and also came to smack of that 90s X-Men feel.

And now that Superman himself is going to be wearing essentially the exact same costume in issues of Action Comics, it might be time for something a bit different. But not this different. So here’s my design:

Want to comment on the DC redesign, or to suggest some other characters you’d like to see me redesign for the blog? Then become a fan on Facebook, and sound off!