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When I heard they were rebooting the Spider-Man franchise, I wasn't too bothered. Spider-Man 3 hadn't been any great shakes and it looked like it was time for new blood. Then, the images of the new movie's costume started hitting the web.
I don't have the vocabulary to express how bad I think this new design is, in fact, it's entirely possible that language is inadequate to task, entirely. It's as if someone tasked the design team with creating a Spider-Man costume that preserves the mask and web-pattern, but defecates on every other Ditko design element in the costume.
When Steve Ditko took on the art chores for the soon-to-be-famous Amazing Fantasy #15, he designed one of the first truly modern, and one of the most iconic, super-hero costumes of the Silver Age. While the text of the story invoked the circus acrobat, the design was very new. The full-face mask and the large mirror-lens eye-pieces gave him a nice, creepy look. At the time, it was unusual to have a super-hero who could never show expression.
At the time, those heroes who weren't carry-overs from the Golden Age still mostly dressed like they were. This was due to the fact that the same artists were drawing comics who'd worked on the Golden Age classics. Because of this, the basic design model of tights, trunks, boots and gloves was still pretty common. If my menory isn't too defective, of the early Silver Age heroes, only Barry Allen didn't wear shorts over his tights and since Jay Garrick never wore them, it kind of followed. Even the Martian Manhunter, whose costume was really just a part of his camouflage, part of him, incorporated shorts into his "costume".
But, we're talking about Spider-Man.
Unlike most other supers of the day, Peter Parker was a skinny kid with glasses who made his own costume. Even in the Sam Raimi movie, Peter's supposed to have made the costume himself. Now, the funny thing is, in the movie, we see his first attempt at costume construction is somewhat less than stellar. Then, suddenly, with some extra motivation, he's able to put together a costume that according to some sources, cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've seen fan-made costumes that matched the complexity of the movie costumes and they cost several hundred dollars for materials, plus lots and lots of time and years of expertise. a high school kid who never so much as darned a sock isn't going to be able to put together a costume like the movie costumes in anything like the time involved in the movie. Even a fairly simple spandex costume, with silk screened webbing would be difficult to make and cost a few hundred bucks.
That takes us to the new movie, where the costume is much more complex and appears to be made of some fairly exotic materials. And this time Peter's a high school kid, not heading toward his first year of college. Now, I don't know how it is up north... maybe every high school boy learns to sew spandex tights for himself, but where I went to school, not even the gay guys did that. I'm guessing a science geek like Peter wouldn't have learned to sew, either.
That being the most likely scenario, I think he'd go with the simplest option, when making his first real super-suit. Alex Ross seems to have thought the same thing, when he designed an alternate costume design, in case they didn't want to work up the comic design for the movie. I never liked the web-shooters on the outside of the costume, but I realize it's hard to hide the things under a layer of cloth. Also the back-of-the-hand shooter is a design I never liked. But, I do admire the simplicity of it, the practicality, for a guy with Spider-Man's powers. And, the fact that something like this could actually be put together by someone of a high school level of sartorial proficiency. By which I mean, most of it could be bought off the internet and easily modified into the Spidey suit.
When I saw the new movie costume, it started me thinking about this situation again. How willing suspension of disbelief can so easily collapse into unwillingness to suspend disbelief. The idea that a teenage boy could, or would, build a costume as complicated as this new movie monstrosity.
I know it's ultimately useless, by this point, but I can't help putting it out there. I mean, I love a complicated costume as much as anyone, but graphic design is often based on keeping things simple. It's all about how something "reads" to the eye. It's especially important when viewing something from a distance that it be easily recognized.
For this reason, I started with Ross's idea of a simple costume and reworked it with a few of the elements from the classic costume. since it appears the new movie is going back to the mechanical web-shooters, I thought a belt of web-fluid cartridges would be a good idea. I did modify the gloves a little, instead of the "ringed" fingers, I went with simple black fingers. I wanted the mask to still have the iconic look of the comic book mask.
With Peter designing the extremely complex web-shooters, which would probably make him a rich man if he sold the technology to the textiles industry, I figure he'd need to stick to the old rule, Keep It Simple, Stupid. The webbing design could be easily silk-screened, the lenses could come from old aviator glasses. And, I'm sorry Hollywood, but spandex is perfectly all right for a costume like this. Put the many thousands of dollars saved into a good script and better CGI effects, whatever.
I'd still like to see the Lizard or the Vulture as a villain. I'm worried they're going to go with the "Ultimate" Green Goblin, at some point, which I absolutely hated. I like Gobby as a crazy guy in a suit, not a fire-spitting gargoyle. Just something that bugged me.
A little light on the art, this time, but that's all I have.
See more of my stuff at . . .
heroblog.deviantart.com
www.heroblog.com
www.adastracomic.com
Copyright © 2011 Joe Singleton
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