Artist Alex Ross, who has illustrated nearly every Marvel and DC superhero in high-profile projects such as Marvels, his Timeless variant covers and Kingdom Come, discussed which comic book costumes did and didn't work.
Ross discussed several character designs, and his work on The Alex Ross Marvel Comics Poster Book, during 2021's ComicsCon@Home with Sal Abbinanti. The poster book includes 35 removable art prints of Ross' paintings of different Marvel heroes for a mural that was installed in the company's New York offices.
Ross called John Romita Sr. "one of the greatest costume designers in comics" and lauded his version of The Punisher's outfit, but said Romita missed the mark with his Wolverine color scheme. Romita's original depiction of The Punisher includes an interesting design element: the teeth in the skull emblem "were always designed to be a row of bullets." However, other artists have rendered the bullets as canisters or ammo magazines, Ross noted. "So I was carefully trying to draw each one, and they're these super long bullets that -- I don't know what kind of gun they go into, because I don't know guns for nothing," he said.
Romita also designed the Wolverine costume that debuted in 1974's Incredible Hulk #180, but Ross said John Byrne's alternate, which first appeared in 1980's Uncanny X-Men #139, was more suited to the character. "When he came out with the brown outfit, I thought, 'Oh, my God, that's perfect. That is exactly what the character design should be,'" Ross explained. "Because I never understood the multiple red, blue and yellow colors for this character. I mean, he's kind of a werewolf superhero in a way, and it made no sense to me that he would be so vibrant, you know. Like, he also should have a little bit of a stealth capability, and you know this is not happening when you're wearing bright yellow in the jungle."
Ross also lamented changes that diminish characters instead of improving them. "Luke Cage is a great example," Ross said. "Wonderful character, important character historically, but symbolically, his design that's memorable is the one with the yellow shirt and the tiara and everything. ... When you get rid of all that stuff, he just looks like another guy, you know. He looks indistinguishable from multiple guys you could run into."
Meanwhile, Ross was less-than-enthused about Iron Man's Silver Centurion look, saying, "I definitely would have liked to include the original Nick Fury [in the mural], the way he appeared as going from Sgt. Fury into Nick Fury because that's -- that's one that gets complicated with the movie version having an outsized impression upon the way they do the comics."
"A lot of it is to just represent the thing that I feel touched my life, and I agree with the design aesthetics of, and I want to feature that, at least on alongside a lot of the contemporary things," he concluded.
Source: YouTube