Longbox Review

In August, I posted a bunch of pics showing Robin’s costume through time and with some fans’ redesigns. In that post, I also mentioned that I may post my own Robin costume drawings. While my memory convinced me that I had a bunch of Robin costume redesigns, it turns out that I only had a few; regardless, I wanted to share my drawings of Robin (warning: graphic intensive). Note: these are all circa 1983.

I had to do a woodblock carving for an art class, so I choose to do this close up of Robin’s face. I’m not sure what happened to that woodblock.

Here’s one of the first that I did. Of course, I’m just recreating a pose (never traced!) from a New Teen Titans comic (kudos to those of you that can name the issue each pose is from) and adding my own background, however simplistic and attempting to be colorful it may be.

Ok, so I liked to make use of the markers that I had at my disposal. I’m not sure what that bridge-like structure is supposed to be, nor do I know why I put that star in the upper left corner. Also, I didn’t do hair or faces very well.

Hmm, I’m sensing a pattern here: Robin is always running away (or toward?) something.

Why is he shooting a power staff? Because that was in the panel that I drew from. I like this pic because I put a Brainiac 5-looking dude in it.

Here I’m starting to let the pencil do the shading instead of a felt marker. And look at Batman’s mouth–evidently I had a hard time with his lips, so I gave him a grim-looking mouth slit.

Ok, now I start tweaking Robin’s costume a bit. I never liked the shorts and short sleeve look because it was impractical. So I gave him long sleeves, pants, proper boots, and upped the yellow in his costume. It’s my way of melding the classic costume and the Earth-2 Robin’s costume.

Notice this Robin has brown hair now. That’s because I wrote several short stories starring me (yes, me) in an alternate world where my Mom and step-father were killed (by my birth father no less) and I became Robin. That’s how much I loved this character. Note that the short sleeves are back–probably because I thought that’s too much yellow!

I was particularly proud of this collage for the centerpiece. It’s one of the few times that I felt I did a face somewhat well. Then I had to ruin it by outlining the top of the mask with that damned brown marker (curse you brown marker!!!). I’m pretty sure these all came from the NTT Annual #2.

I thought Robin should have a darker, stealthier look, so I came up with this, though it’s too similar to the one shown in Detective Comics #481. Notice the small boxes on his utility belt? The ones at the sides of his waist are mini jets for short bursts of flying.

Finally, I was playing around again with the color scheme. I thought that the green mask should be part of the green leotard. If I remember correctly, that pose came from a panel featuring Jason Todd.

So all this did is make me want to redesign superhero costumes again! Did you ever play around with your favorite superheroes’ costumes? Let me know!