Costume Spotlight: The Flash's TV Look (With Bonus Reverse-Flash!)

Just in time for the season two finale, I present the time DC changed the Flash's costume to be more in line with the tv show...only to have the tv show make the change irrelevant only a few months later! Of course, this isn't the first time the Flash's outfit has reflected the small screen, as I've covered before.

When The New 52 happened, every character got a design overhaul. Some were major, some were minor, but all of them involved a bunch of extraneous lines. Fortunately, The Flash came off looking pretty good since extra lines means more places for lightning to flow from. Here's how he looked beginning in 2011:

Not bad!

Come 2014, The Flash gets his own series on The CW, with a pretty accurate costume...with some exceptions. The main one being that instead of a white circle behind the lightning bolt, it was red. I've never been able to figure out why this is, since the pilot shows a picture of a future Flash that has the white circle, but that's the choice they made. (The other one being that he doesn't have yellow boots, which has never occurred to me before but now that I've noticed it, it's going to bug me big time).

So in The Flash #41 (June 2015), the Flash in the comics gets a new costume that looks very similar. Even the extraneous lines have been moved to more accurately reflect the extraneous lines on his tv costume. And this was definitely to tie into the show, because this storyline also introduces the Reverse Flash to the New 52, and he was the primary antagonist of The Flash season 1.

So yay, he looks more like the tv show! ...except that season two of The Flash changed the circle to white only three months later. Of course, now that DC Rebirth is happening, I have no idea how the two costumes will compare.

But hey, speaking of Reverse Flash! Here's what he looked like prior to the New 52:

Simple, clean, efficient. I dig it. Here he is in The Flash season one (2014-2015):

Pretty good. A little too much black for my taste, but it gets the job done. So, of course, when he's introduced in the New 52 an issue before Barry's new costume (May 2015)...

...there's the black! Arguably not as much as the tv version, and they changed the shape of his symbol to a diamond for some reason, but it's still clearly based on the tv version.