Evil Starfish, a Wonder Wetsuit, BatNipples... and The Comic Strip

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Tuesday 26th June 2018

Who said the DC Universe was dark? And what's our UK comedy costume connection?

Did you know that Lindy Hemming, the designer of magnificent costumes for Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy - Christian Bale's Batman, Tom Hardy's Bane, Heath Ledger's Joker - started out doing something similar for Peter Richardson and Keith Allen, in the also classic but slightly smaller-scale Comic Strip spoof, The Bullshitters?

That was one of the acclaimed Welsh costumer's early screen jobs anyway, as was the hugely popular Tom Sharpe college romp Porterhouse Blue, several Mike Leigh comedy/dramas, and even the Dudley Moore vehicle Blame It On The Bellboy. Which is all a big departure from Nolan's famously moody bat-tales, if not for that fictional universe as a whole. This idea of DC as perennially dark is well wide of the mark.

Hemming is one of the unforeseen stars of the thoroughly enjoyable DC exhibition Dawn of Super Heroes, which is at London's 02 in Greenwich until September. Alongside a splendid array of original artworks, models and costumes, it features video interviews with key people involved in bringing those heroes to the page and screen.

The Oscar-winning Hemming - she triumphed with Mike Leigh's Topsy Turvy, in 1999 - is an engaging talking head, offering enjoyably candid insights into the design process behind, say, Heath Ledger's outfit. It's a lot lower-key than Jack Nicholson's earlier Joker suit, from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, which pops up earlier in the exhibition.

She was also involved in the armour worn by Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, a more amazon warrior-like affair than Linda Carter's glitzy '80s TV version. Both outfits are here too, as is Carter's Wonder Woman wetsuit, from the episode in which she battled sharks to rescue a stolen dolphin. Oh yes.

Looking around this colourful exhibition, it's the humour that often stands out. Particularly telling is a glass case featuring an old Riddler costume from the classic 1960s Batman series, and a TV running relevant Riddler-related clips from it. As the accompanying commentary track explains that the famously camp show reflected the era's Batman comics, which were a lot sillier than today, almost by government decree.

Bruce Wayne's alter ego was always supposed to be fearsome, but crackdowns on edgy material in the paranoid America of the 1950s led publishers to self-censor themselves. You'll see the 'approved by the comics code authority' badge on US comics right up until the early 2000s. That oddly jaunty version of Batman became the norm along the way.

The 'moody vs funny' issue reared up again late last year due to the Justice League movie, which bemused some fans by taking a more gag-laden approach than the Superman/Batman films that built towards it. But even Nolan's mood-establishing Batman trilogy had its comic moments, many of them from our own Michael Caine. Those films were also a much-needed change of tone from the one that went before: Joel Schumacher's overly-daft Batman And Robin.

Thankfully the Dawn of the Super Heroes curators have a sense of humour too and happily exhibit several costumes from that movie. They're actually pretty spectacular, notably Arnold Schwarzenegger's huge Mr Freeze outfit, and Clooney's batsuit - with its now infamous nipples.

Other varied highlights: the big, brooding, bronze-looking Batman statue from The Dark Knight Rises; a couple of cute little costumes that helped make Lois Lane and Superman fly in the first Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve Superman film; and the skimpily iconic Harley Quinn threads as seen in the 2016 Suicide Squad movie (and a lot of comic cons and Halloweens since). From Margot Kidder to Margot Robbie, those movies have really moved on.

The costumes are clearly the stars here, but perhaps even more fascinating are the old, original comic covers, which will be a particular eye-opener for anyone involved in modern media. Logos and speech bubbles glued onto the page, correction fluid all over the artworks: that was how they did it in the pre-Photoshop days. Those covers veer from the grim (Batman and Superman forcing their super-friends to dig graves!) to the brilliantly bizarre.

The first ever comic meeting of the Justice League, for example, features Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, The Flash and the Martian Manhunter battling 'Starro the Conqueror' - a giant starfish. It's probably a good job they didn't go with him in the Justice League movie, really. Even Hemming might have struggled with the costume for that one.