DC has released the variant covers for Justice League #1. There are two different covers,  the normal one by Jim Lee and a variant by David Finch. To confuse matters more each of those covers also appears as two-variants. The Jim Lee version has a blue background on the normal issue and a yellow background on the combo-pack issues (the one containing the voucher for a digital copy). The Finch cover is a 1:25 variant. I really can’t say I’m taken with the Finch cover, they all look so grumpy. I prefer the smiling image from Ivan Reis ‘s NYCC poster.

All of them the covers now show Wonder Woman without any leggings. Putting aside the sexism issue, I just don’t think it looks right. The redesigns had been done to make the League looked more team-like, but they are now making WW look less like the other characters (who all have full-length leggings).

The colouring doesn’t help. The original WW costume had blue-shorts and red-boots. In reality we know that it’s a completely unrealistic outfit, but we are so used to it – because its been there for 70-years – that we don’t usually think about it. This new WW costume with its black-shorts and black-boots is, in my thinking, enough of an alteration to break that 70-year blind-spot and make us realise how odd it actually looks. It also doesn’t help that we’ve had the JMS full-length leggings in place for a year or so. If you’ve read Wonder Woman #613 you’ll have seen both WW costumes side-by-side and neither of them looks wrong. Yet this hybrid version just doesn’t work as well as either the classic or the previous version.

I feel a similar way on Superman’s costume. The segmentation of the suit doesn’t bother me so much as the change in colouring on the belt and trunks. Look again at Superman’s new costume and you’ll see that he’s still wearing trunks as that part of his suit, they are still outlined by a segmentation line. As a defined area of his costume it still exists. That red-belt just clashes against so much blue. Red-and-yellow against blue or red-and-black against blue works because the three colours create a balance, but just red on its own looks garish.