In Brightest Day ...

My Green Lantern outfit is (99 44/100%) complete!

On February 22nd, I went to get my muscle suit and Kyle Rayner/Green Lantern outfit.

Green Lantern was always my favorite superhero.

Now, I'm sure all little boys had a Batman Halloween costume at some time or another, and somewhere along the line, a Superman cape.

The original Silver-Age GL, Hal Jordan, was a very human human who became heir to one of the most powerful artifacts in the universe - so powerful in fact that at one point he cold-clocked Superman and laid him flat out on the ground! (Now, I bet that's something you didn't know!)

The GL oath when powering the ring:

In brightest day, in blackest night,
no evil shall escape my sight!
Let those who worship evil's might,
beware my power... Green Lantern's light!

is quite reminiscent of the medieval oath of fealty:

I {name}, do become your liege man of life and limb and of earthly worship.
And faith and truth I will bear unto you,
to live and to die, against all manner of folk.
So help me God.

Even though I've put on a good deal of muscle from the sword and bow work, I never really got the definition that I'd always wanted. Hence the muscle suit. Hey, if it was good enough for Spiderman and the latest Superman, it was good enough for me!

Corey Sosner of Action Actors makes the most comfortable urethane and spandex muscle suits you could ever ask for. A lot of his commissions come from Batman and Punisher and Wolverine costumes - so this was sort of a new experience for him. The process of building the suit took the better part of the day - it involves trimming and fitting the foam pieces, glueing them to the spandex body suit and basically letting the pieces "cook" onto the fabric.





Once that was complete, I tried on the outer costume - this included a pair of Shift motocross boots (red and white accents covered with Plasti-kote Vinyl Color) and with a white stripe (using Krylon Fusion) down the front. We took some minor liberties with the design of the costume and all of the symbols were silk-screened on the outfit. The picture above had something that looked like a dog-collar - which was not something I nor he was enamored with.

WOW!

It didn't feel like I was wearing any body suit - that's how comfortable it was - and Corey was also quite impressed with the finished product - "Dude, you look like you're completely juiced!"





What's a Green Lantern without a ring, though? Being the perfectionist that I am, the cheapie plastic or tin versions were out of the question.

Google.

The search led me to Russ Sharek of The Morpheus Company. At some time in the past, someone had asked Russ about a Green Lantern ring, and he has made several different versions over the years. Russ had mentioned it on his site and that's how I found him. We discussed what I wanted and Russ made some excellent recommendations - which I attribute to his feng-shui-ness. Again, the ring was quite close to the comic-book version, but with a twist - a black onyx center.



The only piece left is the mask -- Corey took a cast of my face and I'm waiting to have the piece molded. That was an experience in itself. First, you get your hair slicked back with some vaseline and put on a shower cap. Then you grease up your entire face and have this thick goo slathered on. Wait 15-20 minutes. (This is not for the faint of heart or claustrophobic!! And this was a half-mask - a full head molding is even more involved!) Then peel off slowly, so you don't lose your eyelashes or eyebrows.

UPDATE:

Corey gave me a call today - I had had an option of two different shapes of masks. His sculptor did a side-by-side so I could choose - I picked the more angular version on the left. I'll be getting the mask in about two weeks.