“Face Off’s” Comic Book Inspired Episode

Reality TV shows are hit-or-miss with me and this episode, despite my love of comic books, felt like it was dragging along. But the concept was still enjoyable and I wanted to share it with fellow comic book fans. The Syfy reality TV show "Face Off" is a competition between special effects artists who are trying to win $100,000, a 2013 Fiat 500, and the opportunity to become a guest lecturer at the MAKE UP FOR EVER Academies in New York and Paris. For the second episode of their fourth season, "Face Off" teamed up with DC Comics. In a special challenge, contestants were asked to create their own superhero. There were a lot of special guests on the show. This included comic book writer, artist and DC Comics co-publisher Jim Lee, former Senior Vice President and Executive Editor of DC Comics who received the Wizard magazine "Man of the Year" award for his work on the DC lineup back in 2003 Dan Didio, Fables comic book artist Mark Buckingham, editor and artist for DC and Vertigo Comics Cliff Chiang, comic book artist and writer for titles like Batman: The Dark Knight David Finch and comic book artist J.H. Williams III who's most popular work is his painted artwork on Promethea with Alan Moore and his work on Detective Comics with Greg Rucka. The winner of the challenge was (SPOILERS) Anthony Kosar's. He received a special prize for his win too: his design for his character, known as the Infernal Core, appeared in Justice League Dark #16 which was released on January 30th. I actually thought, despite Internal Core having a great design, it was not my favorite. My favorite design was Mercury Ray – and the judges did say, despite the execution being sloppy, it screamed "superhero" the most of them all. The winged Silversight also gets an honorable mention for a great concept and execution. But I think the best execution of a design (and who I thought should have been the winner) was Robot Girl. It was a fantastic costume with some great bloody makeup and cybernetics. They said she looked too science-fiction and horror and not like a superhero, but I say don't discriminate: superheroes come in every shape and size.