This article continues coverage of Superman costumes and costume components offered for sale publicly in the marketplace attributed to use in the Superman films of the 70s-80s starring Christopher Reeve and characterized as “original” and “authentic”. As part of the ongoing analysis, and in buidling tools to assist with authenticating costumes currently in the marketplace, I thought it would be productive to analyze the colors of the costume, and establish benchmarks using confirmed authentic costumes as reference.
While past articles have touched on the colors, as well as the texture of the fabric and other attributes, the following will present a closer look at one of the three primary colors of the Superman costume – blue – in that there seems to be a wide variety of discrepancies with this color, along with the actual fabric itself.
The two costumes that I am aware of that have sold into the marketplace with Warner Bros. Certificates of Authenticity are the partial Superman III costume sold by ScreenUsed in August of 2006 and the Superman III bodysuit sold by The Prop Store of London in February 2008 (both covered in the first article in this series, Questions About Superman Costumes in the Marketplace: Authenticity, Sources, Quantity).
I have created swatch samples of the blue color from the two authentic costumes by opening sample photos within Photoshop and extracting the range of tones from darkest to lightest and made a graphic of nine quadrants. I then took this graphic and used the “Surface Blur” tool, set to a radius of 100 pixels and a threshold of 255 pixels to create a transitional gradient color sample.
Below is a thumbnail of the swatch samples (photo crop, color grids, blur gradient) of the Prop Store of London Superman III costume with the Warner Bros. COA and provenance:
Below is a thumbnail of the swatch samples (photo crop, color grids, blur gradient) of the ScreenUsed Superman III costume with the Warner Bros. COA and provenance:
It is readily apparent that the two confirmed authentic Superman III costumes reflect the same colors, tones, and range, in spite of differing photography conditions.
Below is a thumbnail of swatch samples from the “Prop Store Collection” costume on display at the Movieum in London, which is assumed authentic and is attributed to use in the first two Superman films as well as the third:
Obviously this example attributed to the original film is of a different color, tone, and range compared with the two Superman III costumes with Warner Bros. provenance.
Below are larger versions of each sample…
The Prop Store of London Superman III Costume:
ScreenUsed Superman III Costume:
The Prop Store of London Superman: The Movie, Superman II Costume:
In order to add another productive reference benchmark, I have used the same process to create swatches for the “Superman III” costume that was sent to me for analysis, which has been determined to be inauthentic by a number of experts (see High Resolution Photo Reference Archive: “Original Superman III Christopher Reeve Costume”):
Inauthentic “Superman III” Costume:
The bright blue color of the assumed inauthentic “Superman III” costume does not resemble the confirmed authentic costumes with Warner Bros. provenance that are attributed to Superman III, nor does it match the Superman: The Movie suit on display at the Movieum in London.
Here is a summary of the colors from these four reference costumes:
This material will serve as reference to future articles.
Jason De Bord
Additional Related Articles: Market Watch | Superman