Remember back in the late '90s when Tim Burton was trying to make Superman Liveswith Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel? Of course you do. We've heard Kevin Smith talk about his time as a writer on the flick, plus we've seen glimpses of concept art over the years.
You can even buy the black and silver teaser poster on eBay if you want it badly enough. Now more glimpses of the flick have surfaced in the form of concept art from Hasbro for a Superman Lives toy line, and it's just as odd as you might think.
The sketches by Chris Samuels and Brian Eun are among numerous designs Hasbro produced from 1997 to 1998 while Superman Lives was in preproduction. Producer Jon Peters notoriously didn't want the traditional Superman suit to appear in the film, leading to some suit concepts that eliminated red and blue altogether and went straight for black.
These suits keep the red and blue of Superman tradition, though they often vary the shade. One design features an extremely muscular (and blond) Man of Tomorrow in a suit that features a red facemask, silver piping throughout the suit, no belt and hefty red and silver shoulder pads that connect right to the logo on the chest.
Another looks much more like Nicolas Cage is wearing it, and actually adheres a bit more to tradition, but then abandons that tradition with the addition of a powder-blue cape. Also, if these sketches are any indication of what the final film would have looked like, Superman liked to spend his day surrounded by lighting.
Finally, we also have a vehicle sketch for the "Kryptonian Explorer," which likely would have been the ship that Jor-El placed his son in for his journey to Earth. It's oddly reminiscent of certain versions of the Batmobile, only silver and much more spikey.
We don't know how much of this art matches what Burton was trying to go for with the movie, but the sketches definitely match up to the superhero excesses that we saw in movies we'd rather forget, like Batman and Robin. PHOTOS
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