Fantastic Costume

A uniform is a promise you put on. This one is drawn in alcohol marker, acrylic and coloured pencil at eighteen by twenty inches and laid out as a still life with nobody inside it: the blue suit with its circled four, one white glove resting in the sleeve, the grey boots set down beside it, the belt still buckled. Behind it a rocket climbs through turquoise stars. I painted the empty costume rather than the hero wearing it, because the interesting moment is the one just before. It belongs to The Fantastic Four: First Dreams, and it went out into the world paired with ‘Four’ The Stars under a countdown.