We’ve already seena few unofficial peeks of Flash actor Jordan Fisher as Barry and Iris’ speedy son from the future, Bart Allen, in his superhero costume. It doesn’t look bad—although you wouldn’t know this from the CW show’s official reveal of Impulse, which is absolutely horrifying.
Before you check out the full image, as reported by TV Line, you should see what The Flash was going for. The CW was trying to put Fisher in the same foreshortened pose that Impulse was seen in this iconic page from DC Comics’ The Flash #50:
That’s the sort of pose that can only be seen in comics with the freedom of art, and not in real life... unless you use Photoshop. Lots and lots of Photoshop. Too Much Photoshop. Bad Photoshop. TV’s Impulse looks less like he’s running towards the audience and more like his limbs have been horribly mutated by some supervillain’s raygun. The proportions are so off it’s genuinely kind of upsetting to look at him. His right arm, which is nearly as big as his head in the comic version, is only half that. His left arm, even if it was properly foreshortened, is far too tiny, as if Impulse had surgically grafted on a toddler arm in his real limb’s place. My mind can’t wrap around the non-Euclidian nightmare that is his right leg, but it is very clear that Impulse isn’t running as much as standing on one leg and kicking his left leg straight bag.
Again, even if you account for the foreshortening, these limbs are all different sizes. However, since the foreshortening is also incredibly flawed, it makes everything look so much more unnatural, which is compounded by all the terrible Photoshop work used to force Fisher’s poor body into the comic’s pose. Which is a shame, partially because the Impulse costume looks good in those on-set photos (and the actor’s recent Instagram story), but mostly because I had to look at this very unpleasant photo many, many times to write this article, and I didn’t want to.
Fisher will make his debut as Impulse in The Flash’s 150th episode, titled “Heart of the Matter, Part One.” It hasn’t been scheduled yet, but chances are it will air in July.
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