Legends of Tomorrow's Hawkman and Hawkgirl: A Closer Look

A little while back, The CW released the first official look at Hawkman and Hawkgirl from DC's Legends of Tomorrow, the forthcoming Arrow and The Flash spinoff set to feature the pair along with about a half-dozen other notable DC superheroes and -villains.

The costumes themselves don't exactly match up with anything we've seen from the comics or other media yet, although it's not hard to see where some of the influences are.

Before we do a deeper dive into these characters, let's get something big out of the way: so far, there are no wings.

We know that they will have literal wings, since we saw a CG-rendered shot of Hawkgirl flying in the Legends of Tomorrow teaser footage. We don't know yet whether they'll be CG all the time, or whether they will be collapsible, like the ones the angels on Constantine had last season. We won't spend any more time talking about the wings, since we know so little that all we can really say is that they're almost certainly not going to be the fully-metal wings from the Hawkworld look.

It's also worth noting that Hawkman is baring a lot less chest than usual.

In general, his costume is essentially leather straps crossing his chest, connecting from his wings to an emblem in the middle of his chest (it looks like at least Hawkman has one here, although it's impossible to really see it). We often see a lot of chest hair. But, perhaps taking a cue from the popular look from Smallville, we don't get anything like that here. Rather, he gets a costume that's evocative of most of the other Arrow and The Flash super-suits, except for the headpieces which are decidedly comic book-inspired.

Probably the closest analogue to the costumes seen in the photo at top is the one seen directly above. Printed on a trading card marked "Golden Age Hawkman," it is rare to find other art online of Hawkman wearing so much in the Golden and Silver Age eras. Later, when he got more science fiction-heavy for a while, he would start to suit up...but that version of the character shares very little with this one, and had more of a jumpsuit look.

So -- yeah. While the color scheme isn't the same (that owes a bit to more recent iterations of the characters, who have since about Zero Hour had more natural tones rather than the garish primary colors of early Hawkman and Hawkgirl stories), we have seen a version of the characters that featured their big headpieces, along with a sleeveless top for Hawkman and a deep V-neck top for Hawkgirl. That the gear in the photo looks less superhero-y and more warrior-like shouldn't be surprising given the characterization the Hawks have had for years now in the comics and onscreen.

Between the leather and the hard, inorganic-looking headpieces, the look does seem to owe at least a bit to the Hawkworld-era costumes, when the pair were reinvented as alien cops. Of course, depending on the artist, there's been variance since the very beginning as to how "organic" the headpieces look, so it's possible that this is just an Arrowverse riff on the Golden Age looks above. Certainly there's a little more "Hawk" in these than in the classic take, since the coloring and the "feather" detailing sells the idea.

It's interesting to note that Hawkgirl has some kind of necklace or choker around her neck (unless that's part of her top). Given the inclusion of Vixen in The CW's DC Universe, it could plausibly be a totem of some kind, although that's probably a stretch.