ScreenCrush’s Comic Strip is a weekly roundup of the hottest superhero movie/TV news items. From Marvel to DC and points in between, if it pertains to costumed comic book heroes, we’re covering it here, bringing you our expert analysis. This week, check out Marvel and DC movie concept art, get your first tiny glimpse at Captain America 3, and gaze at Suicide Squad set footage.

Concept Art of the Marvel and DC Movie Universes

When you look at a finished costume in a movie, you are looking at the end result of hundreds of designs cooked up by countless designers. In the realm of the blockbuster action movie, a character only comes to life after a director has weighed every possible option. Artists throw all kinds of ideas at the wall, some of them bland and others off-kilter and others somewhere in between, and the director picks and chooses what he or she likes until a final design is reached.

So that’s why there are countless different designs for Ultron for Avengers: Age of Ultron, which range from the spitting image of his comic book counterpart to totally loony options that would never have made it to screen, ever. Since our look at these designs come from someone photographing pages of a book, we won’t embed them here, but feel free to check them out.

You can also do the same thing for Scarlet Witch’s variety of different costumes, many of which are more outwardly superheroic than her final film version. Then again, those designs are also a bit more overtly sexual and uncomfortable, so the fairly straightforward design in the finished feels like the right direction.

What we can share directly are these alternate looks at Quicksilver. The top image is awfully close to what ended up in the final movie, but the bottom two are just plain bro-tastic ... and does he have a neck tattoo? Did David Ayer almost direct this?

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And while we’re sharing Avengers: Age of Ultron concept art, here’s a piece that deserves to be printed, famed and hung above the fireplace. It’s just plain gorgeous.

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Let’s jump across the aisle, shall we? Instead of looking at concept art for what could have been, let’s spend about 30 seconds looking at art for what could be. Yes, those two images below are designs for Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman as she’ll appear in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Yes, she’s still wearing that controversial cape in the first image, but that second one, as blurry as it is, sure looks an awful lot like the character in her most classic moments. Seriously, this movie better give us plenty of bracelet-deflecting-bullets action.

Captain America: Civil War is Filming and Here is Proof

Captain America: Civil War and its enormous cast began filming last week and the internet responded by posting EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOKS AT THE SET! that were just crummy pictures of construction sites. We are here at The Comic Strip are above posting pictures of empty sets with no discernible features ... but we are definitely not above posting this picture of Sebastian Stan, who returns as the Winter Soldier in the film:

Of note: that casual outfit is the same clothing Bucky wore while incognito at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Will he get to properly suit up for a few big action scenes? And will that suit be tweaked just enough to sell new toys. Of course!

Meanwhile, the delightful Martin Freeman joined the cast playing an unknown character and comic book writer Mark Millar (who wrote the original Civil War comic) chimed in on that. His statement is pretty much the Millar-iest thing that has ever Millar-ed, which is saying a lot for this guy:

I know who he’s playing in the film, but I guess it’s still a secret. The character is not a super-person, it’s somebody who’s… well, I don’t want to spoil it for anybody but he’s not going to be in costume. Once you get to see it, it’s so obvious. He’s a great actor he could play anyone; he could play Hit-Girl! All I’ll say is, he’s not [playing] the Red Skull.

Early clues suggest that Freeman is playing a government liaison to Wakanda, which means that he’ll surely pop up again in Black Panther in a few years.

Meanwhile, Frank Grillo has decided to take Crosbones’ war with Captain America into the real world, taunting Chris Evans on social media. There actual fighting in the movie will hopefully be half as entertaining as this:

Suicide Squad Set Photos Are Out of Control

Okay, let’s be honest: the first week’s worth of photos and news from Captain America: Civil War are a little underwhelming. Marvel has that locked down tight (for the moment). Meanwhile, Suicide Squad is filming in public locations and everyone within a 50-mile radius seems to have ventured out to take pictures and video of Will Smith and Margot Robbie hanging out on set in their Deadshot and Harley Quinn costumes. Here’s what we’ve learned from the glut of amateur and professional paparazzi shots: everyone still looks like how they appear in the official, Warner Bros. sanctioned images and there’s at least one scene in the movie where the team walks through the streets in a badass line-up (because that’s what militarized supervillain teams do).

In slightly more interesting news, Will Smith went through a fairly rigorous training regime so he could pull off the whole “master marksman and assassin” thing. TMZ (ugh, sorry) posted some footage of America’s favorite movie star showing off his skills. We’re not going to pretend to be excellent judges of amateur soldiery, but he certainly looks convincing enough.

Meanwhile, someone cornered director David Ayer in between takes to ask a few questions and he gave the exact sort of answers you’d expect from a distracted filmmaker with too much to do and not enough time to do it:

It's just so exciting to bring a show like this to the street and get out in the real world with the real people. I'm all about real drama, real performance, and real people, so my twist on this is I'm creating a family a brotherhood here. I'm creating a very real chemistry and I have this incredible ensemble of actors led by Will Smith, who are basically playing dimensional characters with lives and souls. When you feel the performance come through, and the chemistry come through, that can't be beat.

This is where we would share crummy smartphone footage of the set shot by bystanders who don’t know how to shut up, but ... Actually, it’s been a crazily slow week for superhero movie news. Thanks for that, Avengers. This means that we have no other option. We’ve got to fill space somehow. Enjoy.

At least this shot gives us a wide shot of the entire scene, which seems to be taking place in the aftermath of an explosion or firefight.

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