I’m posting this because I sincerely believe what we have here is bona fide. Latino Review have today received via e-mail an image that they were told is concept art from Iron Man 2. I’ve posted a bit of it up above, alongside the picture of Mickey Rourke who will be playing the character in the movie, and you can also get a look at the full thing below the break.

I’m still quite confused as to whether or not Rourke’s character is to be called Whiplash. Some sources tell me he’s playing Blacklash, while others comment on how he’s a Russian character and that makes it likely he’s The Crymson Dynamo. Indeed, he’s certainly dressed in red armor in this concept illustration. I’m hoping that he’s not called any of these things, in fact, and has an actual name like an actual person.

Note the similarities and differences between the common or garden Iron Man suit (Mark 3, was it?) and the get-up that Rourke’s character is shown wearing here. Seems like a plausible design, and the style of the illustration is definitely consistent with many designer’s approach to concept art. And I’d guess that a faker would have tried to replicate the Rourke fizzog more accurately.

I’m supposing that the proton pack looking thing is there to power his electric whips. Come to think of it, a faker would probably have had the whips front and centre stage too.

Iron Man 2 is less than a year away now, which doesn’t seem too long at all. Should fly by. Don’t you miss the good old days when you had almost no lead up time to films being released and they almost seemed to come out of nowhere? Much better than, say, reading a script online one year, hearing that it gets financing the next, casting the one after, shoots that fall, is in post the following spring, gets a trailer some six months after that and then hits screens anywhere up to a year past that point.