Why not both? Vic's "default" should be a slim design but he should be able to "tank up" for difficult fights or environmental hazards, or whatever. He should be able to change his appearance to suit his needs at any given moment.
Anyway, in last year's thread (and the one before that) we talked a lot about what Vic needs to be a viable, stand-alone IP; supporting cast, rogues, themes/tones, settings, scope, etc etc etc. And the last few days I've been kicking an idea around in my head for Vic's home city I thought I'd share.
First off, Vic would be a cosmic hero, adventuring across space and other dimensions. But after he's done on Apokolips/Thanagar/Skartaris/wherever, he still needs a place to go to rest his feet right? And that home can and should be the focus of the occasional story and be an interesting place in its own right with ties to the larger ideas in Vic's mythos.
I think it's best to pull from established concepts when applicable, since fans will accept and latch onto something they recognize more easily than they'll accept a brand new idea. So I'd put Vic in Jump City. It's a name fans of the cartoon know well but it has no history in comics (outside of a name drop here and there) and is basically a blank slate, so it's kinda the best of both worlds; a known element that still offers tons and tons of creative freedom.
My version of Jump City was built entirely by STAR Labs in the 80's and early 90's. While it's not truly a city out of time (like Fawcett was back in the Power of Shazam! days), it's still a city deeply rooted in the trends of the era. The Jump is full of neons and bright pastel, 80's inspired colors, arcades, skate parks, shopping malls, big hair and break dancing. Like a retro-cyberpunk paradise created forty years ago. And in the center of the city is one of the largest STAR faculties in America.
When the story starts, both the city and the Lab are fairly dilapidated and run down. It's not a ghost town or a slum but both Jump and the Lab have seen better days. The Lab is barely used, much of it has been sealed off for decades and no research of any real value has been conducted there in just as long. The staff don't even know what's behind all the locked doors.
Now, why would a science R&D firm need to build a whole city? Nobody knows; everyone involved in the project has been dead and/or missing since before the turn of the century. But the deep rumors mention something called "Project Nightshine." What was the project? Why did it require a city be built? And does it have any connection to the song that Vic keeps hearing, or the algorithm that he keeps seeing out of the corner of his eye?
The answer is that, in the 80's, STAR discovered a strange dimension known as the Nightshine. A harsh yet beautiful landscape of broken moons, deep canyons, and other aesthetics found in 80's album covers, STAR learned that this dimension possessed incredible technology and near limitless energy potential in the form of harnessed vibrational waves (yes, music). The ruler of this dimension, Evil Dragon, corrupted the STAR scientists who found him and had them begin building a portal to earth that Dragon and his forces could pass through. This was far easier said than done however, requiring far more power than a single Lab could provide as well as needing a huge "magic circle/ritual circuit" to complete. So STAR built Jump City; the city's power was tied into the Lab to fuel the portal and the street layout provided the correct "ley line alignments" needed. The corrupted STAR scientists were ready to open the portal and damn all of Jump City, burning it all up to bring the Dragon to earth, but at the last minute were stopped by a quartet of STAR employees (who happened to play in a band together). One of those members was locked in the Nightshine (and would become Ultralak) while the others disappeared to quiet lives....until the story demands that Vic hunt them down and find answers to his questions.
As the book progresses and the Dragon is finally defeated, the Lab opens up completely again, and Jump begins to heal and improve as well, becoming less run down and more modern without sacrificing it's 80's cyberpunk aesthetic. So we get to see Vic have a positive impact on his setting and watch things develop and grow. Seems like a nice parallel to Vic's journey as a character as well as the real world advancement of technology since Vic's debut nearly forty years back. Y'all know I love my meta-commentary.
Just a rough idea that still needs a lot of adjustment and work but I thought it was fun.