Why Bad Costumes?

I began planning this column with the notion that I would find a few truly bad superhero costumes that had really rattled my admittedly dulled aesthetic sensibilities. First one came to mind, then the next, and soon I had half a dozen or so pieces that managed to rankle.

The stinkiest pieces all seemed to come from the mid-to-late eighties. The following, therefore, deals with some really atrocious pieces from mainstream comics of the era.

Mohawks and Their Enemies

Ugly dated styles that defined a period might give a tone of reality to comics if the writers would address the level of derision characters could expect for the horrible affronts to taste, decency, and geometry posed by their manner of presenting themselves to the world. Unfortunately, comics frequently thinks awful excesses of tasteless trendiness somehow deserve dignified treatment. This leaves incredibly implausible stories or outfits that would make any sane enemy (or, for that matter, ally) laugh himself unto helplessness and incontinence. Such describes Marvel's makeover of Storm in the early eighties, when she adopted a vomitrocious and accompanying leather costume.

Context helped make this look do evil to the well-being of readers. The rugged and punkish look ran completely contrary to a character originally created and portrayed as dignified, cautious, and elegant. This costume, where it appeared, defied the character concept about as thoroughly as it would have if someone tried to get these clothes on Jackie Onassis. Even the blue Superman look, as much as fans hated it, did less to undermine the concept of the character (if, indeed, the electric Superman somehow failed to remain true to the core of the character).

When DC attempted to create a young hero team for its doomed "Earth 2" cosmos, they similarly sought to pander to someone out there who might have related better to a superhero with both an extremely ugly haircut and an unpleasing costume to complement it.

This look actually made stories containing the early Nuklon difficult to read. In the long run, at least, DC had the sense to follow the lead of Waid and Ross in redesigning the character's look altogether; and they followed through at the barber's as well, no longer inflicting the grotesque helmet-crest look on the reader. We have to consider wasting Ordway and Breeding on this image as somewhat tragic, for even the widely recognized excellence of their visual treatments could not redeem this dog of an outfit.

Abuses of Color

Superheroes generally have to look different to attract the attention of readers. This imposes Diminishing Marginal Returns as artists create new costumes; soon the color schemes that please the eye become attached to specific characters. In addition, sometimes printing technology suggests the likely color schemes even when taste knows better. Consider, for example, the green skin and purple pants that sometimes define Marvel's property the Incredible Hulk.

A workable character might receive a less-than-workable costume for want of an available unique color scheme. In the case of the illustration above, the Hourman from Infinity, Inc., got stuck with a real howler of a color scheme. The first Hourman had a mix of color that didn't abuse the eye; why couldn't the second?

Other Insults to Taste

Marvel's silver age abounded in ugly costumes. Look at an Avengers prior to 1968 and the ugly costumes will leap out like pea soup from Linda Blair's mouth. So, therefore, characters like the Grim Reaper, the Living Laser, and the Unicorn began with outfits that warranted the beatings these characters could respect to receive in the comics.

In the seventies and eighties, Marvel remade a few of these outfits. Such reworkings did not always improve things; in some cases, the modifications only involved a change from one kind of hideous to another. In the case of the Unicorn here, he managed to keep a color scheme that really deserved some hard jail time, and combined it with the ultra-effeminate hip boots and long gloves look that would make for difficult times once he made it to prison.

The Romita Jr./Layton period of Iron Man involved elements that still contribute to the franchise to this day, in ways some may consider better (the character James Rhodes) or worse (the endless sequence where Tony Stark wandered around town in a dirty tuxedo, hopelessly out of control on a never-ending booze binge). Iron Man fans that miss that era of the book probably do not turn back to it to see this ensemble on the shoulders of the Unicorn.

Other characters just never had a chance insofar as awful costumes doomed them to abuse the eye. Note the purple and pink sartorial atrocity in this Steve Ditko cover. One might doubt that any color scheme could rescue this questionable outfit, but the colors that did end up on it gave it the certain special something it needed to enter the territory of the completely unjustifiable. Though we can't forgive the outfit for its awfulness, we can at least cut some slack for the much-abused Steve Ditko, who seems responsible. Ditko has earned some kind of amnesty from the Comics Fashion Police.

This fellow Quantum, however, deserves no such consideration. Mauve, gold, and orange all in one hideous package? Without having read this book, I can't tell much about what Quantum could do, but I know that I might not need powers in that costume. I could render my enemies helpless with disgust when the light hit me the right way.

Insufferable Makeovers

While it often serves to shake things up for stagnant characters to provide them with a new look, sometimes these efforts fail spectacularly. Ill-considered attempts to integrate thematic elements or emblems into costumes can really drag them into dangerous ground. Marvel's desire to provide the original X-Factor and Wonder Man with costumes that referenced their official names got letters onto these costumes, but not in ways that made them wearable.

If we include the period during which Wonder Man did not wear a costume at all, his red jacket and black turtleneck days, Wonder Man had at least four costumes prior to this one, and all of them looked better than this badly colored, badly designed, and generally unnecessary piece of dead taste. Whoever put him back in his black-and-red outfits, the line of costumes that include his current, basic look, deserves some kind of recognition for sparing the reader any more appearances of hopefully the last of Wonder Man's green, red, and yellow experiments.

As a footnote, you might note Iron Man's red and white armor. Both design and color-wise, it represented no improvement over what had gone before (and, really, looked no better than the armor with the nose mask). It belonged to a period of uninspired costuming even if this version of the armor could not compete with Wonder Man's outfit as a sartorial faux pas.

Why the Eighties?

Through the seventies, the vital new standards and concepts brought into the medium by the innovations of Marvel (and, to a lesser degree, DC) helped drive material, but the Silver Age steam couldn't keep things going in the early eighties.

Change for its own sake brought about some of these pieces. For no particular reason, some creators in the early eighties simply did not have a talent for costume design; and the virtuosi of design, such as Simonson, Adams, Cockrum, and Kirby, were no longer as involved in company wide costume design in a way DC and Marvel needed them.

Note, however, that bad costumes do not bad comics make. Some of these illustrations represent successful properties of the day; nor can we qualify the art that encompassed the bad costumes as itself bad, because some of these pieces include styles that would shape the modern standards of the medium.

Time also has a way of doing away with the worst pieces of costume design. If others survive, odds favor that we can outlast them.