Bad Costumes of the Nineties

The theme of bad superhero costumes, as begun previously (here), must confront the sartorial abominations of the nineties to have any credibility. While the Image-styled "new comics" provide regular trainloads of examples of awful experiments in costuming (and the occasionally excellent innovation), "Bad Costumes of the New Comics" will have to wait for another column. Conventional comics publishers provided sufficient material here to provide adequate aesthetic ill-content.

Tarts in Thongs

Recurrently in the nineties, comics chose to portray superheroines essentially as strippers with incredible abilities to bust heads in spike heels and miraculously manage not to slip out of a costume composed of less cloth than one might find in a modest handkerchief. Vampirella, once an aberration with her piece of Frederick's-of-Hollywood attire, would, by some standards of the nineties, start to appear quaint or even prudish. In general, we can see in the supherheroines of the nineties a spread of super-exhibitionism.

Moondragon had a problem with her tailor. The material of her costume, seemingly, dwindles away a bit more every year, though the original version of it probably used less than a yard of fabric. The accompanying image here - due right - does not actually represent the full shrinkage of an already insubstantial outfit, since some artists think of it more as a green tatoo about the width of a single pen-stroke. From the regular depictions of this character, presumably we should assume she would prefer to travel the spaceways altogther deshabilee. It makes a reader long for the day a superhvillain appears with the with the power to send her home to put some clothes on. Nor does Moondragon do much to refute the image of comics readers as hopelessly vile, obese, hairy (yet balding) single males who live with their mothers, never bathe, and only avoid careers as serial sex offenders because that would involve getting off the sofa; somebody could infer just such a reader by reverse engineering from pictures of Moondragon. One only need ask "Who wants to read this stuff?"

This piece of out-of-character soft-core fluff appeared, if I recall correctly, during the lifetime of Jack Kirby, the creator of Sue Storm/Richards. However, Mr. Kirby, in his seventies, seemed somewhat less inclined to go punch someone inna nose over this affront. We should allow people to grow old gracefully, but nothing about that should prohibit us a well-reasoned regret about all the folks who deserve a punch inna nose but never receive it. Some plot concept did drive this particular bit of pandering; as the story ultimately revealed, a demonic-style possession or mind control had unlocked certain nasty aspects of Sue Richards' personality, causing her to express symptoms like the pathetic grasping at attention this outfit involved. The implied table dancing that went with an outfit like this did not actually make it into the story. (Question: Which sold more copies, the issues containing this Invisible Woman costume, or The Essential Fantastic Four 1 and The Essential Fantastic Four 2?)

Horrendous Makeovers

Some analyses of art suggest that a form starts demonstrating corruption when it starts overusing ornamentation, gimmicks, flourishes, grace notes, and innumerable tiny added details rather than attempting to sell the big picture. When guitarists bury songs under drawn-out guitar solos which pretend to excellence because of the number of notes, delivered in the least time, that they contain; when cathedrals bury themselves under gargoyles, complicated bas-relief work, and endles excresences; when connaisseurs must use a microscope to find quality; when such things happen, we may suspect that decadence has set in. All that said, I must admit that in the sample to the right, I like the art better than the costume. Probably an inferior talent could not get away with this assembly of muscle-fibre-like cables here growing like carbuncles on the Heroes Reborn Iron Man. One can object to this particular suit of armor on several levels. If you don't feel that its complexity represents either decadence or a simple ornate excessiveness, consider that the ways in which it differs from the "classic" Iron Man armor (of the seventies and eighties) tend to make it resemble the XO Man-o-War armor from the departed Valiant Comics. Imitation flatters the imitated, but insults the imitator.

I didn't personally mind much the short-lived changes to Superman that went with, and included, this costume. It took nerve to do as much to Superman as change the shape of the buckle of his belt (fans still grumble about the episodes of "Lois and Clark" where Dean Cain wore a costume with a square, rather than elliptical, buckle). Also, I knew that DC would not stay with it, though they shocked me by the abruptness with which they dispensed with both costume and powers without much explanation. However, the Consensus of Comics Readership impugns the aesthetic of this outfit, so in good conscience I can add it to this gallery of sartorial mishaps. If you find this costume does make your hair stand on end just a little, at least console yourself with the manner in which this art seems to reflect an approach reminscent of the late, and missed, Don Newton.

I've seen others discribe this short-lived outfit worn by the Scarlet Witch called "trashy," but since it involves neither a ridiculously plummeting neckline nor the dreadfully cliched thong/t-backs of the worst offenders in female costuming - the coverage seems positively prudish in comparision to the Moondragon and Invisible Woman costumes shown above - I have to write this piece off on grounds of taste. It doesn't really work with the character. It desperately calls for a jacket or cape to work with the sort of feet-planted hex-casting one expects of the character in those scenes where the Avengers must resort to fisticuffs. This costume also makes me wonder: Why don't female superheroes get cold? Superman, in his traditional outfit, buries himself in yards and yards of cloth even in the heart of a sun, and the Scarlet Witch, with too many of her female peers, expose about 80% of their skin surface to the most brutal of winter storms. In the outside world, away from comics, females tend to perceive the ambient temperature as more cold than males do - some biological thing having to do with the constriction of blood vessels in the surface of the skin bears responsibility here - yet comics gets this backwards. I don't hesistate to suggest that comics creators sometimes act in ignorance of females in the real world; and others know, but do not use what they know, in designs. So, therefore, comics abound in what Marie Severin discreetly calls "things that are not possible" pertaining to the famale form.

General Bad Taste

The color scheme of this outfit should make Jean Grey want to return to the dead. She can't hide behind the excuse of color blindness, either, since that trait mainly afflicts males; besides, her mental powers, whichever ones she has this week, would allow her to enjoy the sensation of he retinas of others hemorrhaging as they attempt to view this exercise in advanced applied gaucherie. If she has returned to her Phoenix costume, a renovation for which we should commend Dave Cockrum for designing, we can understand why. If the "thong-worn-over-ugly-orange-leotards" offends, consider that this generation of X-costumes also featured her beau, Cyclops, in a costume which converted the conventional "underwear on the outside" look to a briefer thong look. However, the thong makes only one component in a comprehensively awful piece. Big epaulets? Feh! If that Sue Richards atrocity (above) would have justified a quick and painful game of smashmouth, this one, for sheer ugliness, invites some kind of scornful visitation from angry poutergeists.

What sells as "cutting-edge" one year can go down as "hilariously dated" a few years down the line. Aesthetically, I don't have great objections to the Green Lantern costume that Kyle Rayner wears. However, a number of details do invite nitpicking; I can understand the complaints that one sees appear incessantly on newsgroups and message boards about this outfit, even as I wonder how anyone can let it matter enough to waste the time necessary to complain about it. To begin with, I doubt the wisdom of costumes with boots above the knee, especially on male characters. Something about such boots strongly suggests either strippers or bondage wear. The same objections apply to gloves that continue up the arm past the forearm. The knee protectors suggest things best left unmentioned. The fingerless gloves remind me of high school kids in the seventies who plucked the fingers off their gloves, believing that the modification made them look like boxers: a bit of poseur gimmickry that invited a well-earned derision. Some critics of this costume also attack the use of asymmetry and the relative absence of the color green in the costume. However, those seem like "features" rather than "flaws" to my eye. Even with all these criticisms presented, I sometimes find myself liking this costume, but such pleasure comes with attendant guilt. I have to enjoy it in secret, where no one can catch and reproach me for liking it.

Kyle's mask remains the most volatile point of contention in criticisms of the costume that the latest Green Lantern wears. Common nomenclature tags it "the crab mask," with some justice; a web rumor suggests that Kevin Dooley, onetime Green Lantern editor, made a bizarre mask out of cardboard, which, in gestures of peculiar humor, he sometimes wore to work. When DC editorial developments called for the introduction of a new Green Lantern, so the legend maintains, Dooley wanted his cardboard mask incorporated into the new costume design. We need not adhere to this myth too credulously to see how the design of the mask could suggest such a story to explain it.

If you recognize the character depicted in the scanned panel below, that suggests that some surface where you live has vanished under stacks of comic books. Quasar still has loyal fans, although his following evidently didn't suffice to keep him out of comics oblivion.

The character enjoyed a classic Silver Age outfit inherited from an equally obscure character named "Marvel Boy," whose tales occurred in the fifties, either real or revisionist. Three of his later costumes suggested the prototype, including the last one he wore in his outings with the Avengers. This costume, however, seems to depart somewhat from that concept. While it does effectively disassociate Quasar from his connection with the gone-and-forgotten "Marvel Boy," it much resembles the disposable and forumulaic costumes that appear on doomed micropress comic books and in the more uninspired pieces of art that sometimes infest low-budget superhero role-playing games.

For me, a particular costume summarizes the male side of costuming excess from the 1990s. Look, to your right, at the following cover from the first issue of DC's short-lived post-Zero Hour version of Manhunter. This fourth use of the name (after Kirby's original Paul Kirk, Englehart's Mark Shaw, and the Manhunter clone from Secret Society of Super-Villains) involved an obvious attempt to cater to the tastes of the consumers of the "new comics." Look at the wealth of decadent detail! Not only does this Manhunter sport some of the biggest epaulets ever to appear in a comic book; not only does he wear the sort of mask one might expect of characters in early issues of Rob Liefeld's Youngblood; not only does he bear spiny barbs over the entirety of his person; he also overwhelms with his ugliness. After seeing this image once in a comics bin, and again on a (since departed) web page, I gave in to morbid curiosity and bought three issues of this title. It didn't really impress me aesthetically, but it did surprise me in two ways. One, the late Archie Goodwin himself acted as editor for this project. Two, while the book contains mostly fistfights and people crashing through walls, doors, and windows, it also attempts to hint at themes of a doomed hero attempting to avert some future horror by selling out to a demonic entity. The meat, however, lay more in potential than in delivery. Frank Miller and/or Dennis O'Neil could have made this one work, but its absence from newsstands suggests that the title didn't last very long at all.