Category Archives: Bad Super Costumes

I've made no secret of the fact that I was a big "Legion of Super-Heroes" fan growing up. But one member I could never quite get my head around was Timber Wolf, and in retrospect my difficulties probably started with his costume:

You can tell he's a rebellious, wild, savage Lone Wolf by the symbol on his chest, and the fact that he wears his Granny panties on the outside. Vicious! Plus, like many too-wild-for-society outcasts, he wears his excessively starched collar without a button. Take that, Convention!

I also like the pre-mourning black armbands, just in case he ever lets anyone get close and then they die, which would totally never happen because he's a lone wolf, but still. Even lone wolves can be prepared.

I also like his wild-beast, untamed, living-in-the-wilderness hair. Lone wolves might be terrible barbers, but luckily timber wolves have mastered the follicle arts, because that's one nice 'do. You can tell he's a hair-savvy timber wolf by the barbershop stripes on his fashion-flaunting epaulettes.

In future redesigns DC would address the hair issue:

You can almost hear the "GRRRRR!" can't you?! As in, "GRRRRR! I'm mean ol' loner Timberwolf and -- wow, I have GOT to go potty!"

But most importantly, check out that hair. Now that's some beastly coiffure, folks. You can't help but see that and think of a wild animal, some savage, wild, small animal. Some bad-tempered, wild, savage, small animal that is ferocious and tenacious and a loner and ... wait a minute!

(Timberwolf images and character ©DC Comics, Inc. Wolverine © Marvel Comics.)

I like Black Canary. There, I said it. Despite the fishnet hose, trampy collar, and trailer-park blonde wig, I dig the character quite a bit, having formed my opinion of her during the 1970's "Green Lantern / Green Arrow" stories where she was a strong, butt-kicking woman. She seems to me to be one of the most well-rounded of the DC stable of female characters.

What I never understood was why she didn't track Zatanna down and slug her for stealing her costume:

Seriously, chick's magic, she can have whatever she wants for a costume, and the best she can do is "eviG eM kcalB s'yranaC emutsoc"? Sistah please.

At various times, the powers that be at DC have agreed, and tried to "update" her look, sometimes to good effect, and sometimes to bad. Like this one:

I imagine the creative meeting going something like this:

Editor: You know what's hot right now?
Artist: My pits? Seriously, it's so hot in New York right now fat guys are makin' their own gravy.
Editor: No, you idiot, I'm talking about workout videos!
Artist: You mean taut, lithe, sweaty women working out in tight clothing? I have no idea what you're talking about.
Editor: Just go away and redesign Black Canary as if Olivia Newton-John were starting in the movie version and quit stinking up my office.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this just seems like a mom who rolled out of bed one morning and decided to fight crime without changing out of her sweats.

The headband is the literal and figurative capper, of course. You couldn't walk around in the super-hero universe of the 80s without one of those things, which a decade later would morph into living snake-gods at the loving hands of Rob Liefeld and company. But I also hate the thick, puffy sleeves, the obligatory mid-80s colored stripe down the center of the uniform, the white pirate boots, and the useless white cuffs. She's gone from looking like a hot, sexy, slightly dated yet still classic temptress totally in keeping with her general theme of "night singer" to this uncomfortable, every-square-inch-covered fitness video reject look.

But mostly, it's the headband. I wish someone had choked this bad canary of an idea before it ever got out of the mines. Thankfully they'd ditch this look in fairly short order and get her back to something more bad-ass and less baggy-ass.

(Images and characters © DC Comics.)

It says a lot about our culture that male super heroes like Batman and Superman can go for literally decades without changing their underpants, but female characters like Wonder Woman and Supergirl have different outfits for every possible occasion. To wit:

She makes you wonder if she has yet a different costume for stopping non-dangerous fanatics. On a separate note, it's sad to see how far Spock let himself go in his later years, isn't it? As Mr. Luthor can attest, balding in the Superman Universe is responsible for more evil than the next three leading causes combined.

Unlike Wonder Woman, Supergirl's "every day" costume firmly lives on the modest side of town, without showing a lot of excess cleavage or leg (though, depending on the artist, that mini-skirt can ride awfully high). This outfit, by contrast, is strangely more casual despite the martial trim and work gloves. She looks tough, don't get me wrong, especially with the wide-strapped muscle shirt.

So tough, in fact, that the high neckline makes me think she's issuing a constant challenge, saying "Don't look at my chest", which is difficult because, come on, there's a giant red and yellow "S" right there. Which is about the only way the even more gigantic eye at her navel makes sense. "Don't look at my chest, LOOK AT MY CROTCH AND IT WILL LOOK RIGHT BACK AT YOU! LOOK AT IT!!"

Anyway, I actually think this isn't a horrible outfit. Do something with those enormous Playtex oven cleaning gloves, replace the Spanx under the tunic with sensible bikini-cut spandex, lose the blue pockets, and reconfigure the belt so it doesn't look like the Eye of Sauron and I think it would be fairly decent.

Of course she'd have to put on her "What I wear to change clothes" costume to do so, but I'm sure Evil Bald Spock won't mind waiting.

(Image and character ©DC Comics, Inc.)

As you'd expect, the 1940s saw a multitude of patriotic-themed super heroes hitting the comics newsstands even as real war raged across the globe. Few realize that in the same venue, another deadly conflict burned out of control -- a war on fashion, led by Yankee Doodle Jones:

Who says you can't combine striped pants, a leather wrestling belt, purple star-spangled vest, and a light blue puffy pirate shirt and make it look good! Oh, right -- this guy.

As jarring as it is to see purple and aqua on an outfit that's ostensibly based on the flag of the USA (which, need I remind you, contains neither purple nor aqua, nor wrestling), even worse to my bleeding eyes is the jaunty red flight-attendant cap he's sporting. I can just imagine him leaping into this heated battle with the heinous Nazis screaming "Coffee, tea, or ME!"

The bad costume is what brought us here today, but I can't close without saying a word or two about the name. "Yankee Doodle Jones"? Really? There's nothing like an implied "Dandy" to make your enemies tremble in fear. Or possibly titillation, depending on their proclivities. But perhaps this was just the forerunner of a whole clan of Yankee Doodles, like Yankee Doodle Sam and Yankee Doodle Fred and of course, cousin Yankee Doodle Betty.

"Darling, the Yankee Doodles are coming over for dinner tonight, so be sure to break out the good star-spangled purple and aqua table cloth, won't you?"

(From "Yankee Comics" number 4, 1942.)

For people my age, the 1970s are the touchstone for bad fashion. We saw a rare confluence of bad fabrics (shimmery polyester for example), bad incidentals (huge collars, wide ties), and unfortunate color sense (paisley browns, electric orange shag carpeting, white shoes).

But with the benefit of hindsight, the 1990s mounted a serious challenge to the King of Bad Fashion Decades, at least for super hero costumes. This Wonder Woman ensemble from an issue of DC Comics' "Elseworlds" serves as a great example of that; allow me to give you a tour.

Let's start with that Fauxhawk, which tries to combine the long-haired Penthouse pinpup look (required of all female comics characters) with a Punk sensibility. But let's be honest, no Punk would ever go out in a tiara. It's just not done.

You then get to that staple of the Nineties Costume, the popped collar. On, of course, a short-waisted leather jacket with rolled-up sleeves. I can never figure out what it was about the climate in the 1990s that made people get cold only on their upper arms and shoulders. I keep watching "The Weather Channel" hoping to see some sort of explanation, but alas, I watch in vain.

The torso's fairly traditional Wonder Woman fare, though with a French-cut bikini line that would shame even the French. (I'm kidding, of course -- the French are shameless. And I should know, I'm one quarter French!)

Interestingly, though, she has on a short-sleeved turtleneck covering the swell of her Wonder Bosoms, which makes you kind of wonder why she's bothering with a bustier in the first place, since swelling Wonder Bosoms is kind of the point of that particular bit of fashion.

Hang on, though, while I reiterate -- she's wearing a short-sleeved turtleneck. Again, what is the temperature gradient that would result in such a thing?

Whatever it was, it also led to multiple boots, something I have never understood. She's got on leggings, thigh boots, kneepads, and regular super hero boots. That's some serious legwear, folks.

I'm forced to wonder at the puke-green eyepatch-wearing Mullet Man With Thigh Pouches she's accosting in this scene. Is he from the Fashion Police, sent out to arrest her for crimes against humanity? Does it take an alternate Elseworld to finally bring sanity to the fashion-challenged Nineties?

We can only hope.

(Image and characters ©1994, DC Comics.)

I think the questionable costuming choices in this "Exciting Comics" cover from 1940 pretty much speak for themselves, but you have to credit the guy in purple for remembering to include a reservoir tip:

And I'm not sure whose pleasure that robot is ribbed for, but no matter what I'm glad to see that even in 1940 they put safety first. You can have your Y2K era leather-clad Bat-heroes; for my money, latex is always your best bet.

Comics fans tend to spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about female super-hero outfits (raises hand), largely on the basis that they're "impractical". Black Canary comes in for her fair share, as it's hard to imagine doing acrobatic martial arts while wearing both spiked heels and a bustier.

But I think we tend to overlook that for the most part, male costumes are just as "impractical". Luckily, the Black Canary herself is here to disabuse us of our prejudices in a way only possible in comics:

Preach on, sister.

My question for you, Mr. or Miss or Ms. or Mrs. or Dr. Comics Fan, is what other costume elements that we usually don't think twice about would probably be insanely impractical were they to exist in reality?

The first one to come to mind for me has been remarked on many times, and is the utility of wearing a unitard all night long with no easy way to ... um, relieve yourself. Just, no. Give me a Bat-zipper or something.

Your turn!

What if Amazons were actually Hell's Angels motorcycle gang members, and instead of being based on the Greeks they were modeled after S&M enthusiasts, and then their Princess Diana came to the Man's World to investigate new ways to use straps and bad leather clothing? Well then, my friend, you'd get this version of Wonder Woman:

Holy Minerva, that's a lot of useless costuming bits! My favorite is probably the ingenious use of the bra straps meeting at the sternum, where according to my vast engineering knowledge, they would offer approximately zero support. In fact, I bet wearing a bra like this would actually make the breasts sag more! But that's ok, because there isn't anything even remotely accurate about this woman's anatomy in the first place, including her unfortunately broken hips. Maybe that's the reason for the otherwise puzzling waist straps.

I mean, the reason other than "straps are hot" according to the fevered adolescent imagination of your average comics fanboy.

The painted-on biker shorts are just ... I don't have words for that. Wow.

Finally, I don't know why she bothers having the separated "=W=" logo on those jacketless sleeves, as there's no way in Hades she's ever going to get both sides of that thing to meet up over her chest. Maybe if there were a few more straps and a winch she could manage it, but otherwise, no. Which is probably by design, because clearly the last thing anyone working on that book would want would be to cover any more of her chest than absolutely necessary.

On a side note, I had no idea just how extensive Wonder Woman's costume history was until I stumbled upon Carol A. Strickland's impressively anal-retentive (her words, not mine!) index. If you can swing a few minutes to check it out, it's interesting reading. It makes me feel bad for the Amazons -- all those women on one island and so little fashion sense to go around. Pity.

(Image ©1995, DC Comics.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you what may be the worst costume in the history of super-hero comics:

As you can see from the cover, that's Marvel Comics' "Killraven", sporting a San Francisco Gay Pride Parade-worthy outfit featuring leather suspenders AND leather hot pants AND leather thigh boots AND a mini-corset string set AND an Eighties workout headband AND a mullet AND roll-top gloves.

That's a lot of suck to go into a costume that contains a total of, at the outside, three square inches of fabric.

Why would you even need suspenders to hold up those short-shorts? Did the copious use of alternate-future Nair-like hair removal products result in a man-region so slick it sheds clothing like water off a duck's butt?

I'll give him this, though -- he's a lot manlier than I am, because if I tried to wear leather suspenders with no undershirt, my nipples would be chafed absolutely raw. But not Killraven; sore man-nips or not, he's as bold in his fashion sense as he is in combat, what with his innovative "swords versus laser beams" strategy and all.

I said he was manly, not smart.

(Image and character © Marvel Comics.)