Category Archives: Bad Super Costumes

If bad super hero costumes had a Hall of Fame, Image Comics would occupy almost every slot with their bewildering array of over-the-top, hacky sartorial disasters. Seriously, whenever I start to run low on mockable items for this blog, I go to Half Price Books and buy an issue -- any issue, and only one -- of an Image Comics title from the early Nineties. Which is exactly what I did with "Brigade" number 3, where I found this:

Battlestone is a virtual cornucopia of Image cliches. You've got the longer-on-top, wavy white hair combined with the excessively long braided rat-tail. You've got the large shoulder pads over partially armored body. You've got the anatomically-impossible sculpted abs, one armband dramatically bigger than the other, the itty-bitty hands, the appearance of a skull somewhere on the uniform (bonus points for putting it on his actual skull!), and of course the bulging, manly crotch being either stared at lustfully by someone else in the panel or with big long "background" lines pointing to it.

(Edited to Add: Plus look at how HUGE that groinal area is in relation to the figure of Thermal the flame girl, who in theory is IN FRONT OF him and therefore closer to us, the hapless viewer. That thing's bigger than her whole forearm and hand! And head!)

Combine that with his epitomization of "Image's Golden Rule of Naming Characters": Two words jammed together, at least one of which must be related in some way to bloody carnage. War-blade. Rip-claw. Death-blow.

Ok, that last one is actually from "Seinfeld", but it absolutely could have been a Nineties Image character, and you know it!

At least most of the word combinations make a vague sort of sense, but "Battlestone"? I'm supposed to be scared of slingshot ammunition? Particularly when paired with the shoulder pads' rainbow chrome effect and red stripe, he comes off less as intimidator and more as humorous sidekick. Especially when you see him from behind, when the awfulness of the outfit really shows:

"Holy firmly rounded armored buttocks, Batman!" I guess that's one way to insure that you rarely run away. And if you do, that your backside will be -- literally -- covered.

(All images ©1993, Rob Liefeld.)

For your bad costuming consideration, I present Marvel's "Hellstorm":

The actual costume isn't that bad, with a strong and simple color scheme and some nice elements to it. What has me concerned is that weapon.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but he's trying to threaten people with a fork.

Don't get me wrong, in terms of tableware a fork is definitely right up there behind the knife, and certainly well ahead of the spoon. So props to him for that, but I just can't help but recommend, were I advising him, to perhaps get away from implements of fine dining altogether. Consider farm tools, perhaps, or even (if he's feeling bold) actual weaponry, you know?

Still, a fork is what he chose, and to give him credit he did try to jazz it up a bit, with all the curves and the long outer tines and the shiny gold and whatnot. But despite what some super-villains would have you believe, size does matter, at least if you're waving place settings around, and this one is just too short. Granted, he can make the handle grow longer to become a true trident, but as it is this looks silly.

And repeating the design as his logo isn't helping. Oh no. Even when the thing's at maximum extension, one look at the chest emblem is going to remind everyone that while it's not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean, nonetheless Hellstorm's usually sporting a dinghy. Metaphorically speaking.

I do think it's cute that he made the cape ties look like little skulls because nothing butches up an outfit like tiny, tiny bones. Ooh, he killed some mice, look out, he really means business with that fork!

(Image and character ©Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc.)

While reading through one of the execrable "Millennium" issues the other day, I came across this character:

I drew up short for two reasons. One, I dare you to encounter a green and purple color scheme on a super-powered individual whose name is NOT "Kang" and take it in stride. And two, who the hell is Overthrow?

Look, I get it, these huge multi-book mult-issue mass crossover titles revel in throwing out completely obscure characters to titillate the hard-core fanboys, but Overthrow? Honestly? Even Blue Beetle, who's issuing the dialog from off-panel, seems stunned that such a random person is making an appearance, and the two of them go way back.

But I bet the reason you never really heard from Overthrow before or after this issue is his costume. In a word, it blows. Or in the words of Bart Simpson, it's achieved the seeming impossibility of both sucking and blowing at the same time. Besides the color scheme (which frankly is hard to get past, but I'll soldier on), I find it hard to take a guy seriously who got his hairpiece by mugging and subsequently scalping Carrot Top. Granted, that was a profound act of goodness for all humankind, but slapping that mop on top of a purple Round Table Helmet is just weird. I keep looking for the big red clown nose that surely just fell off that ensemble.

Due to the perspective of the figure (and the rubber-penciled efforts of Joe Staton) it's hard to tell what's going on with his crotch. (And by the way, if I had a dollar for every time a teenaged Jeff got the "What's going on with his crotch?" question I'd be a wealthy man right now.) Either that's a knee pad on top of a padded boot front, or this guy has serious ego problems.

I sure hope it's the latter, because a purple and green Carrot Top wannabe with a raging boner is just scary enough to get me reading further. Otherwise, it's just another sad, sad costume.

I've made this point before, but it bears repeating:

You can't wear two pairs of shoes at the same time!

You would think such a fundamental rule of fashion (not to mention physics ... or is it geometry? topography?) would be pretty easy to keep in mind, but you'd be wrong. The latest violation of this sacred trust I've come across is from Mike Grell's "Shaman's Tears", and I think I can see why he's crying:

I'm going to overlook the leather open-chest vest and attached feathered g-string because -- no, wait, there's no way I can ignore that. He's wearing a feathered leather g-string, people! Can you imagine him showing up at the local JLA recruiting drive?

Feather g-string guy: Hi, I'm here to apply!
Batman: Uh, I think maybe you're looking for the "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter" auditions in Ballroom G ...

But that bit of exotic bondage play isn't what brings me here today, my friends, oh no. I am instead here to bring attention to the footwear abomination the Shaman and his tears are sporting. Your eyes are not deceiving you, he's actually wearing leather thigh boots -- cinched at the knee, mind you -- underneath white moccasins. First of all, you don't wear white shoes until after Great Stag Hunt Day in the Sioux culture, but even more critically, you only ever wear one pair of freaking shoes at a time!

I love me some Mike Grell, don't get me wrong, but this outfit makes me feel violated in about six different ways. Unless he's standing on a flower-decked float blowing kisses to other dudes during some sort of Pride Parade, no one should ever wear this costume.

I suspect that somewhere deep in Super-Hero Comic Book Publisher HQ is a machine whose sole purpose is to take a random animal and mash it together with the word "man" to produce a new character. That's about the only explanation I can come up with for Marvel's "Frog-Man":

The Frog-Man costume is worn by student Eugene Patillo, and as a character he's played for comedy. Which doesn't excuse this outfit, from the Cookie-Monster-like mouth hiding the eye slits to the bad color scheme to the most egregious offense against the costume gods -- a pair of Underoos covering a frog's genitals.

First, look, this is a family blog, but come on -- amphibians don't have external genitalia. That's just a biological fact, or at least a fact-like statement I made up without checking against Wikipedia because I'm just that lazy.

Second, the kid is in a full-body rubber costume, why does he need underpants on the outside? Couldn't he just have made an outfit like a giant frog, without worrying about the naughty bits since the actual bits in question were already covered by the aforementioned full-body rubber costume?

I'm not saying Vincent Patillo's little boy is an idiot, but at least judging by that outfit he's a few lily pads short of a pond, if you know what I mean.

(Frog-Man © Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. And they're welcome to it.)

Like TV networks or Hollywood studios aping each other's worst show concepts, DC and Marvel have an unfortunate tendency to swap really bad characters. At some point Marvel was apparently desperate to compete for the massive Australian-weapon-aficionado audience DC had hitherto cornered with Captain Boomerang, because they invented their own ridiculously-attired villain named, cleverly enough, "Boomerang":

Yes, like bad fashion, super-powered concepts also have an irritating tendency to come back again, and it's certainly appropriate in this case given the characters' names. I didn't think it was possible to design a more ridiculous costume than Captain Boomerang's, but Marvel has certainly achieved the unlikely here. How the hell do you run around with two back-to-back slabs of wood (or metal or handwavium or whatever) strapped to your chest? And though it's not clear in this frontal image, he's got two more stapled to his back! To illustrate how ridiculous this looks, take a gander at this action triptych from "The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe":

If I saw this idiot running down the street towards me, boomerang handles jutting out at odd angles all over the place, I'd laugh myself silly. How does he even sit down without one of his belterangs jamming a hole in his diaphragm?

And if you think I'm out of line in coining the term "belterang", here are just a few of the weapons listed for the big guy in the Handbook:

• shatterangs
• gasarangs
• razorang
• screamerang
• bladerangs

Given all that, I think I'm safe in classifying this costume design a "Wankerang."

(Images and character ©2006, Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc.)

In my drawing frenzy yesterday, I missed "Bad Costume Day" here at HeroMachine, but I'm not one to let an opportunity for mockery pass me by. Luckily today's example of Fashion Failure is really, really bad to make up for it.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us count the ways Captain Boomerang's outfit sucks:

1. The pattern. You should never look like you're wearing Grandma's wallpaper pattern, and yet Captain Boomerang has fallen into that very trap. I bet if you got up close the boomerangs on the tunic would actually be white foil. Hideous.
2. The hat. Oh Great God in Heaven, the hat. What kind of crazy super-glue or adamantium hairpins is he using to keep that itty-bitty cap on his bald head? Double-sided tape, maybe? Look, I mean no disrespect to the millions of past and present military folks who have worn just such headwear, but they were ordered to do it. I bet not more than three of them in all of recorded history got out of the service and thought "The gas in the trenches was horrible, but at least I get to wear this nifty pygmie-sized bag on my head forever now!"
3. The hair. The cap is made worse when you look at his hair. Or lack thereof. I myself am follicle-challenged, but you don't see me rushing out to the haberdasher to purchase a cap in the exact shape of my bald spot, cut in such a way to accentuate the wild, curly mane of fringe-fur I still manage to sprout.
4. The scarf. I've mentioned this before, but that thing is like a mutant killer python just waiting to suck Captain Boomerang into the nearest jet engine. I'd put the over-under on how many times he's gotten yanked back into a spiral of death via revolving door at an even twenty. It does match the sporty sash he's got going on there, which I suppose is ... "good"? At first I thought maybe they were actually one long strip of cloth, and if you yanked on the scarf end you'd be giving him a power-wedgie. I still hope that's true, because I think the Flash using that technique to foil a crime would be Awesome.
5. The dress. I'm all for cross-dressers' rights, but look, dude's in a mini-skirt. At least he has the decency to cover up the down-unders with a black leotard, but have some decency, man! Yes, yes, I know that's probably a tunic, but no one in the Twentieth Centry was wearing tunics while there were lots and lots of men wearing dresses, so I'm going with the odds on this. Emphasis on "odd".
6. The shin guards. It's like they started designing this from the top down, and by the time they got to the feet they were almost out of ways to humiliate this poor bastard. "How," they thought, "can we make our intended audience of Americans hate this guy any more than they already do from the rest of this ludicrous outfit? Well, let's see, Americans also hate ... hmm ... let's see ... I got it! They hate soccer! He's from Australia, give him shin guards!" I'd finish with "Then they all went out and got drunk", but it's pretty obvious they did that before they started designing this costume.

Aside from the bad hair, bad hat, bad dress, bad shin guards, bad hair, and bad scarf, of course, you have to admire the pluckiness of a guy who goes after the Fastest Man Alive with a muscle-powered weapon. Ignore the fact that your opponent can, you know, outrun sound, you're gonna nail him with a hand-flung piece of wood. Right.

But then, we already knew he was brave, because he showed up in that costume. Next to that kind of courage, battling the Flash is nothing.

I've always liked Yellowjacket's costume, but one part of it in particular has always driven me nuts:

Try to ignore the Flying Squat he's got going on in the illustration and focus on those shoulder pads. Er, wings. Imagine how this would work in real life. You've got gigantic black blinders on either side of your noggin, meaning you can only see what's directly ahead of you. Maybe that's why he's always teaming up with the android Avenger, Peripheral Vision.

So just from an optical physics point of view, this costume doesn't make much sense. But then I'm asked to believe that he uses these vision-blocking shoulder flaps to fly.

Wha-hunh?!

Look, I'm no ornithologist, but I'm pretty sure that you ain't gettin' off the ground by wrapping wings around your shoulders. Maybe Henry Pym should check with his wife Janet for proper flight-appendage placement, because my bet is that he built this costume while in one of his trademark drunken stupors.

As you know, the 31st century's "Major Victory" homage (which is French for "rip-off") to Captain America inspired this week's character design contest. But I ain't letting him off that easy, no sir; you wear a costume that bad and you deserve all the super-powered costume mockery I can muster. To refresh your memory, here he is again, leaping into glorious, bulging, oh-my-god-what-is-that-on-his-crotch battle:

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