Comics Alliance: Vengeance and Fashion

While my last contribution to the Comics Alliance was built around characters taking their clothes off, this week’s is about super-heroes putting clothes on: A gallery of some of comics’ most notable costume changes!

 

 

Click the image above to head over there and check out a good mix of old favorites (Disco Nightwing!) and my personal choices (The New Blackhawk Era!), and feel free to leave a comment about your favorite costume change in the comments.

But before you go, yes, the rumors you’ve heard are true: I did neglect to include Spawn and his many important and significant costume changes. It is, I assure you, to my eternal shame.

19 thoughts on “Comics Alliance: Vengeance and Fashion

  1. What, Invisible Woman’s “Hey, look at my cleavage through this 4 on my chest” from the 90s wasn’t worth a mention?

    No, you’re right, it wasn’t.

  2. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m afraid a lot of my Bad Costume Change List involves Kirby. I love the guy as much as anyone not named Chris Sims, but Ditko’s longshoreman-Sandman looked cooler than the Frightful Four Sandman, Gardner Fox’s badass Golden Age DC Sandman looked cooler than the Bronze Age DC Sandman, and (I’m sorry to point out) Perez’s “groovy 70’s threads” redesign of Wonder Man is cooler than the original. It’s goofy looking, and God knows Perez is hit-or-miss as a costume designer (see Nightwing above), but of all Wonder Man’s many costume redesigns, most of which try to reimagine or refine Kirby (which is perilous for mere mortals), only Perez’s actually goes in a completely different direction and gets something memorable.

  3. You know, say what you will about disco Nightwing (or traditional Robin for that matter), but it sure wasn’t boring. Nobody’s been able to dress the guy in anything remotely exciting since.

  4. I’m glad to see that Alex Ross got someone to pay him a second time for the Silver Agent.

  5. I should add that I also like Perez’s second WM redesign, from the Busiek run, where he still had the Charlie Brown stripe, but was basically made of Kirby Dots.

  6. The Dr. Fate ’90s design has to get my vote for the most insane redesign ever.

    Although, now that I think about it…did you purposely not bring the ’90s into this? Because I guess if you do, there’s tons more awful ones that I’ve just blocked out over the years…

  7. I still think that they should never have reverted to Taskmaster’s “Skeletor with pirate boots” costume, I loved that Udon redesign.

  8. I’m just glad Solomon Stone is back in his classic duds after the disaster that was the Late Nineties Retro-Swing outfit. The shades were bad enough, but they had to know zootsuits were gonna go back out of style, come on!

  9. The Udon redesign of Taskmaster is definitely one of my favorite costume revamps ever. Kept the skull thing, but made him look more like someone you would hire to do work for you, and less like a guy who spends all his money at Renaissance faires.

  10. Also, you forgot all of the Transformers but Drift, Sims! How can you forget the Transformers? It’s like you aren’t a big fan. That can’t be right, can it?

  11. The Wasp’s costume changes were kinda hot.

    (This is not the reaction I expected to have. It didn’t happen last week.)

  12. feel free to leave a comment about your favorite costume change in the comments.

    Or, in internet-speak, point out to Chris that he “missed” that one, including using the word “fail.”

  13. You missed a really radical change: Deadshot.

    We all know the outfit he has in SUICIDE SQUAD and SECRET SIX, but back when he first faced Batman and Robin, he was wearing a tophat and tails, and only disguised with a domino mask. Nothing like the cool Bruce Campbell-esque character we know and love.

  14. I’m not sure Transformers qualify as costume changes. There’s been very little update to the classic characters (until the Universe toys came along and some tweaks in the IDW character models), and that’s ignoring namesakes of characters Hasbro wanted to keep the names to.

    Unless we’re going for a transforming joke or something.

  15. Are you sure those are short-shorts? I always thought they were man-panties.