Clothing makes the (Super)man

The biggest problem I have with superheroes is that they wear their underwear outside of their clothing.

I was talking to a friend of mine about an idea for a Live-Action Roleplaying Game (LARP, for those of you in the know) involving the X-Men and Spider-Man, as they were portrayed in their respective movies, when that statement came up.

So, let's talk about the superheroic costume, shall we? When taking superheroes out of comic books and putting them into virtually any other type of media (other than cartoons), their costumes are the hardest part to translate. Film and television directors have tried a number of different approaches to handle this thorny issue.

Sometimes, the directors had the courage to just put their actors into tights. And sometimes this works out. Christopher Reeve had the physique to pull off the Superman costume, Adam West did not have the physique to pull off Batman. This technique hasn't had a huge representation in modern superhero films, for good reason.

The next option is for the silhouette hugging costume that is made of something a little sturdier than spandex. The Spider-Man costume that Toby Maguire has worn, and the Superman costume for Brandon Routh both fit into this category. Visually they follow the design of the costumes from the comic, but the textured fabric they're made of gives the costume a weight and reality that spandex lacks. The sculpted muscle-suit of the Flash television show also followed this pattern, and while it didn't work, so did the rubberized Captain America uniform.

Then we have those costumes that aren't superhero costumes, but neither are they ordinary clothing. The leather outfits that the X-Men wear, the "costumes" of the Mystery Men and the armored Batsuits fit into this category. (Although there is an argument for the Batsuits fitting into the previous category.) These outfits aren't something that any sane person would wear down the street, but neither does the audience viewer think of them as being "men in tights." Personally, I put armored costumes, like that of Judge Dredd or Robocop, or if they ever make an Iron Man film in this category as well.

And then the final option is to keep your superhero out of costume. Tom Welling on Smallville, of course, is the quintessential example of this. However even movies and television shows that take one of the above approaches tend to give us a lot of time with the heroes out of costume.

Part of this is practicality. Regardless of the fact that Judge Dredd has never shown his face, you don't pay Sylvester Stalone's salary and not use his face to sell your movie. (Which is really a damn shame. Stallone was willing to do it, and the Judge masks and armor looked really good.) Also, unless you're dealing with a Hugo Weaving, it's hard to have your actors emote through a mask. But I think part of it is that, regardless of how good your superhero costume is, people are afraid of showing too much of it, because they think it looks silly.

Outside of licensed novels, superhero novelists shy away from costumes too. In the Wild Cards novels, very few of the Aces wore a costume, and those who did still had serious concessions to practicality. Part of this was the "realistic" nature of the series, but having tried my hand at writing a superhero novel, I think the other part of it is that when describing a costume, it's hard to not just describe someone in colored tights.

I give Hollywood credit for it's continuing attempts to get the superheroic costume right. But I fear that the costume will largely continue to be restricted to the drawn image, and that our live action heroes will continue to mostly wear leather, plastic and trenchcoats.