03/27/2007
Blogging:: 2 comments: by Isaac Magaña
An astronaut will wear a space suit when going out into space, firefighters have special flame retardant clothing, and police officers have Kevlar. If you are going to be a hero in comics your uniform is a pair of tights. Does that make any sense? Where’s the armor, where’s the padding, where’s the first aid kit?
It seems to me that super hero uniforms, or costumes, don’t always make any particular kind of sense when it comes to function. Batman has a cape and a utility belt. The utility belt has gadgets and other detective items, he hides in the shadows with his cape, but yet he still wears his underwear on the outside of his pants. Where’s the logic behind that part of the uniform? The utility belt makes sense. The cape makes sense. Underwear outside of pants - explain that to me?
Why doesn’t anybody wear sneakers or other athletic shoes? Everyone seems to wear boots, high heels, or boots with heels. I’m sorry but I can’t imagine doing a sprint or a marathon in either high heels or boots, but if I need to fight crime or save the world send me a pair of boots. When I need to hurdle a bad guy or jump to safety, boots are what I need according to the heroes in comics. Superman wears boots, but I don’t think he needs them. If he’s going to kick something, do the boots give him any real sort of advantage?
Uniforms are also gendered. Sometimes the outfits respect traditional gender ideas others bend and break stereotypical norms. Male identified characters get full body suits, with a few exceptions, while female identified characters get something that show more skin, or have stereotypically feminine qualities. Black Canary has fish-net stockings, Bat-Girl and Spider Woman have their long hair exposed while in costume, and Ms. Marvel and Wonder Woman have bathing suits as their uniforms. I guess the last two are exceptions since they are relatively invulnerable, but when does being invulnerable mean you have less of a uniform? The Sentry and Superman have full body suits and they’re invulnerable.
Some outfits, while questionable, make sense more than others; Iron Man has a robotic suit of armor for himself and it protects him very well. Batman’s costume and belt (minus the outer underwear), and then there’s Black Panther who has a woven vibranium suit which offers him some protection against a wide array of weapons.
Okay, so I guess I might be giving super hero uniforms harsh criticism. The Fantastic Four have developed unstable molecules as the material for their uniforms and Superman has his super blankets and those turned out way better than regular every-day tights. Olympians are considered great athletes, and when they compete they wear tights and other form-fitting clothes. Wearing spandex material allows for better range of motion, less air resistance, as well as other benefits. Why shouldn’t heroes wear something similar?
Another thing to consider is that comics are a visual medium. If we want to see our heroes in the peak of human condition I don’t think army fatigues or starched shirts can show us that. We need clothes that can show muscle definition, and tights can do that. I’m not saying cotton or polyester couldn’t do that but we associate athleticism more with tights. If a character shows muscle definition through her or his costume, then we can find it believable that one’s costume is a pair of tights or something of similar design. I believe that’s why we all jump to the conclusion that heroes wear tights. What other clothing grabs the skin so well? The odd thing about all of this is that spandex and tights weren’t invented until 20 years after super heroes were published. One has to wonder whether the reason tights and spandex had such bright colors was somehow to pay homage to the super heroes who had worn them before. Take care of yourself and watch out for those bent corners.
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Posted by Wound First Aid on 07/16/2009, 01:23 AM
This sneaky, cheeky bit of artistry looks innocent enough at first glance. Fan through the pages and you’re treated to beautiful color paintings of summer scenes in thirteen Cape Cod communities. The title and the captions apparently refer to tourists, beginning with cars streaming over the Bourne Bridge: “They arrive every summer, passing over the bridges in droves.” The next image, in Sandwich, where a girl admires ducks on a millpond, continues the theme: “Coming from far away, they feel as though they’ve landed in a different world.”Wound First Aid
Posted by Andrea Akutagawa on 12/18/2009, 04:37 AM
I agree with the writer that tights serve the purpose of rendering manifest the muscles and underlying physiology that is, “in the peak of human condition.” That’s an aesthetic attribute. Secondly, they serve a functional purpose: less wind resistance, less chance of clothing getting in the way (of fighting crime or for purely aesthetic reasons) of representing the hero, in that it’d be easy for the villain to grab hold and rip the hero’s t-shirt, but less easier, I think, to grab hold of something that’s adhering tightly to the skin. On a side note, I read on the Wikipedia article for Batman that there was some kind of an androgynous element to the hero’s identity, his relations with Robin (such as sleeping in the same bed), his androgynous clothes, so it may be a sexual undertone. I would certainly be aroused if I wore underwear over tights with nothing underneath.