Silly Costumes and Other Accessories

Man, will you look at the negative influence Rob Liefeld had on the industry, and left behind, when he was on the loose plying his trade in Marvel comics! Cable/Nathan Summers has never struck me as much of a character, and neither has this sample of his own costume, one of the most oversized monstrosities I've ever seen. You can practically tell that he must be tired having to hoist those huge shoulder pads, armor and firearms around, including at least one shoulder mounted gun he's got smoking there, even though it's not often he's depicted with them. Though that doesn't make him any more interesting character-wise, of course.
While we're on the subject of Rob Liefeld, I think it's worth presenting some of his worst output as an artist. I can't say his art was that great to begin with, and over the years, it got progressively worse. It was at Image Comics in the early 1990s that he really plummeted into jaw-dropping awfulness, yet inexplicably enough, he kept getting jobs. And one of the most notorious assignments he got was Marvel's ill-advised "relaunch" of at least 4 titles in 1996-7 as Heroes Reborn. Jim Lee, who's much better an artist than Liefeld (but has since devolved into an awful publisher at DC), did the art chores on Fantastic Four and Iron Man's relaunches (although Scott Lobdell, an otherwise bad writer himself, may have done the writing), while Liefeld himself did both the art and the writing, if memory serves, on Avengers and Captain America.

And if there's anything that disastrous step, a precursor to Marvel's destruction of its universe under Joe Quesada in the following century, will be remembered for besides the pedestrian writing, it's the astoundingly poor quality of Liefeld's art. Badly drawn torsos that are off-balance, neckless bodies and even crummy costumes, more on which anon. It was a pure nightmare.

Here now are two examples, Liefeld's rendition of Scarlet Witch in volume 2 Avengers, and Steve Rogers sans costume in volume 3 Captain America (today, there's only so many relaunches it's pointless to count them all). What's ghastly about these is how Liefeld makes Wanda look masculine and Steve look feminine. GAH! Wanda looks like a transvestite and Steve looks like a tomboy (and yes, by that I mean a woman with a short-cropped hairstyle). What kind of mindframe was he in when he did this? Did I mention just how awful the nod to one of Wanda's early costume designs from the Silver Age really is? Liefeld is truly the pits.

It gets worse with some of the following. Take a look:
So in that next panel, Steve is implausibly much taller than the guy carrying his shield. I guess we really are confusing him with someone else, because the "guy" we see in the other panel is only a head taller than the one confronting "him", and not as towering as Liefeld drew him in the first. What happened, did he take some of Hank Pym's massive growth formula that turns him into Giant-Man and it went bonkers? Steve looks even more disturbingly feminine in both that beanstalk-picture and the cafeteria scene in the middle, where, by contrast, he looks quite the normal size, yet isn't even as muscular as the super-serum experiment made him way back in the Golden Age. This is a glaring example of Liefeld's inconsistencies from one panel to the next.

I can guess why this initially got past the main editors at the time: basically, Marvel farmed out the books to "hot" writers/artists to do with as they pleased, Liefeld inexplicably being one of that kind of bunch. Frighteningly enough, the books may have had fairly good sales results at first, though they did plummet soon afterwards. In any case, Liefeld was thankfully taken off the books and let go, and the relaunched volumes were canceled and given to better writers to relaunch again in ways that fans would recognize. An interesting note: Marvel had attempted to renegotiate its contracts with Lee and Liefeld to cut their salaries. Guess what happened? Lee agreed, whereas Liefeld refused. Isn't that amazing when the better artist turns out to be more sensible as well and not make it look as though he's only interested in money, while the poorer artist can only think of greenbacks. I guess I might also mention that Liefeld has also signaled he's a leftist, and since 2009, he's really alienated me politics-wise as well as art-wise.

A classic case of having to suspend one's disbelief, namely, at how the character shown in the picture on the side can possibly introduce himself to earth's residents in the goofy garb he's wearing!

During the Bronze Age period, Superman sometimes featured an otherworldly superdoer called Vartox, who first debuted in Superman #281 Vol. 1, November 1974. He was a hero from the planet Valeron, and sometimes assisted the Man of Steel with several of his cases.

Trouble was, this guy (whose design must've been drawn from Sean Connery and his role in the 1974 sci-fi movie Zardoz, where the setting "the vortex" must've served for drawing the character name from), was kind of old for the role of a superhero, which was one of the main reasons why he once traveled to earth to ask the Man of Steel for help after his powers for paralysis came up short during one crimefighting case he was working on. But old or not, his getup was truly embarrassing, and as time went by, the way he was written kept getting worse with each consecutive appearance.

Now the vest he's wearing is okay, but the knee-length boots, and the very skimpy pair of underwear/jock-strap are exactly what do in his outfit, since it comes very, VERY close to making him look like...well, you get the idea.

What was the talented Curt Swan thinking when he came up this monstrosity? It wouldn't pass muster even in the World Wrestling Federation, which I couldn't stand when I was a youngster anyway. It does seem to have been [un-]inspired by such foolish baloney, though.

Vartox was later reintroduced post-Crisis in 1999 in a book called Team Superman, and while my knowledge on how he was reintro'd then is insufficient, I certainly do hope that they gave him a better costume, and, come to think of it, they probably did anyway.

The following character, Captain Ultra, seen (assuming it's possible to do that, of course) on the left of the page, appeared as a joke character in Fantastic Four #177 (he first appeared as an attempted applicant to be the fourth member of the crooked Frightful Four, but was rejected after he turned out to have a problem with fire and smoking. He subsequently became a hero, and was better off that way). And seeing him, well, you could very easily wonder if the color on the pages - and on Captain Ultra himself - faded to yellow over the years. The "bib" on his chest appears to boast a letter U, though it's hard to tell if the black or the yellow are what to look for. If anything, this reminds me of a joke involving C3PO from Star Wars in MAD magazine: "I gotta start using a sunblock!" Oh yeah. And I gotta start using a pair of sunglasses to view this ridiculously drawn character. He is so headache-inducing!

It's possible that he may have appeared in a couple of other Marvel books as well during that time. Today, however, he's been forgotten.
Mike Grell did have some good ideas for costume designs when he first began his career in the mid-1970's by penciling the Legion of Super-Heroes back then. But there were also quite a few embarrassments, as this Cosmic Boy outfit shows. Good gosh, it looks almost as if he'd been fooling around in his girlfriend's underwear drawer, or was so dizzy after a night of heavy petting, that he looked through the wrong clothes drawer when he woke up! All the accessories he's got on are practically female, for pete's sake! Is he modeling a futuristic line of swimsuits, maybe? Umm, Cosmic, please leave that to Dream Girl to deal with; you're not the one who's meant to be doing it, you know. Or, if you are, then it should be the male swimming trunks you should be modeling, not that wretched ballerina-style getup you've got on there. Yikes, what an embarrassment!

Then, there's Tyroc, an Afro-American Legionnaire, who wore a similar costume, with chains included! And if you ask me, that outfit too is quite an insult. The white gloves aren't much help either.

Cosmic Boy was lucky that by the time the Iron Age came around, artists Steve Lightle and Ernie Colon gave him a new, full-body costume that was certainly an improvement over the one he'd been wearing during the Bronze Age. And the one he's been wearing since Mark Waid and Art Thibert took over the writing for the Legion in 2004 is certainly an improvement too. But even so, this does come as a real embarrassing moment in Grell's career as an artist. Maybe that's one of the reasons why, since the mid-80s, he's drawn so little since then?

As for Tyroc, I'm not sure, since I don't know enough about his appearances post-Zero Hour, but I expect that even he too has been given more respect than Grell ever did when designing him.
More nuttiness can be summed up in the guise of the Red Seal, a Golden Age hero who appeared in Target Comics in 1941. His costume with long sleeves and bare leg fittings could work on a woman, but on a man looks ridiculous with the long sleeves, which Robin didn't use (and neither did Golden Age Atom Al Pratt, seen higher above). Next to that is an outfit worn by Aqualad in the 1990s a short time before he changed his codename to Tempest, that looks like one of Ms. Marvel's costumes with brighter colors. I just can't comprehend why some artists want to use costume designs that look more feminine on male protagonists. It's not like it's that hard to differentiate from those worn by other notable heroes!

A thorn in the side

Another gem from the 1990s, when bad costume designs really peaked. Sub-Mariner, while frequently going bare-chested macho as a hero, had a pretty decent design when he was originally created in 1939. But in the mid-90s, a really bizarre new look was introduced, and was it ever waterlogged and messy!

Why all the long, unkempt hair around prince Namor's head? And the sharp fin-style pointers on his legwear just don't fit the bill either. They make it look like his legs are covered with seaweed. Thank heavens this goofiness didn't last long.