Accepting this premise (of no secret identities for realism), it was also only natural to forgo the use of costumes. If our heroes were to live in the real world, let them dress like real people."
— Stan Lee, Origins of Marvel Comics
The Fantastic Four stayed in civvies for two adventures, but by their third issue (March 1962) Lee acceded to reader demands for superhero costumes.
The blue uniforms artist Jack Kirby designed were understated by superhero standards, emphasizing the unity of this often-disunited team.
“I loved the ‘no costumes’ approach, as applied by the FF in issues 1 and 2, and Brain Boy from Dell and the early Doctor Solars from Gold Key,” recalled Bob Hughes. “But it just doesn’t cut it with the average fan. Can you imagine people actually preferred the incredibly awful superhero costumes Wonder Man wore to the utterly cool safari jacket? It's enough to make you want to write off humanity as a lost cause!”
“Readers/fans WANT their heroes to wear distinctive costumes, if for no other reason than to identify them AS heroes, separate from everyone else. (same with the super-villains),” observed Carl Thiel.
“As a kid in the ’60s, the books that appealed most to me were the costumed superheroes. Even the non-super-powered among them wore the same jacket and pants from issue to issue.”
“I still remember my first impression after reading Fantastic Four,” recalled Charles W. Fouquette. “After all the simplistic DC Superman and Batman stories, to see these so-called heroes arguing and threatening each other, I was quite surprised!
“In my young mind. I couldn’t understand why they were so mad at each other. In later years, I understood this is how adults act! Kudos to Stan Lee, he never wrote down to his audience!”
“Who would have thought that such a rich pantheon of characters and concepts would come from such humble beginnings? ‘The World's Greatest Comic Magazine’ was a title richly deserved.”
Edward Lee Love wrote:
ReplyDeleteSuperhero costumes really do the same jobs as sports uniforms from acrobats to wrestlers, weightlifters to football players. 1) It makes the characters instantly identifiable. At a sporting event, you can easily tell one player apart from the others and one team from the other, even at a distance and in movement. In comics, where one artist drawing Hank Pym and another drawing Steve Rogers and you cannot really tell them apart from a third artist drawing Clint Barton, the costume does that job. 2) It highlights the human form and the action sequences. Aside from the functionality of freedom of movement as well as protection gear, the costume and uniform allows an appreciation of the physicality and form of the person. Honestly, there are only a few artists in the history of comics (John Buscema is tops in this in my eye), that can do action sequences of characters in regular clothes that are as viscerally exciting as one in costume.
Craig Maddocks wrote:
ReplyDeleteIt was almost sacred that Superheroes's kept the same costume. Then Marvel had their heroes redesign their suits every now and then. Brilliance.