7 Awful Comic Book Costumes

Whilst many superheroes stick to just one style that continues on throughout their chosen career, there are a few who decide to throw all caution to the wind and think “Who really cares about what I wear when I’m saving lives and doing all this heroic stuff?” Below we celebrate some of the worst offenders of this train of thought!

Cannonball

During Fall of the Mutants, a cross over with other X titles, the New Mutants lose their team member Cypher and believe the X-Men to be dead. In response to these traumatic events the team believes they need to “graduate” and create their own costumes and to become heroes. Costumes which they, no shit, create from things they found in the attic of the school or as I like to call it; the X-Attic.

This “look” started in issue 61 and continued up until the 90th issue… that’s over two and a half years in that God awful costume you can see above. I know what you’re thinking “What did he replace that shitty costume with when issue 90 came around?” Funny you should ask, he replaced it with this:

Mmmm Don’t you just love the 90’s?

Jubilee

Jubilation Lee is a Chinese American mutant who can shoot fireworks from her hands. Yeah I know insert racial stereotype here.

Being the thief she is, she steals parts of other peoples costumes to make her own; cue 80s montage music! Taking useful items such as a leotard, gloves, thigh high boots and a shoulder bag… Jubilee becomes even more of a racial stereotype!

Thankfully this look didn’t last to long and she instead she decided to copy the colour scheme of DC comics hero Robin with an outfit of red, green and her trademark yellow raincoat as those colours always go together.

Az-Batman

After the success of the Death of Superman storyline in the 90’s, DC comics next character shake up would be bringing down the God damn Batman. The villainous Bane; a super smart steroid enhanced version of Nacho Libre figures out who Batman is and proceeds to pummel the God damn Batman until he breaks his God damn back!

mean Batmans apprentice Jean Paul Valley; a bit of an unhinged crime fighter who has no problem with kicking people to death.

To go with this new Batman, Valley proceeds to make a new outfit to reflect the change in methods.

After ruling Gotham with an iron fist, the true God damn Batman heals his broken back (hey it happens!!) and returns to Gotham to defeat Az-Bats and take back the mantle of the Batman. Thankfully he takes one look at the new costume and gets rid of the trademarks of the 90’s and goes back to the classic look; huzzah!

Shatterstar

Coming from a planet 100 years in our future where you are a genetically created slave and ruled over by a crazy tyrant known as Mojo number 5 isn’t really going to help with your fashion sense.

Shatterstar thankfully or disappointingly gets transported to our planet during the early 90’s where he joins up with the gruff mutant soldier Cable and his new team X-Force in exchange for their help in overthrowing that mad green tyrant Mojo.

As I said earlier, being a time travelling slave from a World that revolves around television isn’t going to help with your taste in clothing. So Shatterstar decides on this amazing number for his first “superhero” costume…

I really have nothing else I can say to make that look worse than it already is! The boots, the one shoulder pad, the pointless pouches (a 90s and artist Rob Liefeld trademark) its all shit. The worse thing is that “thing” on his head.

Is it a helmet? Some kind of face armour? Something he has stolen from a boxers locker?! I have no fucking clue how useful it would be in stopping say a sword or a bullet!

Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange really hasn’t has much in the way of different costumes. The fact that he rocks a huge collar and gets away with looking awesome is probably a major factor in him not wanting to ruin his rep.

But back in the 60’s, Strange’s comics weren’t doing all that well in sales and Marvel instantly thought the way to improve that would be to give the Sorcerer Supreme a new set of duds.

In Issue #177, Roy Thomas and Gene Colan introduced the revamped Strange's appearance which more closely resembles those of other superheroes, giving him a form-fitting blue costume, a full-head mask and a fucking secret identity as Dr. Stephen Sanders.

That’s right, Doctor Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme of the Marvel Universe now had a secret identity! Thankfully the awful land creepy ski mask and admittedly still kick ass collar combo didn’t last very long’ 7 issues in fact!

Luke Cage

After successfully creating not only the first but a powerful and interesting black super hero with Black Panther back in 1966 Marvel decided to shit all over that by making their first black hero of the 70’s a raging stereotype.

Whilst left unattended by the doctor in charge, a sadistic prison guard who blames Cage for his recent demotion racks the power up to 11 hoping to kill Luke. As this is the world of comics, Cage is instead granted superhuman strength and durability which he then uses to escape the prison and chooses to become a super hero. So naturally he chooses the worst thing ever to fight crime in!

Where do I start? Bright yellow shirt open to his navel, huge chain being used as a belt and matching metal wrist and head bands. Its just so gaudy and down right ugly that somehow, he kind of pulls is off. Maybe this is the reason he stayed with this look for two, that two decades! He may be powerful and now a well respected father, husband and super hero in his own right but whenever I need to know how huge Luke Cage’s balls are; all I have to do is look at this costume and think “Fuck, he must have the biggest testes known to man to pull that look off!”

Nightwings First Costune

After being Batman’s sidekick for 44 years (that’s in our time not comics time!) Dick Grayson aka Robin wanted some of that solo superhero action for himself after seeing his fellow Teen Titans doing just that.

As his Robin outfit would never do for his new persona, Dick goes back to the drawing board and creates a new costume inspired by truth, justice and what appears to be Disco.

The costume probably wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t for that horrendous collar, which admittedly looks even worse with the colour scheme of pale baby blue. Dicks reasoning for this God awful costume is this; “I am the sum of so many people who have influenced me, shaped my thinking and given me love.” Whilst that is a beautiful quote, how the fuck does that translate into “Disco collars are so in and suitable for flying around town in!

For some reason not his friends, team mates or even enemies remark or call him out on the Saturday Night Fever look and he keeps this outfit for a mind boggling 8 years until 1992 came a calling and Dick decides to replace the disco collar with a mullet.

Because you know again;it’s the 90’s!