DC Comics codified what superhero costumes could be. Way back in the Golden Age of comics, superhero costumes shared a common design language, one that would change as the years went on. There are some early gems from this period, but right off the bat, there were already bad costumes. It’s one of those things that you can’t get away from; sometimes, artists want to try something different and it just doesn’t work. Over the years, fans have gotten a lot of great superhero costumes, but they’ve also gotten a lot of terrible ones. Usually, you take the good with the bad, and hope that the next costume is better.
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Everyone has a different idea of what makes a bad costume. Sometimes, it’s the colors. Sometimes, it’s the cut. Other times, the costumes are so of their time that they just don’t work at all outside of a specific era. There are loads of bad DC costumes out there (I would honestly say that DC has more bad costume changes than Marvel, but that’s just because most DC costumes are iconic and any change to them doesn’t work for fans), but these ten are the worst.
10) Golden Age Mister Terrific
Mister Terrific II is finally getting a chance to be seen the greater pop culture, and it’s awesome. His costume is very cool, and people might expect that the first Mister Terrific would have a great costume as well. However, this isn’t the case. From the “Fair Play” emblem on his chest to the weird overcoat, it just feels like a costume that is much too busy for being so simple. The red and the green go together, but it’s just a lot of weird design choices that don’t really work together.
9) Silver Age Elongated Man
Elongated Man hasn’t really had a lot of great costumes, but his worst is his first. It’s just a simple purple fully body suit with a domino mask. Sometimes, simple is good, but sometimes it’s not, and this the latter. There’s nothing to remember about it, nothing that really sticks out. Superhero costumes need to grab the reader’s attention, and this costume doesn’t do that at all. It’s so bad and boring, that it’s not even worth insulting.
8) Justice League Europe Power Girl Costume
Power Girl has one of the most eye-catching costumes out there. However, even beyond that, it’s the perfect example of a simple costume that works. After Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC tried to change Power Girl’s costume and that’s where we get this ’80s nightmare of a costume. Because it’s Power Girl, it still had to have a “boob window,” but every other decision they made with the costume was bad. The shoulder pads and tiara scream ’80s, and the blue just doesn’t feel right on Power Girl. Also, changing the color of her cape is a mistake. There’s really no eye-catching colors to the costume, and this is a huge problem with it. It’s a boring, badly designed costume that forgets the timeless aspects of her original costume and makes something that would never work outside of the decade in which it was created.
7) Cosmic Boy Swimsuit Costume
There have been a lot of weird costumes changes, but Cosmic Boy’s swimsuit costume is one of the weirdest. Look, there’s nothing wrong with sexy male costumes; nearly every female costume gets sold by sex so what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, but there’s something about this costume that just doesn’t work. Sure, it shows a lot of the beefcake, but that doesn’t mean that it’s good. In fact, this costume is honestly pretty unsexy when it comes right down to it. It’s hard to even think about why they changed Cosmic Boy’s costume for this. It didn’t even keep any of the design elements or colors from Cosmic Boy’s other costumes. It wouldn’t be much better if it did, but at least it would look like a Cosmic Boy costume. This one doesn’t have any elements that scream Cosmic Boy, and that’s what makes it so bad.
6) Lex Luthor’s Bronze Age Costume
Lex Luthor is DC’s smartest villain, and he’s honestly had some great looks over the years. His green and purple armor is one of the coolest armors in the history of comics, able to fight it out with Superman who at that time could throw planets while looking great. However, in the late Silver Age and Bronze Age, Lex Luthor had this extremely lame costume. First off, it has the disco collar, which ages it immediately. The purple and the green coloration does work, but there’s just something about the way the purple overpowers the green that just doesn’t work. The cylinders all over the costume are meant to be pouches, I guess, but they feel really weird on this costume. The bandoliers at least break up the purple, but they don’t really feel like anything Lex Luthor would wear. Lex was on the right trail with his costume, but it never gets anywhere near the destination.
5) ’80s Black Canary
There have been very few costume downgrades as huge as the ’80s Black Canary costume. Black Canary’s original costume was basically perfect; even her current costumes use it as a guiding light and they look great. However, the ’80s happened to DC and they were trying their best to “modernize” their characters. Unfortunately, those “modern” costumes just never really worked. Black Canary’s is easily one of the worst of all time. Everything about it is bad. It has the ’80s headband thing that never looked good at all and the shoulder pads. I get that they were trying to give her a symbol of some sort with the shoulder pads/black section, but it’s just very ugly. Black Canary is a tough as nails fighter, but this costume doesn’t get that across at all. It threw away perfection and replaced it with complete and total garbage.
4) Earth-Two Dick Grayson’s Batman Homage Costume
DC’s Earth-Two has a lot of great costumes, and a lot of bad ones. Some of the bad ones stick out and this Dick Grayson costume is one of the worst of the bunch. Now, Earth-Two Dick Grayson had some great costumes, ones that used the red, green, and yellow colors of Robin and but changed the cut and design (the costume he wore in Crisis on Infinite Earths, for example, is awesome). However, this costume is completely terrible. One of the problems with DC back in the day (and still in the modern day at times) was that no one ever got to move up in the ranks. So, when Earth-Two Batman retired, Dick wasn’t going to become the new Batman. Instead, we got his costume, which took some of the design of the Batman costume and some of the design of the Robin costume and just smushed them together. It’s basically a way of saying, “Sorry, Dick, you’re never getting promotion, but we will give you this monstrosity.” Now, there’s a certain campy appeal to the costume (I personally like it; not because it’s good, but because it feels like The Room of superhero costumes), but that doesn’t change that it’s such a bad costume.
3) New 52 Tim Drake
The New 52 is full of terrible costumes, but the Teen Titans easily have the worst. The New 52 was a horrible time for the Teen Titans in general, but there are several especially bad costumes, and Tim Drake’s Red Robin costume is one of the worst. Tim Drake had been having a hard time of things since Damian Wayne debuted; Tim was still popular enough to stay around, but no one seemed to know what to do with him. They gave him the Red Robin name, the name that Kingdom Come Dick Grayson took on, and the Red Robin costume, which was excellent. However, the New 52 had to change everything, and that meant that Tim’s costume had to change as well. This costume kept the red and black colors that were part of the original Red Robin costume, but took away the full head mask for the Robin-style domino mask. From there, they made the design way more busy, with the red section on the chest not looking good at all. There’s the ’90s style bandolier and arm pouches that shouldn’t have still been a thing in the early ’10s. Finally, it took away his cape to give him wings. They seem to have done this to change Tim’s gimmick as a superhero, gliding instead of swinging through the city, but it just doesn’t fit who Tim ever was at all. It’s an all around terrible costume. Tim Drake earned being Robin, but he definitely didn’t deserve this eye sore of a costume.
2) New 52 Superboy
Superboy is one of the biggest failures of the New 52, and that’s saying something. Superboy has changed a lot over the years, but the New 52 tried to do something completely different with the character and fell right on its face. Of course, we all should have known that was going to happen when we saw this terrible costume. Black and red had been Superboy’s colors since he joined the Teen Titans in the ’00s, but this one took away the coolness of t-shirt and jeans Superboy, and went in a direction that didn’t feel right. There’s a grimness to this costume that Superboy costumes never had before, and it just doesn’t work at all. The red piping at least breaks up all that black, but that doesn’t save this costume because the piping design is ugly. It’s a bad design right from the rip, and it’s thankfully been relegated to the dust bin of history along with everything else about New 52 Superman.
1) Azrael’s Batman Costume
The ’90s have been called the decade of extreme, and there are a lot of examples among that in superhero costumes. For exhibit A, I present to you Azrael’s Batman costume. It takes all of the bad designs choices of the ’90s — high tech armor, pouches, blades, and full face masks — and throws them up all over the Batman costume. One of the things that people don’t always realize is that Azrael was meant to be a critique of the grim and gritty heroes of the ’90s, a parody of the trends. His costume is a perfect example of this. It takes everything that was bad about ’90s costumes and put them all together into a terrible package.
What are your least favorite DC costumes? Sound off in the comments below.
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Image Courtesy of DC Comics -
Image Courtesy of DC Comics
