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09.20.2006
Top Ten Skimpiest Superhero CostumesLast week we presented for your consideration a list of the Top Ten Skimpiest Superheroine Costumes. In the interest of fairness, we wanted to follow up with a list of the Top Ten Skimpiest Superhero Costumes. This one, as they say, is for the ladies (And, um, some of the men, depending on your inclination).
Batman's junior partner Dick Grayson was among the earliest comic book superhero sidekicks, and is certainly the most successful—he’s been around for over six decades at this point. The character has changed quite a bit over the years; Grayson aged about ten years, and went on to become Nightwing, and the name Robin was passed down to Jason Todd (who was killed by the Joker in the '80s) and then finally to the current Robin, Tim Drake. So has his costume. Back in the Golden Age, the first Robin debuted wearing a pair of green trunks and bare legs, inadvertently inventing Underoos in the process. His trunks would shrink into briefs over the years, making the Boy Wonder's costume look like something more appropriate for a Girl Wonder (unless Robin didn't mind shaving and occasionally waxing as part of his training). By the '90s, DC finally gave the third Robin a pair of full-length, making his costume no more revealing than his boss', and the long-pants look carried over into the Batman movies and cartoons, as well as the Teen Titans cartoon. Still, for almost half a century, when it came to scantily clad sidekicks, Robin ruled the roost.
Dr. Bruce Banner couldn't control his transformations into the rampaging giant man-monster known as the Hulk. If he could, he'd probably plan on being in the vicinity of a Big and Tall men's store when he started getting a little irritated. Instead, the Hulk is always bursting out of Banner's clothes—socks, shoes, shirts, glasses and lab coats are no match for his gamma irradiation-borne size changes. Thank God for purple pants with elastic waistbands, or the shirtless green goliath would find himself at the bottom of this list, rather than near the top.
What is it with green-skinned muscle-bound men who keep taking their shirts off? The Martian Manhunter got his alliterative (and rather unimaginative) name due to his heritage—he is indeed a Martian, and, once he was accidentally transported to Earth, he devoted himself to hunting men. Not the way men hunt deer or pheasant, but the way cops hunt robbers. Martians are shape-changers, meaning MM could transform the molecules of his body into any arrangement of clothing he could think of. For some reason, all he could think of was a pair of blue panties, held up by a belt. But what the Manhunter lacks in garments, he makes up for in accessories—a bilious blue cape, a red harness, and blue pirate boots round out his outfit. No one's ever really asked why he wears the harness, probably because they're afraid to know.
Speaking of harnesses, that's one of the key components of He-Man's outfit. In fact, it's one of the only components. A pair of fur briefs and a pair of matching fur boots compliment his harness, making for one of the smallest superhero costumes imaginable. Given superhuman strength by the powers of the mysterious Castle Grayskull to defend the planet of Eternia from such villains as Skeletor, He-Man is virtually without weakness. I imagine if his fur briefs ever get any fleas, however, it's all over for Eternia.
Not just the hero of Greek myths and some of the weirdest movies ever made, Hercules is also a member of the Marvel Universe's superhero elite. An on-again, off-again member of the Avengers, this hero is one of the world's strongest, funniest talking (Typical swear word: "Zounds!"), and scantily clad. A green skirt, green sash, headband and leather sandals or leather thigh-high boots are all that comprise his costume, unless you count the beard and chest hair. The world has changed quite a bit since Herc was born some 3,000 years ago, but his style has not.
5. Namor One of Marvel's earliest superheroes, Namor the Sub-Mariner was fighting the Axis Powers in World War II alongside Captain American and the Human Torch, back before there even was a Marvel Comics. In the '60s Stan Lee and Jack Kirby reinvented Subby, as Lee affectionately nicknamed him, as a Fantastic Four villain, an Atlantean aggressor who was always invading the surface world or trying to make time with the Invisible Woman. As time wore on, he became something of an anti-hero. But no matter what side he was fighting on, he was usually doing so in a state of undress. His original costume was a pair of green swim trunks, which makes a sort of sense, seeing as how he was a sea-going superhero. But once he joined the Marvel Universe, and started going to Avengers or Defenders meetings in his swim trunks, the costume seemed less and less, um, appropriate. He later adopted a different costume, which included long pants and a shirt with a neckline that plunged all the way to the belt (Apparently, Namor likes to let his torso breathe a little), but still switches back and forth between that and his Speedos.
When Henry "Hank" McCoy first appeared as one of the first five X-Men, he wore a full body costume that matched the rest of his classmates'. Back then, though he was a mutant with superpowers, he still looked more or less human. Later, an experiment gone awry would result in his mutating even further into a look that more closely resembled his bestial codename. He became covered in blue hair, and grew pointy teeth, claws, and the proportions of an ape (with a weird haircut that Wolverine would later emulate). Apparently all that blue hair kept Beast pretty warm, and he didn't feel the need to wear much of anything anymore. During this period of his career, his superhero uniform consisted of a pair of briefs, held up by a belt with an X on the buckle, just so you wouldn't get confused about what superhero team this giant blue mutant monkey man was with. For a private school, the ‘Xavier Institute For Gifted Youngsters’ sure had a lax dress code.
The original King of the Jungle was raised by apes, so it should come as no surprise that his look is of the back-to-nature variety. Depending on the medium the story is set in—Tarzan's conquered 'em all, after all, radio, film, TV, animation, comics, prose–and the creators responsible for his look, Tarzan could be wearing trunks, briefs or a loincloth, made out of leopard skin or leather. Hmm, if he was raised by apes, who taught him the need to cover himself at all, or was that merely a bit of fortuitous artistic license?
If you were built like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger, you'd probably spend a lot of time shirtless, too. The Robert E. Howard-created barbarian hero–who jumped from prose short stories to Marvel comics to the big screen, and then back to comics, now being published by Dark Horse—spends a lot of time shirtless, wearing nothing but a loincloth and boots. But occasionally, even the boots and loincloth get too constricting, and the Cimmerian swordsman strips down to a leather thong. Apparently, this is the Conan of the Dark Horse comics' official thievery uniform, as it's what he wears whenever he's about to scale a temple wall to steal some bizarre religious artifact. Where he plans to stash his ill-gotten loot once he's successful, however, is anyone's guess.
Norrin Radd was an alien who's planet was about to be devoured by the giant alien planet eater Galactus, so Radd struck a deal with the big G—he'd serve as his herald, so long as his planet was spared. He had himself a deal, and took to flying around the universe on a silver surfboard (hence the name) scouting out planets for Galactus to chow down on. When he came to Earth, the Fantastic Four helped him rebel against Galactus—in one of the most classic Marvel stories of all time, courtesy of Kirby and Lee—and together they defeated the space giant. The Surfer paid a price, however, and was exiled to planet Earth, unable to leave the atmosphere. Eventually, he became a hero and used his "power cosmic" to fight evil, but always felt alienated, unable to relate to Earthlings. Perhaps, had he decided to wear some clothes—hell, even a pair of briefs like the Thing—he would have fit in better. |
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