Those Embarrassing Capes and Masks

Dr. Solar tried superheroics without a costume in 1963...

In the comics, particularly those with relatively crude art, the costumes served to easily identify and dramatically focus attention on the protagonists. But that function is served, in movies and television, by the looks, manners and stage presence of the stars, so garish costumes are superfluous.
Superhero costumes were probably not quite as odd-looking in the 1930s as they are today.

After all, American audiences were accustomed to seeing bold colors, capes and tights that emphasized the breathtaking bodies of men and women who could perform astonishing physical feats that even defied gravity. They were circus performers, acrobats and trapeze artists, and their garments must have seemed a natural fit for fast-moving four-color individuals like Flash Gordon and Superman.

But circuses have faded even as superheroes have flourished, and nobody dresses like that anymore. And that makes costumes problematic when popular characters are transferred to the screen.

In the 1930s, the superhero costume wasn’t quite the fetish it became. Superman, for example, would go into action without it when he had to in his early comic book exploits. Oddly, he did wear the costume in his radio adventures, even though he took care that no one could see him acting as Superman for the first few years of his show.

But the costume convention took a firm hold of the popular imagination during the 1940s and 1950s. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby tried to defy it in the fresh approach they took to their 1961 title The Fantastic Four, only to find that the readers demanded costumes. And by the third issue, they got them. Gold Key tried the same thing in 1963 with their Dr. Solar, the Man of the Atom, holding out until the fifth issue before giving their nuclear-powered hero a costume, mask and dual identity.

...But found that he finally had to surrender to comic book convention

In the comics, particularly those with relatively crude art, the costumes served to easily identify and dramatically focus attention on the protagonists. But that function is served, in movies and television, by the looks, manners and stage presence of the stars, so garish costumes are superfluous. And also, talented comic book artists can cast costumes in the light of thrilling, flowing romanticism, but on TV and in movies, real people have to wear the things.

TV, in particular, is a medium comfortable with the mundane, and not so comfortable with the outlandish. TV’s Superman had a costume in the 1950s, but that was clearly a children’s show. The costumes in 1966’s hit Batman TV show only helped to emphasize how campy and absurd the whole idea of superheroes was, and that parody element was echoed in the superhero sitcoms Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific in 1967. The one show that tried to take costumed heroes seriously, 1967’s Green Hornet, only lasted one season.

And it wasn’t that TV audiences of the era didn’t care for superheroes — they proved that by making hits of the non-costumed Six Million Dollar Man in 1974 and its spinoff The Bionic Woman in 1976.

Lynda Carter was successful as the flag-costumed Wonder Woman in 1975 in part because her show initially had a nostalgia angle, pitting her against Nazis in World War II. And The Incredible Hulk was well received in 1978, but didn’t have a costume, just green skin. The companion series Spider-Man featured a costumed hero and failed in 1977, in part because it was so poorly executed.

Producer Stephen Cannell had a hit with a costumed superhero in The Greatest American Hero in 1981, and he managed it by being clever in his approach. Cannell required from the beginning that the hero’s super powers would be contained in his caped alien costume. So he’d have to wear it, and could still play against it.

Then came 1990’s The Flash, a costumed superhero who lasted only a season. Then 1993’s successful Lois & Clark, which deemphasized the costumed hero even in its title. Then 1997’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who needed no costume. Then 2001’s Smallville, which gave us Superman without a costume (and became the longest-running Superman TV series). And then 2014’s Gotham, which gave us Batman’s world without Batman, kind of the ultimate cheeky TV move, I’d say.

The costumed superhero has been successfully revived on TV with Arrow, The Flash and Supergirl. In 2015, Marvel’s Daredevil redeemed the costumed superhero on TV, even though the character’s full costume is seen only at the end of the first season. And now we have Marvel’s Jessica Jones, which astutely uses the costume as a metaphor. The super-powered heroine — alliteratively named as a wink at all the Bruce Banners, Clark Kents, Billy Batsons, Peter Parkers and Sue Storms out there — is presented as once having tried to be a costumed hero, or its equivalent. But Jessica, whom I like to call Supergoth, learned the hard way that her world is too dark and cheerless for fancy dress.