Marvel and DC Comics have reached the success they have for many reasons. Both companies have created characters that readers have connected to. They’ve employed the best writers, artists, inkers, colorists, letterer, designers, and editors (and also some of the worst, but that’s an entirely different conversation) and allowed them to create the best stories possible. The presentation of these characters and stories has always been an important part of what made their various characters and teams so successful, and a huge part of that is costume design. Just look at costumes like Superman’s or Spider-Man’s. These costumes are eye-catching masterpieces, each of them with great little design features that have made them iconic and changed the way superhero costumes work after their introduction. Costumes have gotten changed many times over the years, regardless of how iconic they are, though; some of them are great and some of them aren’t.
There have been times that costumes have been changed and fans don’t really know why. These costume changes are the weird ones, the ones where fans take a look at the change and scratch their heads over why exactly they ever changed them in the first place. These weird costume changes run the gamut of strange choices; sometimes, the previous costume was just plain better and other times the resulting costume is just plain strange. These ten costume changes are the weirdest ones, with fans wondering exactly what the company and creators were thinking.
10) “Brave New World” Martian Manhunter
Infinite Crisis ended in 2006, and DC had done a great job of redefining their universe and getting fans hyped. During this time, DC began a short-lived publishing initiative known as “Brave New World”, which was meant to redefine characters like the Creeper, the Atom, and Shazam. Martian Manhunter was another character who got something of a change during this time, getting an eight-issue series which changed Martian Manhunter’s costume and his overall look. Martian Manhunter’s original costume is bizarre — an X-shaped harness, the collared cape, and the blue trunks — but it worked. The new costume completely covered his look, with a red X and belt homaging his old costume. It gave the character a more militaristic vibe that was a very strange choice for Martian Manhunter. On top of that, it changed the shape of his head. He looked more he did in his true Martian form, which was another strange choice from a costume change that will always be extremely weird.
9) ’80s Black Canary Costume
Black Canary’s costume is one of the most iconic of all female superhero costumes. It’s a simple, elegant design — black leather jacket, black bodysuit, fishnets, and pirate boots — and her best costumes use it as a guide. Her ’80s costumes isn’t one of those. Post-Crisis DC was trying to get more modern, and a lot of classic costumes of B and C-list characters were changed. Black Canary was one of those. In the post-Crisis DC Universe, the Justice League’s Black Canary was actually a legacy hero, with her mother having been the Black Canary of the Golden Age, which is different form the pre-Crisis version, which was that there was only one Black Canary from Earth-Two who went to Earth-One because she fell in love with Green Arrow. I guess they wanted to make this more noticeable, so they gave her a new costume. It doesn’t say Black Canary at all, trying to give her a bird-like emblem look and an ’80s headband. For some reason, DC tried to reinvent the wheel and it just didn’t work at all, leading to the Brian Bolland-drawn cover of Action Comics Weekly #609, with Black Canary going back to her mother’s costume and burning the other one. We all wish we could burn this costume out of our memories.
8) Hawkeye’s Goliath Costume
Hawkeye is one of the most respected Avengers, and a big reason for that is because he doesn’t have superpowers. While he’s an extremely skilled archer, his greatest attribute is his bravery; his willingness to throw himself into battle with anyone has made him a legend. However, there was a time when Hawkeye did start using Pym Particles, changing his name to Goliath. Now, obviously, a costume change was needed, but what readers got was weirder than they expected. It’s not a bad costume, but it has so many strange little design choices. Apparently, he wanted to cover his nipples and belly button, but was completely fine with bare midriff. The colors are cool, but it’s weird that he didn’t go with the royal purple that is thought of as his perfect color. It mixed aspects of both Hank Pym’s Goliath costume and Bill Foster’s Black Goliath costume, and remains one of the weirder costume choices of all time.
7) Steve Rogers’s Nomad Costume
Captain America’s original battle against the Secret Empire ended with him learning that the President himself was a member. This caused Cap to become disillusioned with the United States, and he gave up the mantle of Captain America, becoming the hero known as Nomad. Captain America’s Nomad costume was certainly a choice. Now, again, him changing his costume made sense since he was changing his name, but the weird part is how costume looked. It’s nothing like his old Captain America costume, with a cape and plunging V line. He kept the pirate gloves and the boots, but the whole thing was a very weird change for the character. Captain America’s costume makes sense, so for Steve Rogers to throw away every aspect of it and changed to a caped costume was strange. Honestly, the cape is the weirdest part, since having a cape seems like it would make things harder for him to move around, as Cap’s fighting style was always rather acrobatic.
6) Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl’s Bathing Suit Costumes
Let’s be real — you knew these costumes would be on the list the moment you clicked on this. The Legion of Superheroes are the original teen superteam, and their costumes have always been some of the cooler costumes in comics. There are some iconic Legion costumes, and they’ve changed many times over the years, with newer versions keeping the design flourishes of the ones that came before. However, in the 1970s, someone decided to change two costumes drastically and that’s the Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy’s costumes. Now, look, members of the Legion wearing glorified bathing suits into battle isn’t all that weird; Shadow Lass, Dream Girl, Princess Projectra, and others all did it. However, the designs for Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy were so very different from what came before, especially Cosmic Boy’s. Saturn Girl’s wasn’t bad, but it was strange for her to go completely bathing suit. However, Cosmic Boy’s was definitely the costume that has gone down as a weird change. It’s honestly iconically bad, and didn’t fit Cosmic Boy at all. They’d go back to threads based on their classic costumes, but this change remains memorable.
5) The Iron Spider
The Iron Spider costume is one of the strangest design choices ever, although it does make sense given where Marvel was taking Spider-Man at the time. The Iron Spider armor was a gift from Tony Stark, who Peter had grown close to during his time with the New Avengers. This being Stark, he changed the color of Spider-Man’s costume, giving the armor the red and gold coloration of his Iron Man armor. Calling it the Iron Spider costume is perfect, because it definitely made Spider-Man look like he was trying to be Iron Man. It also had a taste of Doctor Octopus to it with the arms, but they’re honestly a cool — but weird — design choice. For me, the color change was always the weirdest part. Spider-Man’s red and blue is iconic and it’s weird seeing a Spider-Man costume without them. The MCU did a version of the Iron Spider costume that still used the classic colors and it’s much less of a jarring change, while still mixing the design choices of Iron Man and Spider-Man.
4) Punk Rock Storm
I want to start this by saying that I love Punk Rock Storm. The mohawk, the leather, the studded collar, and bisep bracer, it’s all good. However, it’s easy to see that it was a weird change. Storm’s original costume was one of the sexiest costumes ever, so Storm showing skin wasn’t weird. There was a story reason behind this look, as she was going through a lot and her friendship with the wild ninja Yukio made her change her entire look. However, it was such a jarring visual change for the character that it was a weird choice to make. There’s way to modify her old costume without making this kind of wholesale change to get across what Claremont and company were trying to do. Punk Rock Story is one of the best X-Men costumes ever, but it was a weird change.
3) “From the Ashes” Cyclops
Cyclops has had some of the best costumes in Marvel history. His original X-Men costume is sensational, his second costume — the navy blue with the skullcap and the pirate boots — lasted for years. His various costumes as leader of X-Factor are all awesome (I’m partial to the blue and white with the giant X on it). His ’90s costume is easily his most popular, but his next several costumes are also pretty great, from the New X-Men leathers to the Astonishing X-Men one to the Utopia era to the red and black to the Krakoa Era. While all of these costumes are quite different, they all fit where Cyclops was at the time. And then there’s the “From the Ashes” costume. A lot of the “From the Ashes” costumes are definitely a down grade, and this one is one of the more egregious. I guess it’s supposed to remind readers of the ’90s costume — everything about “From the Rehashes” is supposed to remind readers of the ’90s — but it just doesn’t look good. It makes Cyclops look too young and it doesn’t have the kind of vibe that other Cyclops costumes have. Cyclops has gone back to his ’90s look, most notably after his return to life, so if Marvel wanted that kind of costume, they could have just gone back to it instead of making this one.
2) “From the Ashes” Wolverine Costume
Wolverine’s Krakoa Era costume was perfect. It had the best Wolverine coloration — the brown and orange/yellow is the best for Wolverine, fight me — and had those cool gloves and design flourishes, modernizing the classic brown and orange. However, as we talked about above, “From the Ashes” is all about making readers remember the ’90s, which leads up to this one. It goes back to the yellow and blue, but ditches the trunks and the shoulder flourishes, while adding more of the blue tiger stripes. This costume is supposed to remind readers of both the original yellow and blue and the Astonishing yellow and blue, but it’s definitely a downgrade from all of Wolverine’s other amazing costumes. It’s just so generic, and it was strange that Marvel went with this instead of just going back to one of the older yellow and blue costumes.
1) The New 52 Costumes
Jim Lee is one of the greatest artists in comics history, and proved that he was a great costume designer when he changed the X-Men’s costumes in 1991 (also, his version of the classic X-Men blue and yellow uniforms is the best version of them — check out Uncanny X-Men #275). These costumes lasted the test of time and his next work — WildC.A.T.s — had some cool costumes too. However, his design eye took a turn for the worst in the 2010s. DC rebooted their universe with the New 52, and Lee got down to redesigning classic DC costumes. How did he do this? Adding arbitrary lines all over the costume and taking away trunks. However, he wasn’t alone in making strange changes to DC costumes during the New 52. All of the costumes got some kind of “modern” change, but all of them looked like refugees from the 1990s. The New 52 does have cool changes — Cyborg’s new look was great — but most of the changes were just plain odd.
What do you think are the weirdest costume changes? Sound off in the comments below.
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