31 Days of Scans, day 23: Least Favorite Costume - Superboy's street clothes.

[lonewolf23k]

Okay, this is a pet peeve of mine, but I have a low tolerance for the "Street clothes as Superhero Costume" trope. Especially with Superboy. I cannot stand his "t-shirt and jeans" outfit.



To me, this is a Superboy costume:


And so is this:


And I'll even grudgingly accept this:


But this? This is not a Supeboy costume:


This is a guy in street clothes wearing a t-shirt with the S-Shield. This is the least creative, imaginative or inspirational costume you could ever give Superboy. And that's why it's my least favorite costume ever.

Comments

[q99]

When did he use the second one?

[night4345]

Young Justice.

[q99]

Ah yes. Been too long since I read that. Too bad it was never really trade collected...

[lilacsigil]

I do like street clothes costumes...but for street level heroes, not for Superboy. It seems pointless.

[reveen]

I kinda disagree. For street level heroes they're more concerned about their secret identities and they need armour and utility belts and stuff, as well as wanting a theme to go along with their powers. But for a character with flying brick powers they could go in dressed like a Hirohiko Araki character and bullet would bounce off them just as well. So it makes sense in my mind that a flying brick's costume would be simpler and closer to normal clothes and the t-shirt is just the extreme of that.

[night4345]

What about Superman's shirt and jeans costume?

[starwolf_oakley]

Superboy started as a mash up of 1990s fashion don'ts but became a real hero. Part of it was Superman realizing Superboy needed a "secret identity"

[icon_uk]

Basically because for a worryingly large number of years after his inception, Superboy HAD no identity beyond "Superboy". He wanted to be identifable as Superboy every moment of every day, so him wearing nothing but his costume made a sort of sense, though I never found it that interesting... I always like the idea of the superhero and the secret identity, as I think it makes for more flexible storytelling.

[mrstatham]

Personally, I could never get behind the original Superboy costume. The haircut, glasses and leather jacket were horrific. I did like the one they eventually put together for him in Young Justice, though.

[squirle]

I am generally a fan of normal clothing outfits for superheroes, and after that horrendous 90's haircut and the odd black-red bodypaint, I quite like the normal outfit of Superboy.

They put more effort in the AU costumes for Hyper-Time

[7dialsmystery]

I think the idea behind the street clothes was that Super-Boy wasn't really a member of the Super Family because in that run Clark was a dead beat daddy.

I like the ones they did in the Hyper-Time arc for the Superboys from other realities best.

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081114140420/marvel_dc/images/f/f4/Superboy_Vol_4_64.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3d/Superboy_v2_61.jpg

[kenn_el]

T-Shirted Superboy coincided with the artists drawing him as a buffer late teen (often looking about college-age), so, for me, it helped to rank him with Kyle Raynor and Nightwing as one of the best looks for guys out of the two major companies. It helped to ground him in a way that wasn't true of the other Supers, and also seemed a bit of a commentary on the then ongoing Smallville, where the push to keep Welling out of tights became near parody. I'd applaud a return. Maybe with a hat. Ironically.

[icon_uk]

I confess I was never fond of Superboy going all buff (Which I would normally, like yourself. endorse wholeheartedly) I liked that he was the fairly scrawny, not overly tall guy who STILL had the superpowers. Him going all buff just seemed... redundant, since his strength powers were based on his telekinetic field, not his physique.

[bruinsfan]

Of course, the same could be said for Superman himself - he really doesn't perform daily exertions for his level of strength that would result in the sort of physique he has. Dude would still be able to lift millions (or I guess quintrillions now) of tons even if he were out of shape.

[icon_uk]

Indeed, but I don't mind the full grown guy who has become an icon for millions being a physical ideal as well (because he came from a time when his powers WERE dependent on his physique. I just wanted Kon to maybe go down a different road.

[kenn_el]

That's what I liked about Original Recipe Kara, so I get what you're saying. But by that point Kon had discovered Kryptonian linkage, which meant that the writers weren't going with him solely having the TK thing, plus, unlike Clark, working on the Kent Farm WOULD have the effect of building up his mostly human physique.

[icon_uk]

Well, not really, at that point a lot of Superman's powers were still down to subconcisous telekinesis, (as Byrne had introduced) like flying, the aura that kept his costume intact (and thus part of his invulnerability) and his ability to fly with objects which he couldn't lift simply using his strength, and which prevented supermassive objects he was carrying (like say battleships) from collapsing under their own weight.

Kon had always had Kryptonian heritage of a sort with Kryptonian DNA laid over a human template, the big change when he went buff was the reveal that the human template hadn't been the scuzzbag chief of Cadmus, but Lex Luthor (Which actually made no sense since Luthor had never tried to use this to sway Superboy during the Reign of the Supermen arc, and in fact Lex was already in cahoots with a slightly deluded alt-Earth Supergirl at that point in time (who went on to become Matrix)

[kenn_el]

Nope. Initially Superboy's DNA was a close approximation of Kryptonian. Which is why he was so reliant upon the TTK to make it look as if he was doing "Super" stuff (same thing with Matrix's powers), as TPTB wanted to keep Clark as special. The "it was Kryptonian DNA all along" was a retcon.

[icon_uk]

Though Superman was using TK for most of his Super stuff, so the point was sort of moot IMHO, but I'm not a PTB! :)

[rainspirit]

Superboy's original costume is horrible, but one thing it isn't is boring. I'll always have a fondness for it, even if he'll never get away with looking like that again.