AndyC

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To start my own discussion, who is your favourtie underrated villain? Someone that never really grows (but has the potential to do so), or someone that just gets isnta-knocked out. Why are they you're favourite?

@Sep

MB and I were talking about Killer Croc last night, and I think the guy definitely gets a bad rep. Guy used to be a genuine threat, but now he's treated as either a side-arc or a lackey for more important villains. It doesn't help that nobody can agree on whether he's supposed to be just a buff guy with a skin condition or a full-on kaiju. For that matter, pretty much all of Batman's "monster" villains get treated like total jobbers these days.

Also, I've said it before, but I think the Atomic Skull should be a much more prominent villain in Superman's lineup, purely on how great his name is. If it were up to me, he'd have replaced Metallo a long time ago. "Metallo" sounds like a brand of aluminum siding for your house. "Superman Versus The Atomic Skull," on the other hand, that sounds like the main event of Wrestlemania.

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Also love what we saw of this suit in the 'Crossfire' segment of Batman: Gotham Knight.

@Lord Wraith

Wait, there's an animated Batman movie where they play Crossfire?! Awesome!

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I'll go ahead and put the rest of my picks in as well. You've already seen my pick for Batman, so let's go with a few more:

Superman

The Classic costume spent an awfully long time without any significant overhauls, and for good reason: it's the superhero costume. Sometimes the S is a little different, sometimes the blue is a little darker or a little lighter, sometimes the cape is a different length, but those are pretty minor quibbles, and it served him well for about three quarters of a century. Of my favorite takes on the Classic costume, I've gotta give it up to one of the absolute definitive Superman artists, Dan Jurgens.

If we're gonna spice it up and go with the more modern no-trunks look, though, I've gotta go with the Rebirth 2.0 design by--oh, it's also Dan Jurgens. How about that.



I also really liked the costume they made for him in the Smallville Season 11 comic, at least when they drew him to look like a classic Superman instead of trying to draw Tom Welling's face:

Wonder Woman

I know, I know, the DCEU fanboy likes the DCEU costume, what a shocker. But seriously, I love this costume. She looks like a fighter without the need to cover her head-to-toe in plates and blades and shit. She looks sexy without the need to have her boobs and butt on display. Most importantly, she looks like a goddamn superhero, which is something tons of artists completely fail to convey.

And while it's not canonical, I really liked this more simplified fan design as well:

The Flash

To anyone and everyone out there aspiring to design a costume for the Scarlet Speedster: please, for the love of all that is holy, KEEP IT SIMPLE. This is the absolute last character in the world that needs to have armor plates or Tron lines or little fiddly bits all over his costume. In comic books especially, since you can only really simulate motion and speed. Therefore, in my opinion anyway, the best way to simulate speed with the Flash is to streamline his design to the point where the eye takes in everything you need to know as quickly as possible. And DCAU Flash does that perfectly, particularly with that semi-permanent smirk that lets you know his attitude right off the bat.

Green Lantern

Kyle Rayner's pretty much the only Lantern that doesn't either put me to sleep or get on my nerves, and on top of that, he's got the biggest wardrobe to choose from. Sadly, most of his costumes are kind of lame (why do they keep giving him that mask with no nose?!), but I really like this one. Cool minimalist logo, a few glowy bits here and there to make him look appropriately sci-fi, but still immediately recognizable.

Aquaman

While the Sword of Atlantis book itself never really did it for me, I really liked the costume design, which I thought really brought home the whole "King Arthur, but, y'know, underwater" angle.

Close second goes to his underwater camouflage costume from the 80s. I mean, if you want to convey that the guy spends all his time in the deep blue sea, how about putting some actual blue on his costume?

Supergirl

Is Bruce Timm a dirty old man who draws all of his women like something you'd see sprayed on the nose-cone of an old B-17? That argument can certainly be made. Do I mind? NOPE!

Batgirl

Might be a bit of a surprise given that I hate-- hate with a capital HATE-- everything they've done with Barbara Gordon since the launch of the New 52. But I gotta admit, I do kinda really like this costume, especially when it's got that purple hue to more clearly differentiate her from the other Bats. In my own personal head-canon, Babs should still be Oracle, but in any flashback sequences to her days as Batgirl, she'd be wearing this suit.

The Teen Titans

Switching over to Red Team:

Spider-Man

Not a good movie. But an absolutely fantastic costume.

Captain America

I always wished that the first Captain America movie was less of an Indiana Jones adventure sort of affair and more like an episode of Band of Brothers. And this costume is pretty much what I'd want. And hey, in the first movie he did wear a costume pretty similar to this for a bit, so points there.

Iron Man

I don't really have a long or thought-out reasoning for this one, I just think the Bleeding Edge Armor is cool.

Thor

Man, the God of Thunder series was so friggin' good. And a big reason I was so drawn to it was the cover art, which looked like something from a trashy fantasy pulp novel. Dude looks like what every D&D Paladin dreams about being, and Old King Thor and Young Idiot Thor compliment him really well.

Daredevil

Frank Miller absolutely defined Daredevil's tone, but it's only half-finished without Mazzuchelli giving him the look. If it's not drenched in film-noir lighting, it's not Daredevil.

Captain Marvel

Screw you, Carol, I'm not calling him Shazam.

The X-Men

Rather than go through each of them one by one, I'm just gonna pick my 'definitive' X-Men lineup and my favorite takes on their costumes:

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While I'm thinking about it, have we ever done just a straight-up "what's your favorite design" talk yet? Not necessarily your favorite era of a character, just your favorite look that they've had. Outfit and/or artist.

For example, Batman's had a godjillion different takes on the Bat-suit, but to me it's always gonna be the Bronze Age Neal Adams look. The blue-and-gray, the yellow circle, the utility belt with capsule-things instead of pockets, ears at just the right length so they're not little stubby bumps or giant devil-horns, and a build that's designed more for swashbuckling than for brutality. In much the same way that most people can't say 'Superman' without immediately conjuring an image of Christopher Reeve, this is the immediate Batman that comes to my mind:

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Not a fan of Raven's particularly, nor Starfire's. Both aren't terrible, but I like the previous iteration of Starfire's costume more, the one from her solo series. Raven's best costume is arguably her animated costume I think.

@Lord Wraith

Agreed on both counts. I'll still take their current looks over their atrocious designs from the New 52 any day, though.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

There were a few Rebirth costumes that I liked-- Superman finally had a version of the no-trunks look that I could get behind before they put the trunks back on him, Supergirl's previous costume was a perfectly good classic-style outfit, Jon's costume is a great fit for a Superboy-in-training, I liked that they just went ahead and made Wonder Woman's movie outfit her official costume since I thought that was a great compromise between the old one-piece bathing suit and all the different sets of over-designed battle armor they keep slapping on her, Starfire and Raven no longer look completely ridiculous.......

....and that's about it.

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What's surely going to make the top five on a list of Supergirl's worst costumes.

@Lord Wraith

Supergirl's had some genuinely awful costumes over the years, but man, I'm struggling to think of one that's this bad.

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Kind of old news at this point, but my God, Supergirl's new costume is the dirt worst:



"Hey, you know Supergirl's costume is easily identifiable, aesthetically pleasing, and doesn't look like she flew headlong into some clotheslines? Yeah, let's undo all of that. First off, because the original costume is clearly a gender-wapped Superman outfit, let's make it look as un-Superman as possible. No yellow, only one thing that's red, and a desaturated blue, there we go-- oh, and give her some black boots and gloves so it looks like she stole a Fantastic Four uniform. Now let's give her a sleevelss hoodie to make her look frumpy and unappealing, which she wears over tights because apparently she thinks she's the Scarlet Spider. Then, on top of that, her cape--ehh, y'know what, what if she has a sash-- maybe an over-the-shoulder one, or an across-the-hips one like Carol Danvers? Y'know what, fuck it, it's all three at once. That's all good, but it's missing something......oooh! I know! A BATTLE AXE! Whaddya mean 'why give the indestructible person with infinite super-strength a battle-axe?' She's a stronk independent woman, which means she's hyper-aggressive bloodthirsty sociopath (going by how Bendis was writing her), that's empowering!

Anyway, just draw her scowling at the reader and brandishing her medieval death-implement and I think we've really captured the essence of Supergirl here! Background? Ehh, I dunno, a bunch of random faces, give everyone those Kryptonian head-socks from John Byrne's version of Krypton which went out of style in the late 90s. Have a half-assed Superman face looking like someone let out a silent-but-deadly fart in the room and nobody's owning up to it. And make sure to put Gambit there in the bottom; kids still love Gambit, right?"

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_{So does the rest of the civilized world and it makes absolutely no sense why we're the only holdouts.}

Uuuh, I mean, how dare you question the US of A!

'Murrica!

@Master Bruce

Another actual picture of MB:

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

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That's because your people are far too trusting.

@Master Bruce

Actual photo of MB: