When I play superhero RPGs1 or read comics, I cannot help but wonder how it is that certain superheroes manage to stay clothed. Specifically, the ones who were extremely durable whose clothing was not. How do they avoid being frequently naked in public?
They cannot avoid fights; no fun in that. But if they’re hit—there go the clothes. If prone to turning into living flame? Clothes go up in flame. Super-cold? Cloth turns brittle when frozen. Change size? Clothing shreds. Or a teeny-tiny size-changer can slip between the weave of the cloth. Then change back to normal human and oops, no clothes.
In the old days, the Comics Code Authority guaranteed a certain level of protection from power-induced nudity. The Hulk’s pants size might go from M to XXXXXXXL but somehow his trousers always stretched enough to provide him with shorts. Similarly, Doctor Phosphorus’ skin incinerated everything it touched, despite which he somehow always had enough of his trousers left to avoid being charged with indecent exposure2 (well, in addition to terrorism and murder).
In some cases, characters have incredibly precise control over their abilities. The Human Torch, for example, can carry flammable objects without setting them on fire3 even though he himself is entirely or almost entirely enveloped in flame. Since the most common flammable object the Human Torch carries is human beings, this is for the best.
In other cases, the powers themselves can provide costumes. A Green Lantern ring can magic up a costume. Some heroes get the ability to summon their undamaged costume as a minor element of their powerset. Hellcat would be one example, as would the Creeper (unfortunately for the Creeper, said costume is ten bucks of rummage sale junk: a feather boa, boots, and a small pair of swimming trunks).
There is a special subset of superpowered characters whose powers conceal the fact they are stark naked pretty much 24/7. A case has been made for Thor and Loki’s possible nudity. Shapeshifters are particularly fond of this gambit. Chameleon Boy looks like he’s wearing clothing but since the clothes change with him, I’m pretty sure what we see is all Reep Daggle (Chameleon Boy’s actual name), not actual clothes. The Martian Manhunter likewise, although I understand there is a story in which his costume is actually a shapeshifting Martian pet (which kinda weirds me out). At least one version of the Ray has to settle for creating the illusion of clothing in lieu of the clothes his powers uncontrollable destroy. In fact, he is always stark naked.
A number of characters opt for cheap and easily replaced clothes. Iron Munro essentially opted for jeans and T-shirt. If your skin is as durable as a battleship but your clothes aren’t, just hit a discount store for a stack of two-dollar T-shirts and invest in some iron-on super-heroic logos. While affordable, it’s not a solution for the trousers issue. Maybe encourage opponents to aim high by placing a target on your chest?
Perhaps the best solution is to befriend or at least be able to hire someone who can provide a costume of the required durability. The Fantastic Four get adaptable costumes of “unstable molecules” thanks to the inventive skills of Mr. Fantastic. The Flash’s Rogues Gallery depends on the services of Central City tailor Paul Gambi. The Incredibles turn to Edna Mode. That won’t help characters who don’t know super geniuses and who cannot afford the services of a specialty tailor.
There is an obvious solution that has not been used in the comics to the best of my knowledge, which is to worm one’s way into a local amateur theatrical troupe to gain access to and exploit their costumes department. There are only two obvious drawbacks to this otherwise infallible scheme: first, one will be limited to whatever costumes they have on hand, more likely to be suitable for productions of Julius Caesar, Equus, or Oh! Calcutta! than crime punching. Second, wardrobe will react very badly to cast members stealing costumes. It might solve your costume issue at the cost of giving you your first archenemy.
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and the Aurora finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is a four-time finalist for the Best Fan Writer Hugo Award and is surprisingly flammable.
[1]I have played or run Superworld, Villains and Vigilantes, Champions, DC Heroes, Fuzion, Icons, BESM, Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game, and Mutants and Masterminds. There may be others I will only remember once this is published.
[2]I think NASA missed a trick not testing the crotch area of Dr. Phosphorus’ trousers to see if the material could be adapted to reentry vehicle heat-shields.
[3]Johnny Storm sometimes flamed up while sound asleep. The solution: furniture made of asbestos. Well, it was the 1960s! We didn’t know. Plus, superheroes should be so lucky to live long enough to die of something so mundane.
Footnote one seems to have been somewhat truncated. It should read “I have played or run Superworld, Villains and Vigilantes, Champions, DC Heroes, Fuzion, Icons, BESM, Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game, and Mutants and Masterminds. There may be others I will only remember once this is published.”
And indeed there was at least one I forgot: Masks.
I assumed that Luke Cage had an in-universe promotional deal with Carhartt in the Netflix MCU series, since he kept showing up in fresh, new Carhartt gear despite getting shot up pretty much every episode.
Cage complained about getting his clothes shot up at one point, which made me wonder why he wore expensive clothes to a gun fight.
Not surprisingly, Alan Moore took a swing at this at least once – in his superhero police procedural comic Top Ten, it’s revealed that Girl One is not wearing some kind of bodysuit but is actually a “closet nudist.”
Nocturnal ignition?
@1: Also, I personally have run you through GURPS Supers,EABA, CORPS, and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (now available sans license as some flavor of Cortex Prime). We also played Capes! together. More if I remember them
Jaime Reyes’ (Blue Beetle) scarab made new clothes out of dead skin cells (or something). Which is convenient since suiting up destroys whatever he’s wearing. Beast Boy frequently has clothing issues though I think he occasionally gets a fancy uniform
At least during the 70’s and 80’s, most female superheroes must have used body paint and pasties for costumes…
Also, the super known as Empowered regularly has her costume shredded to the point of bare minimum modesty… and then it regenerates. (It’s a sentient fabric of some sort.)
Doctor Manhattan got nakeder and nakeder the more he was alienated from humanity. His particular power set compensated for the lack of pockets.
Superman is solar powered so it would make sense for him to fight crime in a speedo but he never does.
I remember a radio sketch by the Frantics (Episode #86, I think, though my MP3s seem to have been corrupted so I can’t confirm) in which it was explained that Invisible Girl (?) was a nudist… obviously. “I always assumed that your clothes turned invisible too!” “That would be silly.”
I am very sad at the life choices that leave me able to point out Sue Storm’s invisibility has not been limited to making herself invisible since the very early days of the Fantastic Four.
@11. I thought most people knew this. Apparently I have made similar life choices.
Will Smith’s Hancock shuffling up to the ice cream truck with half his butt out always made me laugh but I also loved that someone finally addressed the super heroes not super clothes situation.
If I recall, GURPS Supers has the Costume advantage, where if you pay the character points your powers will protect your clothes but not necessarily you.
You never played Godlike or the original TSR Marvel Super Heroes??
Worm seems to get this right for some characters, but not for some who go through major transformations such as Lung (giant dragon surrounded by flames who I can’t recall ever being described as missing his clothes after returning to human form), various Nazis who summon steel spikes and blades, etc.
I’m glad that you mentioned Doctor Manhattan (who was really beyond giving a damn though most of the story), and that someone else mentioned Girl One. Her camouflage technique was basically dazzle camouflage over bare skin, and one of the characters (an intelligent dog with human emotions and an android human body, and human sexual drives) only mentioned a long way into the story that he was completely colour blind and enjoyed the view…
James Davis Nicoll @11 – I found a backup copy of the MP3s. “Rock Man” of the Fabulous Four introduces Luther, AKA “Shrew Boy”, to “Invisible Chick” at the Superhero Tavern. She gets tipsy on her tube of ether and loses control of her powers.
“You’re naked!”
“So?”
“Well, I always thought you had clothes on, that turned invisible with you.”
“Oh come on, be realistic.”
Though My Hero Academia has a number of characters whose powers ought to destroy their clothes, it offers an explanation for at least one of them. Lemillion, whose power is to phase through matter, wears a costume whose fibers are made out of his own hair (presumably harvested over a period of years), as he’d phase out of all other clothes. I thought that was a neat way to address it without outright handwaving it with “unstable molecules” (which always made me think that the Marvel’s costumes are just a Schroedinger’s blink away from losing all cohesion and releasing a nuclear blast or something).
–Andy
used body paint and pasties for costumes…
To someone who grew up in the South West of England, the use of pasties as a costuming accessory rather than lunch somewhat boggles the mind…
Back in the late Pre-Crisis/early Post-Crisis days, the explanation for Superman was that his invulnerability actually came from his body’s bioelectric “aura;” he was constantly generating a sort of skin-level force-field, so his tights could survive anything his flesh survived (though his cape would regularly get shredded). (The natural effect of this is that anything that can tear his costume can also cut his flesh open, as seen in Death of Superman.)
And I recall some story (can’t recall where) where a shapeshifter’s secondary power meant that their body could absorb and “bring along” any organic material –anything made of natural cotton or silk would just shapeshift (and shift back) along with them, but synthetic fibers would get ripped apart.
@20, now that’s what I call a clever rationalization! Magic fabric or nanotech also work as far as I’m concerned
Cybersnark @20 – Could that be used to remove bullets / other non-living debris from another person by carrying them? Some kinds of tattoos. Intended implants including dental fillings… this might have to be done judiciously.
I think that is Post Crisis. For most of my comic reading days in the 60’s and 70’s, Superman’s costume was made of Kryptonian fabrics, which were as invulnerable as he was. The explanation was that it was made from the blankets he came to earth in. Ma Kent unraveled them and knitted his costume. Superboy used his heat vision to cut threads as needed. His lens of his glasses also came from the rocket, two conveniently shaped pieces, so he could use his heat vision through them without destroying them. In those days his cape never shredded.
20 & 23. Superboy/Superman played with the implications of an invulnerable costume a lot back in pre-Crisis (more importantly, pre-Byrne MoS) days. Like someone else getting their hands on it, and running around being indestructible, wrapping people in the cape to protect them, or wrapping the cape around bombs to contain the blast. There was also an explanation of why mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent always wore a blue suit and red tie – it was because they were made of specially treated fabric to make those clothes extra durable, and those were the only colors he could get to work with those chemicals. (As opposed to the other explanation, that it was easier to use those colors for the printing.) That was necessary, because he would get himself into clothes-destroying situations, and couldn’t explain how they got burned, blasted, or shredded off his body, but he didn’t take a scratch. Or worse, if the clothes were damaged to reveal the Superman suit underneath (as happened once or twice, as well). There was one Silver-age storyline where he was training with the fire department for a story, and had to find ways to cover for repeatedly destroying his fireman’s uniform running into burning buildings.
His civilian suit also had something of the GURPS “costume” advantage, as the treatment also made it miraculously wrinkle-free. He would super-compress his clothes and tuck them into a pocket on the underside of the cape, to keep them safe and close-by, so he could change back, and even after that, the coat and pants were perfectly pressed. Not sure how that worked with the glasses and shoes, but handier than Spiderman’s webbed up clothes ball stuck to the side of a building somewhere. (Which made the alien suit shifting ability nice for him, for a while).
Regarding the Byrne explanation of the aura which protected the suit, but not the cape – when Superboy from the pocket universe was brought in for continuity repairs, Krypto the Superdog was highly confused when he grabbed Superman’s cape and it tore off, as Superboy’s Kryptonian cape would have held up.
And regarding Green Lantern’s using the ring to shifting into costume, it took a while for the Silver Age writers to realize he could do that, as well as make the ring invisible. Until then, he had to take his regular clothes off, and hide the ring and mask in his pockets. Since the very first GL comic I ever read was his Showcase origin, in which he meets Abin Sur in the crashed ship and takes all the gear, I had trouble getting over the fact that he was wearing a suit that he peeled off of a dead guy, and put straight on without getting it cleaned (unless he thought to use the ring for that, but that would have been between panels).
The 2005 Fantastic Four movie has Reed say that since their flight suits were exposed to the same cosmic rays as they were, they can stretch, turn invisible, and burn without being consumed just like their bodies. Fine so far, but I don’t know how that works for Ben.
There’s an issue of Mystique where someone comes to talk to her right when she’s coming out of the shower, and then he bows out of the conversation on the grounds that “she’s naked”, to which she says, “I’m always naked. This towel is actually the most clothes you’ve ever seen me in.”
There is a meme floating around that I can’t get to to put here showing a superhero leaping into the air, ripping open her shirt and shouting “This looks like a job for…oh crud I forgot to put my uniform on this morning.”
Also remembering the first Christopher Reeves Superman movie where he heads to a phone booth to change clothes and notices that it’s one of the new ones that are a) clear b) open to the back and c) only waist up.