I was watching one of the old Superman movies and not with George Reeves or Bob Holiday or David Wilson or even Dean Cane. I'm talking Christopher Reeve, the only true Superman, who, as he was landing, would raise one heel like a girl being kissed.
And I noticed that every time Lois needed saving, or a crime was being committed, or Lois needed saving again, Superman would change from his three-piece suit and tie and into his Superman costume. I didn’t hit me until then: why do Superheroes have uniforms? It’s not like we can't tell the good guys from the bad guys. If my life needed some serious saving, I wouldn’t care if my hero wore a cape, a mask, or a Don't F@&$ with Mr. Zero t-shirt.
I’m not a superhero expert and I never really read comics but wearing a disguise doesn't seem the most practical way to fight crime. It must really suck as you'd have to be in stealth mode from your hideout to the crime, foil the villain, and you can tell he’s the villain because he's wearing a costume too, and then get back to the hideout without anyone noticing you. If Superman wore sweats, Nikes, and a light jacket, he could hit the ATM after subduing The Riddler.
And if you wanted to be disguised, why not make it muted colors so you wouldn't stand out so much. Beige pants with a blue shirt always worked for me. Why wear a disguise and drape yourself in bright colors and a cape with a crappy logo on your chest? It defeats the point of a disguise. The best disguise is just to blend in and look like everyone else.
And don't even get me started on the fact that Superman wears the same outfit every time. If I showed up to work everyday wearing the same shirt, pants, and shoes, people would begin to wonder about me even if I had ten identical sets of clothes at home.
When a crime is in progress, Superman wastes crucial time looking for a quick change in a phone booth, time that would be better spent actually righting some wrongs. Granted he has saved a lot of people; but how many more could he have saved if he hadn’t stopped to change? And what does he do with his suit when he changes? Does he leave it in the phone both along with his keys, his wallet, and his cell phone? It isn't clear where all of these things go but clearly we'd see a bulge if he had them tucked away in his skin tight suit especially if his wallet was a Constanza. These are all questions that have never really been asked before.
I can understand that he doesn’t want to be recognized, but how good is his disguise anyway? His clever deception where he is virtually unrecognizable, especially to Lois, is parting his hair on the opposite side and donning satellite-dish-sized glasses.
Now let’s assume that his Clark Kent disguise is the best one ever and no one knows it’s him. Does he know we use cell phones now? My point is that Superman needs the phone booth to change his clothes and I haven’t seen a phone booth in quite a number of years; and the ones I have seen, have been all clear windows so Superman would get seen in his Super Tights. And why the super tight uniform anyway? Did he leave it in the dryer too long? Was his Superman costume in the laundry and he couldn’t fight crime with a mustard stain on his sleeve so he had to wear his old Superman outfit from when he was in college and weighed twenty pounds less? And what’s with the glasses? He has super strength, and an astigmatism?
His crime fighting garb is a lot of things and masculine is not one of them. He wears tights like a woman headed to Pilates and over them he has a Speedo like a European sunbather. Someone should tell him he’s not on Krypton and on Earth; here the underwear go under the pants.
And it’s not just Superman, but tights seem to be a thing for superheroes and I'm not going to go superhero by superhero because we'd be here all day. The super tights have to me the most uncomfortable way to do anything. If I had to wear tights to fight crime, I’d be too busy adjusting my junk and feeling really awkward to save anyone. My superpower would be my ability to make the villains laugh uncontrollably as I approach them while reaching under my cape to pull tights out of my butt crack. And fighting crime on cold nights would be out of the question:
Me: Stop you foul villain because I can’t chase you in a leotard and knee high rain boots.
Villian: (while pointing at my groin) It looks like Superman has a super small secret.
I was a weightlifter guy during the steroid rage and I, just once, wore spandex tights to the beach. The reason this was not a repeat event was that if I saw a pretty girl, I’d have one reaction, and if I went into cold water, I’d have a very different reaction. I have enough problems without having someone be able to, ahem, read my mind, and I never did have a good poker face.
I’m just saying that as Superman, your credibility might come into question if, when you bring the attractive girl you just saved to safety, you had a bulge in your tights. I’m not going to expand on the fact that no one ugly ever needed saving and all superheroes are built like models with the men having ass chins (except for Robin) and the women had boobs that would make Barbie look like a prepubescent boy.
Back to Superman and his super-bad persona: and just from a practicality standpoint, I remember his suit being of the one piece kind and I didn’t see a zipper or a trap door; how the hell did he pee in that thing? And forget going #2; the cape would go in the bowl every damn time.
In ancient times, Ninjas didn’t wear the one piece black jumpsuit, with the burka headpiece, and the black socks that awkwardly split your toes into two groups like Hollywood has taught me; the power of the Ninja was his ability to conceal himself; and since most people were farmers back then, Ninjas dressed like the locals to blend (really, look it up). Superman would be better off fighting crime in his suit, and then stopping for a latte and a scone on the way back to the office. Have you ever seen Batman in the Batmobile at the McDonalds drive thru window? Of course not. But if he drove a Camry and wore a shirt and tie, he’d be dollar-menuing it.
Over the course of writing this, I’ve begun to think about this a little more and I could see why Superman might want to hide who he is. If I were Superman, I know my friends would always be asking me for favors every damn day: ‘I got this guy who's giving me trouble. I’m not saying you kick his ass, but just scare em. Let him know to back off or you’ll tear him in half like, like something that needs to be torn in half.” Or there’d be the liability aspect: “Thanks for saving my wife Superman but did you have to smash through the side of my house? The front door was five feet to the left and unlocked. You're paying my homeowners insurance deductible.”
So, Superman, Wonder Woman (and don’t get me started on her Invisible Jet - #1 how does she find the damn thing if she can't see the controls, and if people can’t see the plane- #2 wouldn’t they be suspicious when a woman is floating through the air in a seated position and wearing a Halloween costume?), and Supergirl (the only thing she’s super at is plagiarizing Superman’s look), or Superboy (who created these characters with virtually the same name and look - “okay, I’ve got a new character: “Super Armadillo. He’ll have a blue costume with a red cape and boots. And get this, he'll have a big red S on his chest. It’s so original.”),
Superman needs to rebrand himself (really, an S on your chest is the best you could come up with? So much for Superman having super-originality because apparently the yellow sun of our solar system didn't affect that one part of his personality) and has to come up with a better disguise. A hood like Batman, a mask like Captain America, or a hoodie and some dark eyeshadow like the Arrow.
Actually, Batman has it the best of all of the superheroes. Superman is the meek Clark Kent, and Spiderman is the dorky Peter Parker. and Wonder Woman (it must be tough for her to date because she could kick most guys asses) is, well, a wonder woman, and Robin is so robin and named after a little bird: nuff said. I mean even Robin wears a mini mask, probably because he doesn't want to mess up his hair. And what’s with the yellow and green color scheme? If I knew, somehow, that my son would be born gay, I’d decorate the room in green and yellow and dress him in only red. Anywho, when Batman isn’t kicking ass and taking names (he can do both as he’s gotta have a pen and pad on that utility belt), he’s billionaire Bruce Wayne driving fancy cars and dating models...and he’s got a sidekick who’s Robin; I mean even I could be a badass standing next to Robin.
Then’s there’s the Invisible Man: I’m not sure why you need your costume at all because you’re invisible and like Kevin Bacon, you’d have to remove your outfit when you went invisible because everyone would just see an empty suit walking around.
The Incredible Hulk doesn't have a uniform as he is a reluctant superhero, but his green skin and hulk-like (I wonder where he got his name?) body is quite the disguise. “The guy who broke through the wall looked like an angry, green Lou Ferrigno, but with Pete Rose’s haircut.” He fights crime wearing jeans which, oddly, split around his ankles, where they’re loosest, and not around his upper thighs and butt, where they're tightest. If I was Dr. Banner, I'd be more concerned with the way my pants tear than in curing myself of the Hulk. And Hulk would be like the dog that gets everything blamed on it. When people piss him off, he can turn into the Hulk and say that wasn't me who flipped over your car just because you parked it in front of my house. It was the green guy, the big green guy, and his jeans were ripped.
I have a pregnant friend who has these stretchy pants that the bigger she got, the more the pants stretched. David Banner, like Dr. Sheldon Cooper, is a physicist so he must have his PhD. With that amount of intelligence on tap, he has to realize he’s replacing his Dockers every time he gets cutoff in traffic.
Aquaman, Aguaman in Mexico, is only suited for water and he wears scaly tights even though no one can see him, and if the 50s taught me anything, it’s that Flipper has all water crime well under control. If I were a villain, I’d commit all of my crimes five feet from the water thus negating Aquaman. Being a bad guy on land, I’d be as afraid of him as I would be a great white shark out of water; put that Jaws on the hot sand and I’ll kick his ass.
Spiderman moves from the feminine to the infantile with his footsie pjs and a mask swinging from building to building leaving his webs behind. Having him around doesn’t mean New York has less crime, it means it has to invest in really big scissors for cleanup.
So it seems that Superheroes have a super amount of issues to sort through. What I’ve outlined is not an exhaustive list, but it’s a good start. Lets work together to make our superheroes truly super, and getting them out of Speedos and yoga pants would be a step in the right direction.
