Change Clothes - Part 3 - Mobile Edition

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Change Clothes - Part 3
By Kevin Scott
January 12, 2004 - 10:39

Easy Cats

Well I'm back (wonder if I was missed???). I thought I'd give everyone a chance to get back into the flow of things after Christmas and New Year. By the way, I hope you all had a great time :)

Things are still a little slow, but one of our regulars (yes we have regulars, well, 2, maybe 3) decided to drop by.

Stinkfist said;

"I think the change in clothes is the company saying (Hey, guys, don't go! Look! Different colors!). There are some exceptions, though. Spider-man changed his costume for, what I believe to be, a good reason. It wasn't a cop-out, just part of an interesting story. There was a time when Iron Man had to keep changing his armor because he couldn't get it right, and I think that served a good purpose as well. Though when someone like Goliath or Thor changes their costume, it is usually due to a need for more readers. It spices things up, sometimes.

"On the topic of types of costumes I'd like to see, for women, anyway, I'd love to see some of the heroines wearing more clothes. It's possible for a female superhero look sexy and not be stark naked. Warbird, Storm, Rogue, Jean Grey. All of them pull off a sex appeal without being completely naked or close to it. I think it's just a matter of what works best for each character."

I do think Stinkfist is right in the respect that companies use costume changes as a gimmick to attract new readers. Most of these changes seem to be geared up for the male readers, but maybe things are changing.

It seems with the influx of films adapted from comics, companies are becoming more inclined to create that same film feel in their books. So movie goer converts won't feel lost, I would imagine. The good thing about this is the film companies don't seem to want to go with a lot of the ludicrous unpractical costumes, so they redefine them to make them seem "more realistic" (it is superheros y'know, come on!) and they usually want these films to be PG-13 (I think that's right, not up on the American film rating system). So not only will we get our female characters wearing clothes, but more of our favourite characters will be doing their thing in practical costumes.

Marvel has already started this process. If you look through their books one of the biggest changes would be the new look to Doc Ock. He went from this

To a whole lot better costume, in this

And another way Marvel are moving to up-date things is with their MAX line. The good thing about the changes is, that there not just garish gimmicks, they look a whole lot better than the over funked originals.

And the best example of this is Squadron Supreme. You'd never be able to take them seriously in their original attire

But Gary Franks new designs bring them into the new millennium and the realm of realism. If you have the directors cut edition of Supreme Powers #1, you'll be able to see all his great designs, but here is a good example.

With the BIG X-Men - Reloaded coming in May, I'd be looking for more changes.

And Now!

Well, to be honest with you cats, it would seem like this topics dried out at this point in time. So next week things will change. So stay tuned OK.

If anyone has anything they'd like to talk about, just drop me a e-mail via the link. But just because certain topics have ended now, doesn't mean we can't revisit them later on.

So have a good week and I'll see you on the flip side.

Koncise an out :)