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Have you forgotten that Peter Parker made his Spider-Man costume from "off the shelf" items? Still came out looking like a superhero, tho.

The real problem with the "street" approach is what it represents: the great EMBARRASSMENT of the people working on the characters to be seen, well, working on the characters.

"Ugh! Superheroes! So beneath me! sigh Woe is me! Woe is me! Cash this check, please."

SuperHeroes wear SuperHero clothes in comicbooks.

If an artist today who is lucky enough to be hired to draw, say, SUPERMAN, why wouldn't he want to draw the character in the Superman costume. Baffles me.

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It's an outgrowth, I suspect, of the same kind of thinking that puzzled me so when I joined the Industry, back in the middle Seventies. So many people who, as I have mentioned before, seemed to be saying "Remember all that great stuff that Stan and Jack and Steve used to do? Let's NOT do that!"

Back then, this kind of thinking led to "darker" and more "relevant" STORIES, with the characters remaining pretty much recognizable, visually. But the Day of the Rock Star was fast approaching, for artists, and soon the long protected visuals would begin to reflect the whim of whoever happened to be drawing the book that month.

Say ... I haven't read the indicia on a Marvel or DC comic in a long time. Back in the day, it used to say the character "and the distinctive likeness thereof" was copyrighted and, in some instances, trademarked. Does that phrase still appear? Seems like it would be VERY hard to make a case for "distinctive likenesses" these days!

I didn't care for the idea of Super-Heroes fighting in plain clothes then....

And I like it even less now, stick to what has been working for decades.

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Do you see the arrow in the FedEx logo?

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I never noticed that arrow before. Only noticed it this time because of the Gravity discussion.

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For any who might not be aware, the X-Men were in civvies in that issue of MARVEL TEAM-UP because they were, at that time, wearing their "school uniforms" in their own title, which was in reprint limbo, but this story took place in "present day". So civvies, in order to avoid "confusing the readers".

And if that seems unlikely to you, when Chris and I were doing X-MEN we received more than one letter from fans who thought we should do a book MARVEL TALES style book for the X-Men. That was Spider-Man's reprint title, you may recall, which ran concurrent with his new titles. The people writing did not realize the material in MARVEL TALES was reprints!

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A classic example of UNDERthinking the character.

When I was doing WONDER WOMAN, Sergio Aragones did a satirical one-shot, "destroying" the DCU. I was asked to ink the WW pages, and was delighted to do so for two reasons. One, INKING SERGIO! And second, it meant I got a SERGIO page as my share as inker!

The page I got back happened to be the last of the collaboration, and on it Hawkman arrives on Paradise Island. Sergio, of course, drew the character in his own style, but other than that drew him ACCURATELY. And as I inked the figure, I kept thinking This is a FLYING character?? As you may recall from that vintage, he was all strap and pouches and flanges -- tho even that horror was a distinct improvement over a previous version that appeared to have to tops off two grand pianos strapped to his back.

Important lesson in costume design: THINK ABOUT WHAT THE CHARACTER DOES. In comics, the characters don't trip over their capes, unless the writer is being EVER so CLEVER, but their costumes should not look immediately awkward (even if it's on a subliminal level). Typical example, not a good idea to give buccaneer boots to a speedster!

That's a pretty broad statement. Isn't it simply more appropriate for John Constantine (for example) to dress like Lieutenant Columbo than Merlin? And does it always make sense for a public hero (like Reed Richards) to stop to change from street clothes into a costume while lives are at stake? 

And the outfits that She-Hulk wears are more or less conventional fitness togs, going all the way back to the 80's. With a signature color scheme, sure. But not always, and not consistently. Where is the line drawn?

QUOTE: the X-Men were in civvies in that issue of MARVEL TEAM-UP because they were, at that time, wearing their "school uniforms" in their own title, which was in reprint limbo

JB, was it just a mix up due to the X-Men's reprint status that had them in their school uniforms in this 1974 issue of Captain America?