Superheroes & Super Costumes

You know what happens when you wait to long too post a good link?

Kottke posts it first.

Daniel passed along Michael Chabon's excellent essay on the nature of comic book superheroes and their costumes at the beginning of the month, which really struck my fancy.

We say “secret identity,” and adopt a series of cloaking strategies to preserve it, but what we are actually trying to conceal is a narrative: not who we are but the story of how we got that way—and, by implication, of all that we lacked, and all that we were not, before the spider bit us. Yet our costume conceals nothing, reveals everything: it is our secret skin, exposed and exposing us for all the world to see. Superheroism is a kind of transvestism; our superdrag serves at once to obscure the exterior self that no longer defines us while betraying, with half-unconscious panache, the truth of the story we carry in our hearts, the story of our transformation, of our story’s recommencement, of our rebirth into the world of adventure, of story itself.

Excellent.

As Chabon details why "real world" costumes always fail, looking fake and breaking the illusion and power of the printed image, I won't repeat him. I will, however, add an example (about one minute and forty seconds into this) and an exception. Of the myriad superhero costume interpretations done in film and television over the years, the only one to look perfect is the Spider-Man of Sam Raimi's films. Seriously; when Spider-Man is webslinging through Manhattan, especially in Spider-Man 2, he looks as close to the comic book as I can imagine — replicating the design and the feel, not becoming a cheesy real-world costume, but the superhero himself.

What is it about this design and execution that works? Hard to say. The fact that Spider-Man exists in a real-world New York City helps him bridge the gap; but the details of the suit itself contribute plenty. In the comics, it is essentially just a spandex bodysuit, easy to replicate in the real world. At the same time, so much of the on-screen performance is CGI; it is as much an artistic creation, done with shapes and colors instead of cloth and materials, as a printed panel. Even when the effects are less than perfect, there is certainly a little bit of the halftone magic present, because it works.

The best part, though, is that Spider-Man 2 has a writing credit for Michael Chabon.

Awesome.