Costumes, Batgirl, and Controversy

Hello Missfits!
This week's podcast was great! I had some ideas on costuming in general and wanted to share some of my guidelines when designing.

1) Is the outfit suitable for the job?

I generally look at superheroes as cops. Most of them exist to fight crime. I have never seen a cop wear a skirt. It is rare that I see a cop wearing shorts. I never see a cop with uncovered arms. As such I do my best use similar logic when designing a character.

2) Will this outfit cause a wardrobe malfunction while in action?

Larsen's comments struck me as weird. He is comparing superheroes to athletes (fair). But athletes don't fight people with guns and knives!! Also superheroes often use "future tech" or some other convention that we don't have for their gear, so I also disagree with his statement about how actors in movies complain about their costumes. Films are constrained by budgets, limiting their time to create costumes and their materials. Film costumes are also mean to _appear_ heroic, the drawback being that they often are not functional.

Someone like Bruce Wayne can afford the cost of making a funtional yet comfortable battle suit for everyday use. To contrast, Wonder Woman's outfit is supposed to be magic! However I've never seen it written anywhere that her outift prevents wardrobe malfunctions. And even if it did, her classic costume is so different from the garb her people wear that to me it hardly seems logical. Which leads me my next question;

3) Are you recognizing that this is 2015 and not 1955?

I mention this because a lot of the costumes we see on superheroes still maintain design stylings from when they were originally created 40-70 years ago. Our world is different now in a variety of ways. We still have a long way to go but progress has been made. So for example, Catwoman no longer wears an evening gown to commit her crimes. Captain America's uniform no longer sports chain mail in its design. DC has for the most part removed the "strong-man style trunks" from its heroes. Robin wears pants! Classic or no I think the Golden Age of comics produced some rather wacky details that needed updating.

I really liked what Mara said about fantastical stories requiring some root in reality to convince the audience of its machinations. I feel like this is more important now as things that were science fiction like cell phones, smart watches, self driving cars and bullet resistant suits become more common place.

Am I making any sense? Or am I off the mark?

Cheers!

SbL

Very entertaining episode from Mara and guest Missfits Maria and Katy. I had no idea Erik Larson had put his foot so far up his mouth. Some people don't seem to realize that most of these costumes,have been around for decades. Carol Danvers original outfit is about 40 yrs old. Apparently sashes and one bikinis were all the rage in the 70's Marvel universe. But as Kamala Khan realized, the outfits are not only un PC, but impractical. I would like to think that the male comics reader has evolved to the point where we don't,need senseless t and a to get excited,about a title.

Larsen was so far off with the Ms Marvel costume...she's a 16yr old fangirl who used her own clothing to create a costume. Part of the point is that it's a 'classic' superhero costume; it's also integrating her heritage into it by the clothing she chose to pick. Sheesh, I get the sense he didn't read the book.

Yes, it starts from Esther, Daisy and Susan meeting for the first time on their first day at University and covers some of the stories briefly mentioned in the new BoomBox #1.
John Allison's other webcomics are also really good, by the way.