Why do heroes wear underwear outside

I guess back in the day the creators needed as many identifiable themes as they could come up with. Think about black and white t. Without the cape and the shorts on the outside Superman would just look like a dude with an S on his chest. Remember the original Robin?

He only had the shorts, I always hated that look. And then Aquaman only had the tights, something was still off. Today comicbook characters can get away with wearing everyday clothes.

But I think back then a costume had to be so outrages that putting shorts on the outside of the tights just seemed to fit. I dont know, I kinda wish I could walk around with my underwear on the outside of my pants :D. I think it's to break up the color of the costume so that one color doesn't dominate that much. Or it's to keep them from looking like they have a unitard. Don't judge super heroes for wearing skin tight clothes.

If you had pecks and abs like that. You would too. Though, as far as I know you are that ripped. That or they just want to avoid the villains making fun of them by saying they all wear Onesies.

Another question. Do they wear boxers or briefs under the leotard part that has the underwear over that? It could also be something similar as to what we would see in the 80's. When women would do aerobics, wearing a leotard; but for some reason would wear a belt. What was it holding up? I think of it as doing us all a favor. Have you ever seen a guy wearing skin tight spandex pants? Just be glad they're wearing something over it. I've always wandered why a superhero like Superman or Batman would be wearing underwear outside of the spandex.

It would look awful if they walked around without them I think it's a fashion design that became a tradition, build an underwear that protect's there "balls" from dealy encounters haha. Whatever the case, it's best to leave it alone. Otherwise, I'd prefer to have this:. Why don't heroes where Boxers on the outside of their costume?

Wolverine has had his costume redesigned to remove the underwear. Only characters with that style now are in DC, namely Batman and Superman. Both of those characters need a redesign to remove the underroos. The underwear that performers used were longer and more like underwear-shorts. This also made sense for superheroes to adapt their clothing style of wearing their underpants over their thighs.

This was a piece of theoretical knowledge that was mentioned in the biography of Julius Schwartz but there is another theory about a "technical reason" behind this trend. Graphic novels and superhero comics were first introduced in the s but were initially not taken as serious art and only considered for children. And in order to be viable and make profits, comic-book makers had to publish comics at cheap rates.

The extremely low price of graphic novels wouldn't allow a good quality of color printing and the publishers were bound to publish them only in 4 colors, Blue, Yellow, Red, and Black. The lack of options made it harder to show gradient, shadow, and darker areas of the body. Now, it should be noted here that the wrestlers, circus performers, and superheroes weren't actually wearing underwear, but rather tight underwear-like shorts over their leggings.

As superheroes are generally incredibly gifted athletically and perform amazing acrobatic stunts while crime fighting, it was natural enough for this style of dress to get adopted by the earliest superhero artists for their characters. Two of the earliest major representations of this can be found in Flash Gordon , which in turn was partially the inspiration for the garb of Superman , with the principle difference being the colors of their uniforms and the fact that Superman had a cape as far as I can find, the first major superhero to wear one.

Of course, if you still want to think of the superhero tight-shorts as underwear, given that Superman and others often wear their uniform under their normal clothes, it kind of makes sense. Bonus Fact: The original Superman character envisioned by Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster was not the crime-fighting hero from another world we know today. Instead, they made him a bald bad guy set on ruling the world in the The Reign of Superman.