Meditations on a superhero’s unitard

Author Michael Chabon, who knows a thing or two about comic books and superheroes, has penned an essay for the New Yorker regarding the attire of superheroes . It’s an interesting read, if you’re a big dork like me. In it, Chabon makes the case that the costume could be reduced to nothing more than a simple unitard. No boots, no gauntlets, no capes, no masks. But then he goes on to say that the costume is necessary for it conveys the story of the superhero themselves. He gets a bit convuleted in his logic, often times he contridicts himself, but still, a great read. The story of a superhero’s origin must be kept secret, occulted as rigorously from public knowledge as the alter ego, as if it were a source of shame. Superman conceals, archived in the Fortress of Solitude and accessible only to him, not only his own history—the facts and tokens of his birth and arrival on Earth, of his Smallville childhood, of his exploits and adventures—but the history of his ...