Have you ever wondered why Batman, Superman and the other superheroes wore the underwear on the outside? Here’s an explanation!
We have all had a good laugh growing up, wondering why superheroes wear undies on the outside. It’s probably one of the oldest conventions and the explanation to which many of us are not aware of.
One would think that after portraying heroic displays of brute force against injustice and achieving worldwide fame, it would lead to many fashion enthusiasts advising against flashing undies.
Well, the reasons are quite simple. Graphic novels hit the market in full boom around the 1930’s when colour printing was still new and an imperfect technology. They weren’t taken as a serious art form and considered to be something that was meant only for children. The extremely low price of graphic novels wouldn’t allow better quality colour prints and sometimes even going as far as black and white and keeping only the covers coloured. To add to the limitation, graphic novel publishers could only afford 4 colour printing, hence the 4 colour superheroes.
Superman – Red, Blue, Yellow and Black; Batman – Grey, Blue, Yellow and Black ; Wonder Woman – Red, Blue, Yellow and white.
Another issue while printing was that gradients at the time were not possible and even after inventions graphic novel printing was expensive.
So to represent gradients, thick black cross hatch lines would be used to denote darker areas, which also became the staple way to denote gradients in graphic novels till date.
Also, since graphic novels became all colour from cover to cover, repeated printing would disturb the alignment of the printers and cause color bleeding. To avoid this, thick black outlines were used to cover the bleeding.
Now, after only 4 colors and thick black lines covering most of the shaded areas caused the superhero characters to have indistinguishable body parts.
Underwear was an inventive way to make the character stand out. The clever and coincidental solution that defined and became the iconic superhero image was to highlight the groin and buttocks with outlines and more often than not, filled with a different color from that of the main costume, making it look like, undies.
Even heroes who don’t wear an underwear outside have outlines defining the pelvic region. Spider man, Iron Man, Flash and Green Lantern, for example.
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