Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy

Accompanying a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, this glossy volume makes a fine show of comic book superheroes' contribution to cultural and aesthetic history. Each section looks at the superhero ""body"" in a different way: ""The Graphic Body,"" ""The Armored Body,"" ""The Aero-Dynamic Body,"" ""The Mutant Body,"" looking at representative figures (Captain American and Wonder Woman in ""The Patriotic Body,"" The Hulk and The Thing in ""The Virile Body"") before delving into bright, full-color (but not always in-focus) photos from the haute couture runways on which these tropes have been re-appropriated. Bolton provides brief, thought-provoking text, concerned more with the superhero's cultural legacy as a whole than its connection with fashion: ""Superheroes, like jazz, movies, and baseball, are quintessentially American."" Runway variations on the superhero theme run the gamut from hyperglam Catwoman-inspired dominatrix get-ups (from Gaultier and Versace) to Mutant-esque rainbow-hued scale-and-feather gowns (Thierry Mugler) to hand-made Star Wars underoos (Noki by J.J. Hudson). While the scintillating fashion spreads are the book's best selling point, the text is smart and well-researched; fan-boys probably won't learn anything new, but should enjoy Michael Chabon's contribution, ""An Essay in Unitard Theory.""