In May, Marvel and DC Comics superheroes invaded one of America’s leading temples of high culture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” an exhibit by the Met’s Costume Institute that finds links between examples of contemporary fashions and classic superhero costumes. PW Comics Week readers who cannot get to New York City to see the show, which runs through September 1, should take a look at the Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy catalogue (Yale University Press). Officially published on May 26, the book is written by the exhibitions curator, Andrew Bolton.
The book’s essays, save for the introduction by Michael Chabon, are all rather brief. Instead the catalogue is dominated by photographs of models wearing the many costumes in the show, designed by such leading names in the fashion world as Giorgio Armani (the sponsor of the exhibition and the catalogue), Jean Paul Gautier, Alexander McQueen, and Thierry Mugler, among many others. There are also numerous reproductions of vintage comics artwork featuring characters spotlighted in the show.
The introductory essay by Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, previously appeared in The New Yorker. While acknowledging the magic implicit in the concept of the superhero costume through a childhood anecdote, Chabon proceeds to deconstruct the theme of the show, arguing that the superhero costume, traditionally skin-tight, is really a substitute and signifier for the nudity of the idealized human body.
In his preface (adapted into the introductory wall text in the show), Bolton immediately establishes that superheroes can be used metaphorically “to address serious issues. . .under the guise of entertainment,” including “shifting attitudes towards self and society, towards identity and ideology, simply and directly.”
The principal theme of the exhibition and book is that superheroes and fashion are linked by their mutual concern with “the power of transformation. Fashion, like the superhero, celebrates metamorphosis, providing unlimited opportunities to remake and reshape the flesh and the self.” Thus the secret identity trope of the superhero genre is not unlike the situation of a person who uses fashion to express another side of his or her personality that is not reflected, say, by everyday business suits.
The first section, “The Graphic Body,” explores both Superman’s “S” insignia and the work of fashion designs who have experimented with variations on this iconic emblem. These variations on the Superman theme are nearly the only cases in the book and show in which the spotlighted fashion designers were clearly, consciously influenced by specific comics characters. In most cases, it is safer to say that Bolton has discovered examples of fashions in which the designers have paralleled the iconic designs of celebrated superhero costumes.
Thus, the chapter on “The Graphic Body” also covers Spider-Man’s costume, which is paralleled by various gowns and other women’s apparel with webbing and spider motifs. Bolton argues that these fashions evoke Spider-Man even when the designer had no “deliberate” intention of doing so. Unfortunately, Bolton does not investigate why male designers create spider motifs for women’s clothing. Are they invoking the black widow stereotype, implying that these femme fatales are out to ensnare men?
Another chapter, “The Patriotic Body,” addresses the American flag motifs in Captain America and Wonder Woman’s costumes, and how today’s designers use flag imagery for political commentary. The fashions in “The Virile Body” exaggerate the impression of musculature, like a drawing of the Hulk. In “The Paradoxical Body” Bolton connects Catwoman’s costumes from the 1960s onward to dominatrix imagery, though it would have been rewarding had he also examined the allure of her very different 1940s costume with its billowing gown and cape, concealing more than revealing. Iron Man and the movie version of Batman are examined in “The Armored Body,” while “The Aerodynamic Body” compares the Flash’s sleek uniform to athletes’ bodysuits. “Mutant Body” provides examples of how certain fashion designers engage in “challenging the ‘beautiful people’ aesthetic.” Finally, though Bolton attempts to deal with Watchmen in “The Post-Modern Body,” this chapter is really concerned with the death imagery in the costumes of Ghost Rider and the Punisher.
The catalogue carefully lists the sources for all of its photographs and the titles and cover dates for the comics artwork it reproduces. But comics aficionados should notice what is missing: credits for the comics artists who created that artwork. Among the many notable artists represented in this catalogue are Jim Balent, John Buscema, John Byrne, Gene Colan, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Frank Miller, Kurt Schaffenberger, and Joe Shuster; none of them receives credit alongside his work. In his essays Bolton always names the creators of the characters he mentions. (However, as usual, Bob Kane gets sole credit for creating Batman and Catwoman, and writer Bill Finger once again goes unmentioned.) Bolton credits Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert as the creators of the original Golden Age Flash, but concerns himself primarily with the Silver Age Flash’s uniform, without ever mentioning its designer, Carmine Infantino. It is hardly difficult to track down the credits for the comics artwork in this book in these days of the Internet and burgeoning comics scholarship.
But the key is that one has to recognize that the identities of comics artists are important. This is the one gaping flaw in an otherwise admirable book. It is rather bewildering that in putting together this book, apparently no one realized that much of its potential audience would be comics aficionados who care about who drew what.
Nonetheless, Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, both the show and the book, mark an enormous step by one of America’s leading art institutions in recognizing the cultural significance of comics and of the superhero genre. Now comics has its foot in the door of the Metropolitan. As readers of R. C. Harvey’s recent biography of Milton Caniff know, the Metropolitan staged an exhibition of American comics over fifty years ago. Perhaps the Met’s new “Superheroes” show will lead to their trying an actual show about comics again.
