The costumes comic book characters wear have changed tremendously over the years. Evolving from the leotard outfits circus strongmen wore during their acts, superheroes and villains began to wear different clothing based on the fashions of the time. Stories about vigilante superheroes fighting super criminals often depict the characters wearing some pretty bizarre costumes. Costumes have evolved from brightly colored spandex to ‘70s leisure suits, to ‘80s punk outfits, to whatever exactly happened during the ‘90s. The costumes of heroes continue to evolve, but many villains have been featured in some of the most questionable outfits ever imagined.
Supervillains have taken on some of the most outlandish costumes in the comic book business. We sometimes look for visual cues to tell us who the bad guy in the story really is, and when a character is seen wearing sultry and seductive black leather, we automatically decide not to trust them. Comic book creators have gone over the edge in the past, giving characters less clothing and accentuating specific body parts. Whether it’s a guy or a girl, sometimes they overdo it and we’re left with a pretty trashy costume that no one wants to remember. Here are 20 supervillain costumes that will definitely make you blush!
15 EVIL SUPERGIRL
When DC Comics decided to reintroduce Kara Zor-El, the true cousin of Superman, back into the DC Universe, creators decided to make her as modern as possible. That meant Supergirl now embodied what people (men) believed was the pinnacle of beauty in 2004. She was unnaturally skinny with straight blonde hair and a costume that made her look more cheerleader than superhero.
This version of the character came with a twist, though, because she had an evil side to her. Manipulated by Darkseid, she started wearing some kind of weird leather bikini top with low-cut hot pants and platform shoes. It was the easiest way to make people believe she had been corrupted, but it was also unpleasant on the eyes. Thankfully she didn’t wear it for very long.
14 WHIPLASH
Iron Man doesn’t have many recognizable villains, which is why Marvel decided to invent one for Iron Man II. Mickey Rourke’s Ivan Vanko was created as a combination of existing villains Whiplash and Crimson Dynamo. The result was a bizarre combination of character elements that resulted in some kind of Russian Tony Stark doppelganger dressed to look prison-chic.
The hair, tattoos, and metal teeth seemed to directly juxtapose his technical skills as a scientist and engineer. In the end we got a fight scene where Rourke went shirtless and simply wore the character’s harness and energy whips in a fight against Tony Stark on a race track. He did eventually wear a full suit of armor, but the trashier outfit he wore earlier in the film is all anyone remembers today.
13 HARLEY QUINN
Harley Quinn began her life in a full jester bodysuit on Batman: The Animated Series and her early appearances in the DC Universe. When the New 52 was launched, Harley was given a full makeover in order to make her more deviant and somewhat in line with her depiction in the Arkham Asylum series of video games. The results were questionable, though they were a beginning to massive success.
She was reimagined as wearing nothing but a skirt and a corset set against a red and blue color scheme. The costume seemed overly revealing and didn’t really have much function other than to get male comic book readers interested. Suicide Squad didn’t exactly help matters, but she was eventually given another revamp that reintroduced her black and red color scheme and proved to be very successful.
12 MALICE
As a superhero, Sue Storm has gone through her fair share of bad costumes, but nothing was as trashy as what she wore when she became the evil Malice for a short time. After being mentally and emotionally manipulated by the evil Psycho-Man, she took on the persona of a supervillain who attempted to destroy the other members of the Fantastic Four.
During her time as Malice, she dressed in attire you might see in someone’s very, very private collection which the keep hidden at home. She wore a spiked black mask, something that resembled a revealing bathing suit, and thigh-high black boots. Sue first made this startling change in 1985, which drastically altered a character with decades of history. The Fantastic Four were able to save her and return her to normal, though.
11 JUGGERNAUT
The Juggernaut’s inclusion in X-Men: The Last Stand may be the single worst example of a movie catering directly to fan service. The character was seemingly included in the film just so Vinnie Jones could recite a single line of dialogue taken directly from a popular internet parody video that was circling around at the time of filming.
Though the character is not actually a mutant in the comics, his origin, and therefore his costume, had to be altered in order to make him one in the movie. The end result was a character who wore a half shirt seemingly made out of leather straps for some reason. While he certainly resembled the character, he didn’t exactly improve on the comic book look. It all seemed a little too low-rent.
10 JOKER’S DAUGHTER
If you want to talk about trashy supervillain costumes, look no further than the New 52 Joker’s Daughter, who basically lives in the trash. This version of the character is obsessed with the idea that she is the biological daughter of the Joker and goes on to wear her father’s face like a mask. Her costume isn’t particularly notable, but it is ripped and in tatters like something she found in the trash.
Depending on who is drawing her, she either wears an ugly torn up T-shirt or something that looks like a bra. She looks pretty gross overall, and considering she lives in the sewer, it’s likely she also smells pretty bad. She’s been on the Suicide Squad and worked with the Red Hood for a time, but no one seems interested in getting her the help she really needs.
9 RUBY THURSDAY
Ruby Thursday has to be one of the weirdest comic book characters ever invented. Around since the 1970’s, she is a normal woman with a red ball for a head. She can control the red ball, giving her several abilities a normal head would never allow her to do, but it’s hard to take her seriously when she doesn’t exactly dress for the occasion.
She has made many costume changes over the years, but she is very rarely depicted wearing something that is actually appropriate for fighting superheroes. Sometimes she wears a full bodysuit with an opening down the middle, other times its simply a bra and some tight pants. Whatever she wants to wear, it should just have some kind of bodily protection element added in, otherwise what’s the point?
8 MYSTIQUE
It’s hard to imagine a more questionable costume than a character who literally doesn’t wear anything over an entire trilogy of films. Rebecca Romijn was the first live-action Mystique before Jennifer Lawrence took over the role, but the filmmakers left out an important aspect of the character: her costume.
Apparently someone decided that Mystique didn’t actually need to wear clothing in these movies. Sure, she’s blue and scaly, but she’s out there fighting people wearing absolutely nothing. She still wears clothing in the comics, with her trademark white outfit perfectly serviceable for a live-action film. Instead, we have a shapeshifter who can clearly imitate clothing going out of her way to not do that. It’s weird and should have given the films an R rating, if we’re being honest.
7 ENCHANTRESS
Whatever costume the makers of Suicide Squad decided to put the Enchantress in for the movie clearly never read a comic book before. She traditionally wore a stereotypical witch's attire or some kind of robed gown. Whatever Cara Delevingne was forced to wear for the film wasn’t what you would consider comic book accurate or really tasteful in any way.
She basically just wore a fancy bikini while looking as dirty as humanly possible. She spends a good portion of the film covered in dirt and grime, making her look pretty gross. At the end of the film she becomes far cleaner than she was but the outfit doesn’t get any better. She also starts wearing some elaborate headdress that looks pretty weird. If only the makers of the movie tried even a little bit.
6 VARTOX
DC’s Vartox is a hero much like Marvel’s Starfox is a hero; he’s well intentioned but his methods are extremely questionable. He was introduced in the ‘70s as a rival of Superman, and was created as an analogue to Sean Connery’s character in the film Zardoz. In more recent stories, he has been portrayed as a creepy would-be hero, who female heroes like Power Girl have to work with.
His traditional costume is much like Zed’s own outfit with high boots and short pants while leaving most of his body exposed. Vartox is also an extremely hairy man, which he is not shy about sharing nearly every inch of, and isn’t exactly the ladies man he thinks he is. While he isn’t really a villain, it’s probably fair that most characters he encounters think otherwise.
5 EMMA FROST
Perhaps the most infamous member of the X-Men is also one who started off as one of their greatest villains. As a member of the Hellfire Club, Emma Frost was a menace to the X-Men for years thanks to her strong telepathic will. It turned out that she wasn’t all bad in the end, but like Jessica Rabbit came to be known, she was just drawn that way.
Still, Emma has hovered between hero and villain over the course of her existence. It would seem that no matter what what was going on with her life, she was wearing some impossibly revealing costume to go along with it. Sometimes she was a temptress and other times she was an effective headmistress of the school. Either way, one can hardly say that lingerie is appropriate attire to fight in.
4 WHITE RABBIT
David Finch created his own version of White Rabbit for DC Comics, seemingly just so he had an excuse to draw a character in lingerie. Batman first runs into the mysterious White Rabbit during an outbreak at Arkham Asylum. The character is later discovered to be the pathological alter-ego of Jaina Hudson, a woman Bruce Wayne briefly dates in the New 52.
This new character seemingly has no clear superpower other than being able to create a caucasian duplicate who has no idea how to dress in public. She’s basically just a glorified drug dealer, since she has no other abilities. The whole Playboy Bunny look was probably considered to be titillating to someone, but really it’s just a trashy costume created seemingly for the sake of it.
3 TRIGON
Have you seen the way the demon Trigon dresses? He’s mostly just naked with a few pieces of clothing added in to make him sensible for a mainstream comic book audience. He’s topless with a pair of insanely high white boots and a small flap of fabric that somehow manages to cover up his groin. How he’s able to do that while towering over everyone else in existence is a mystery, but it probably has to do with demonic magic.
Over the years, DC Comics has attempted to give him some additional clothes, including a cape, a bigger bikini bottom, and even something of a corset. We all know that Raven has her issues with her father, but him dressing like this is probably not helping matters.
2 SELENE
In many ways the supervillain Selene Gallio is very much a ripoff of the more popular Emma Frost. They were both created by Chris Claremont as members of the Hellfire Club, where women are clearly not allowed to wear normal clothing. She basically came to wear a variation of Frost’s own costume, which is basically just lingerie for supervillains.
While Emma was the Hellfire Club’s White Queen, Selene was the Black Queen, necessitating her wearing a black outfit instead. Just as Emma has worn more clothing over the years, Selene has also taken to covering up a bit more. That’s not to say she dresses modestly at this point, but at least she has moved up from the simple corset and now wears an actual... bra?
1 BOMB QUEEN
Bomb Queen is a supervillain who basically does whatever she wants. After taking full control of New Port City, she was able to outlaw superheroes and put restrictions on crime. This made her insanely popular among her citizens and made it impossible for anyone to depose her. It also has given her free reign to basically wear (or not wear) whatever she feels like.
Created by writer and artist Jimmie Robinson, Bomb Queen has existed in many different series and has shown some incredibly explicit and graphic scenes. The character’s own costume makes it almost impossible to display her in any kind of social setting. Typically she is seen wearing something of a bikini with low-rise pants that are basically just leggings. To put it lightly, Bomb Queen seems to be very comfortable in her own body.