It goes without saying, but a key element of any successful superhero is the costume. It’s pretty hard to imagine Spider-Man becoming such a cultural phenomenon without the eternally cool webbed costume designed by Steve Ditko, and had DC Comics gone with Bob Kane’s original red-and-black look for Batman, we almost certainly wouldn’t have 15 different theatrically released films starring the character.
There’s so much iconography contained in the aesthetic of a comic book costume that bringing them to life on-screen requires an immensely difficult balancing act, with costume designers having to thread the needle between something that is functional and looks good on camera while also keeping the core elements of the design. Oftentimes they nail all three, but occasionally a good live-action superhero costume is held back by an overreliance on CGI to touch it up – a problem that the HBO Max series Lanterns has corrected from the last time the character was presented in live-action.
