I’m kind of annoyed by most superheroes as characters because of the costume thing.

The spandex thing that’s a pretty-common convention was because the Comic Code Authority disallowed nudity. Solution? Skintight outfits.

Now, I’ve got no problem with nudity, or salaciousness, or outright adult comics for that matter.

But we’ve got all that historical baggage of just about everyone running around in skintight outfits. So a lot of the genre winds up with having to come up with elaborate explanations as to why they’re wearing the things.

The CCA is long dead. You can have nudity or salaciousness in comic books if you want. But the convention is still with us because of designs that date to that era, and it’s just senseless. I feel like it kinda restricts the genre and doesn’t help the immersion.

There are comic characters who don’t do the spandex thing. John Constantine or Dick Tracy wear trenchcoats. Dream in Sandman doesn’t have fixed garb, but doesn’t do spandex.

The Parahumans series – Worm and Ward web serials, not comic books but certainly superheroes – are what I’d call some examples of modern superheroes that don’t have a design dating from an era where there were CCA constraints. Granted, they aren’t graphic novels or comic books, so there are different incentives, but even so.