Sports Illustrated it ain’t …

With heartfelt thanks to Chris Sims for burning out my retinas with his retrospective of the Marvel Swimsuit Edition comics of the morally turgid Nineties, I present to you what is possibly the worst costume ever. Anywhere. In this, or any conceivable universe:

swimsuitnamor

Seashells on man-parts is wrong. Just wrong. Let's not even get into how staggeringly uncomfortable that thing must be to wear, with the ridges and the coral and the sharp bits ... man, talk about "shrinkage". ::shudder::

Here's how bad it is. It's so bad that just wearing it has turned Namor into a walking, noseless, undead mummy aqua-zombie. With incredibly viscous water oozing down his disturbingly ribbed musculature. It's either that, or the sight of his skimpy shell-Speedo got the local sperm whale a little too excited.

(Image and character ©1995, Marvel Comics, and the responsibility of Joe Quesada, who should be ashamed. Forever.)

15 Responses to Sports Illustrated it ain’t …

  1. Loki says:

    This is almost as bad as naked Spider-man.

  2. Niall Mor says:

    @Loki: Naked Spider Man? Never mind, I don’t want to know πŸ™‚

  3. Gero says:

    GAAAH! MY EYES!!! X__X

  4. remy says:

    Well, if the Little Mermaid can wear a seashell bra, then I guess Namor can….wear…a…forget I said anything

  5. song_bird says:

    I’m sure this would be pretty hot if Namor looked like himself. πŸ˜›

  6. song_bird says:

    I like Nova’s and Boom Boom’s the best πŸ˜€

  7. John says:

    I gotta tell ya…this just pisses me off. I’m ashamed that Marvel ever had this idea in the first place.

  8. PCFDPGrey says:

    Is it me, or does this look like the handy work of one Mr. Rob Leifeld to anyone else?

  9. kingmonkey says:

    It looks like someone tied Namor’s chest with hemp rope. Muscles are never that corded.

    Swimsuit issues… The things we try and forget. I never understood why my friends actually bought them. Didn’t Image end up doing the same thing at one point?

  10. Xstacy says:

    I bought them, along with the Year In Review. Of course, I subscribed to the original Excalibur, too, and I think those things are related. In the 90s it was kind of hard to find anything that didn’t take itself way too seriously.

  11. By Thoth I don’t even want to see the butt floss in the rearview! ROFL, the local sperm whale. HEY! FREE WILLY!

  12. PCFDPGrey says:

    Okay, I saw that Liefeld didn’t do this picture. He IS however credited with the Boom Boom picture. When I saw it, the first thing that popped into my head was “where are the pouches? Liefeld puts pouches on EVERYTHING.”

  13. Gero says:

    I’m kind of glad that he didn’t do this one, then…Just try to imagine where this guy might be hiding a pouch o__O

  14. NGpm says:

    Birth of Venus it ain’t either.

  15. Legatus says:

    Best thing of that Swimsuit Special was iron Man wearing shorts over his armor.

    You just can’t beat that silliness!