Today I am pleased (horrified?) to give you what may be the worst costume I have ever seen. In a delicious twist of irony, it is worn by Kitty "Pryde", though after being forced to appear in public like this she probably changed that last name to "Weeping Shame". Witness the devastation, my friends:
I'll give you a moment to recover your eyesight and your sanity.
Better now? OK, off we ... wait, get that bucket in front of you, stat! Phew.
My theory is that this Kitty is actually a twisted alternate-reality love child of Sixties-Era Marvel Girl and Dazzler, whose mutant X-Factor is sartorial suckage. There's just no way an unpowered human could come up with something that bad. I mean, I'm counting eight colors in this outfit, and not one -- not one out of eight! -- is good. From the metallic gold unitard to the spoiled-tomato red to the actinic blue to the baby-vomit green, it's a non-stop chromatic assault on the eyes.
In fact, so thorough is the awfulness that I I bet those lime-green shorts are made of parachute material so the constant shush-shush sound they make with every step can irritate even the unsighted. When you go to that much effort to offend the senses, you don't want to leave anyone out.
If you can get past the ghastly colors (and if you can, you deserve a medal), you realize the actual item choices themselves are even worse. Thigh-high leg warmers? In three-color stripes? Capped by neon-yellow and blue roller skates?! That's so hideous I believe it caused a ripple in the time-space continuum, sending reverberations into the future, engendering a subconscious gag reflexive response resulting in the proliferation of leather spike-heeled thigh boots (see Frost, Emma).
So that's one positive thing to come out of this, I suppose.
And why the hell does Kitty Pryde -- whose power is to become immaterial, I remind you -- have lightning bolts streaking down her odd scoop-necked vest? Can you think of anything less stealthy than lightning bolts?
Not that she's sneaking up on anyone in that costume, of course. Insubstantial or not, I think even the walls would reject someone dressed like that from coming anywhere near them, much less passing through.
(Today's Bad Super Hero Costume comes to us by way of reader Aren, who I both thank and curse for showing it to us. The image is, of course, ©Marvel Comics. Though I bet they wish they didn't have to claim this one.)
That costume is the most god-awful mess I’ve ever seen!
Lol, I think she was going by Ariel at the time (As her super hero handle), and she was like 13 years old or something. In the 70’s no less. So yeah, go back in time to the 70’s, find a 13 year old girl and giver her super powers. Then put her on a team and have her design her won costume without any adult intervention, and this is what you get.
Hopefully, the writers/artists that came up with this design was trying to channel a 13 year old girl….so to speak….you know what I’m talkign about!
Stop Staring!!!!!
I couldn’t agree more, this outfit is terrible! I mean, horizontal stripes, what was she thinking?
well now I have officially thrown up out my eye sockets, this thing looks like something Kitty put together for the Burning Man Festival, thank god she changed her handle to shadowcat and went all ninja (it was the 80’s, everyone was a ninja)
I have no love for Kitty, but in defense of this eyesore, it was supposed to be bad. In story, she had put it together herself, to show that she was a real part of the team, instead of wearing the blue & yellow team costume that the New Mutants were wearing at the time. It was supposed to be what a 13 year old girl would think was a cool costume. And all these years later, it’s still horrendous.
Gah! What an assault on the eyes!
Unitard, mask, roller blades and those thigh-length socks just combine to make a complete costume of awfulness.
Actually, I correct myself, I think those are thigh-length legwarmers.
Even worse.
That they tried to pass this off as “13 year old girls dress like crap” almost makes it worse, in my opinion. If there’s one thing 13 year old girls are hyper-aware of, it’s not looking like an idiot.
That’s more like “a 40+ year old White guy who knows nothing about 13 year old girls thinks younger people are idiots” than it is anything else. It’s insulting.
Jeff, I agree with you 100%. I should have said “in explanation” instead of “in defense”, because there really is no defense for that to have ever been published.
Oww, dammit, my eyes are going to hurt for the rest of the day now.
The part that baffles me is the gold unitard. It’s shiny. Like it’s actually made of gold. Kitty is stuck in that ridiculous pose because she can’t move without phasing herself out of that obscenity of a costume.
Dan (5): What are you talking about? I’m sure it’s even worse to look at this today than it was back when this came out. It got worse with age.
Oh, yeah, I was just explaining, not defending. Though if you do a little digging into 70’s roller disco attire, you might find a lot of similar outfits.
Ugh.
Myro, it absolutly did, but even for the time it came out in ’81 it was bad. And again, it was supposed to be. I’m pretty sure this was the point where I realized I hated Kitty Pryde. I knew I didn’t like her, this turned it to hatred. Really, the best thing you can say about her is “Well, at least she isn’t Jubilee.”
If I remember correctly, she made this costume after being inspired by Dazzler. Which explains a lot really.
Jeff, geez man! Some kind of warning disclaimer would have been useful here. You just can’t undo this kind of scarring once you’ve experienced it.
This costume makes me glad I wasn’t following any comics at that time. Never even saw the costume until now.
Bad costumes seem to crop up fairly often in X-Men. I mean there’s this, several of Angel’s costumes, Dazzler and no doubt more.
Perhaps bad fashion sense sometimes comes with the X-Gene?
I feel like Kitty Weeping Shame would be a good name for a morose Native American superhero….
Is this a superhero? No, its a clown.
@Kytana: You’re giving clowns a bad name, putting them in the same category as this god-awful monstrosity. Heck, not even a 5 year old who dresses herself would come up with this eye-sore from the depths of hell.
Jeff, today is my birthday! How could you inflict that on me on a day like today? 🙂
Happy birthday Niall Mor!
Happy Birthday, Niall Mor. I’ll see what I.can do about sending you some eye bleach as a present.
Thanks, Myro. I think I’ll need it. Thanks for the wishes, MMI.
Happy B-day Niall Mor!
To be fair, she DID change this costume for something a LOT better, VERY shortly after this debuted…
I guess Kitty Pride went clothes shopping with Rainbow Bright and asked Jean Gray if she could dye her old Marvel Girl mask purple! God, it’s giving me a seizure!
…Now imagine Rob Liefeld drawing it…
So, Jeff, a while ago I was perusing your Bad Costume archives, and it occurred to me too late that I should have been cataloging everything you hate in costumes to try to put together, using your criteria, The Worst Costume of All Time for your viewing pleasure. But then I thought, “Wow, what a great idea for a character contest!” particularly with HM3’s recent capacity for color gradation. The most egregious agglomeration of as many examples of excess and awfulness as possible WINS!
Is your list of craptabulousness fresh enough in your mind that you could, without undue exertion, give us a rundown of what sucks to go by? Or if I go back through the archive again and run it down for you, to give your memory a refresher–if that word may be used in this context–would that be sufficient incentive to actually perpetrate such a horrendous and sadistic travesty on an unsuspecting populace?
Or would the whole thing be more harmful than fun?
That is a good idea, SpiderCow2010! I thought the “Bad Image Nineties” contest back in the day was a lot of fun, so I imagine this would be too. I’d be delighted to hear what “rules of bad fashion” you’ve gleaned so far.
@18.Worf: You are right. This clown is a little bit more scary:
http://media.canada.com/a373a9c0-95d4-4a46-a780-e930d6c76147/0710126-clown.jpg
And a five year old kid who dressed from her mum look like that:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwick/3264803667/
I found also the worst time ever for a bad costume were the 90er. Oh yeah…i must know that. *rolleyes
Out of all the bad outfit ideas I had, this makes me feel, no, KNOW, I could never do worse then THIS abomination.
She looks like she should be working at an old drive up fast food place like a roller skate sonic or burger hop.
one of the worst costumes ive seen since joel schumacher’s batman costume
I remember the issue (one!)in which Kitty wore that costume. Yes, it was SUPPOSED to be a god-awful 13-year old’s idea of a super-hero costume. Storm glared down anyone who tried to make a comment on it, although Wolverine insisted Kitty ditch the skates, because they made too much noise. Even better, it was designed by Dave Cockrum, who designed most of the new (post issue #94) X-Men’s costumes, as well as giving the Legion of Super-Heroes a re-design in the 70s. If it was bad, it was because it was meant to be!
This outfit debuted shortly after the issue of Dazzler where all the name heroes in Marvel were gathered at a disco to watch said mutant songbird make her big debut. While the Sprite costume was bad, it was openly based upon Kitty’s impression of Dazzler’s costume – gaudy, shiny, and chock full of “Look at me, look at me, look at me!”. It was pointed out in a later episode that the costume had two brief advantages – the skates did allow her to move about quickly in a tight area, and she could wave a flashlight over her legs to further illuminate a dark area. Not great, but it did point out just how much difference there was between Kitty and every other member of the team at that point.
I like this costume, I cant see what your all complaining about.