Most comic book characters received their most iconic costumes early on, but for these five characters, their most iconic looks debuted years later

SUMMARY

 New costumes can redefine iconic characters years after their debut. Green Arrow and Deadshot both benefited greatly from costume changes.
 Black Widow’s outfit was inspired by the Miss Fury comic strip, while Quasar’s confusing new costume was a gift from a cosmic being that he later altered himself
 Nightwing ditched his disco-inspired suit for a darker look, becoming a Batman character with a more serious image.

In the latest Drawing Crazy Patterns, where we spotlight five recurring themes in comics, we examine five times that a notable comic book character adopted their most iconic costume at least five years after their initial comic bookd debut.

Generally speaking, when you talk about the most iconic version of a comic book character’s costume, they are almost always going to be the first costume that that character wore. Of course, when I say “the first costume,” there is always a grace period early on when the costumes are refined. For instance, when we first saw Batman, he wore purple gloves. That’s obviously NOT his most iconic look, but the rest of his costume was basically on point, with just some slight adjustments. Within five years, his look was defined. Similarly, Superman’s very first costume looked more like a strongman’s costume than anything else, with its small S on the chest and everything. However, within five years, his look had been refined into the famous costume that we’re all familiar with. Even Daredevil, who famously got a MUCH better all-red costume after his original costume, that costume change came in his first year.

What I am interested in here today, then, is when a character got a brand-new costume at least FIVE YEARS after making their debut, and then THAT costume is the one that became their most iconic look. It’s very rare (as, again, the first costumes are almost always the most iconic), but it DOES happen, and here are five examples of it happening.

Green Arrow got a new costume just in time to do some hard traveling

After debuting in 1941’s More Fun Comics #73, Green Arrow somehow managed to maintain a regular feature for over TWO DECADES! Almost the entire DC Universe lost their own features during that period, but outside of the “Trinity” of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, only a rare handful of superheros could lay claim to having debuted in the 1940s and still having a feature in the 1960s. Aquaman and Green Arrow were two of the very few examples. During this period, Green Arrow wore his original costume.

However, in 1969’s The Brave and the Bold #85, by Bob Haney and Neal Adams, Green Arrow decided to revamp his costume, and contemplated quitting as a superhero, thinking he could do more good in the world as a real estate developer. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne was filling out the term of a Senator who was nearly assassinated, and Batman was thinking basically the same thing – could he do more good as a Senator than as a superhero? Both heroes decided that being a superhero was still the way to go. However, Green Arrow DID at least use his new costume to go traveling around the country with Green Lantern as “Hard Travelin’ Heroes.” That costume has become THE standard Green Arrow costume ever since.

Black Widow received a new look for her first solo series that went back to the Golden Age

In 1970, Marvel was planning on launching a new double-feature anthology (something that the company had abandoned when it expanded its comic book line in 1968, so each of the heroes in the existing double-feature series got their own series), and Black Widow was one of the heroes who was got her own book.

First, John Romita gave her a new outfit in an issue of Amazing Spider-Man, which he explainedin Comic Book Artist #6 as:

I did the costume on the Black Widow. One of my favorite strips from when I was a kid was Miss Fury. They had done a Miss Fury book at Marvel, and when I found out they had the rights to her, I said I’d love to do a Miss Fury book sometime. I had done an updated drawing of Miss Fury, and Stan said, “Why don’t we redesign the Black Widow costume based on Miss Fury?” So I took the mask off her face, and made the Black Widow the one in the patent leather jumpsuit. That was why the Black Widow changed.

The costume has been the standard Black Widow look ever since, especially when it was adopted into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Deadshot was saved from comic book limbo due to his cool new costume

Deadshot was seemingly just a one-off forgotten Batman villain when a funny thing happened. Steve Englehart had already written all of the scripts for his run on Detective Comics ahead of time, but due to the vagaries of the DC schedules, Batman was set to have the Joker appear the same month that the Joker would have appeared in Detective Comics, so the editor asked Englehart to come up with a fill-in issue that could bump the Joker back an issue. The editor suggested he revive the old villain, Deadshot, and Marshall Rogers, the artist on the series (with the brilliant inker, Terry Austin), then redesigned Deadshot’s costume, making it look AMAZING.

Years later, when John Ostrander was choosing characters to use in his new Suicide Squad series, he was so impressed by the Deadshot design, that he added him to the team just based on his look, and Deadshot became a Suicide Squad icon, and that costume has remained iconic (even as TV and film actors playing Deadshot rarely wear the mask).

Quasar’s awesome new costume led to some crossover confusion

In a storyline in the pages of Quasar’s comic book series in the early 1990s, the hero helped out a powerful cosmic being known as Origin, who ostensibly came up with all of the origins of every superhero. As a thank you, Origin changed Quasar’s costume, and made it so that the costume was retroactively ALWAYS his costume.

That continuity confusion helped Quasar stop another bad guy, and at the end of that storyline, Quasar finally designed his OWN costume (actually designed by the awesome artist on the series, Greg Capullo), and that costume has become his most iconic design. Amusingly, though, the costume debuted right before Infinity Gauntlet, so his old costume appeared in that crossover, despite Quasar wearing his NEW costume in his tie-in issues (we later learned that Quasar absentmindedly had been switching his costumes back and forth without noticing).

Nightwing decided that disco was dead with his new costume

After being a member of the New Teen Titans for a few years, Dick Grayson basically became “just” a Titans character when he gave up the Robin identity, and became Nightwing. His initial costume was a bright costume with a high collar that people like to joke looks like a disco costume.

A decade later, the Batman titles essentially took Dick back from the TItans, and he became a Batman character again, and since he was now in the darker Batman titles, in 1995, he debuted a new, darker look, designed by the brilliant Brian Stelfreeze. Dick had gotten a new costume just a few years earlier, but this new look instantly became THE look for Nightwing, and will likely remain that way going forward (with some slight adjustments, of course, to the ICONIC version of the costume, but the changes were very slight, more akin to the stuff I mentioned about Superman’s S adjusting over time).

Remember, everyone, that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I’ll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is “missing” if it is not listed. It’s just not one of the five examples that I chose. If anyone else has suggestions for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns, drop me a line at [email protected]! Thanks James G. for suggesting Green Arrow for this list when I was spitballing possible ideas, and thanks to CBR’s own Scoot for helping me with the lede (and the fancy header image, too).