From tracksuits that have seen better days to slick vinyl catsuits, we're here to investigate
what DC's bad guys actually look like in the comics they still call home, and just how
different that is from what makes it onto the silver screen.
The Joker has a pretty packed wardrobe.
Batman t-shirts?
He's sporting them in Sean Murphy's miniseries, Batman: White Knight.
Sleeveless doctor's coat?
Joker donned one in Batman: RIP.
But still, over the decades, a central look emerges: classic suits and tuxedos in green,
orange, purple, and red.
He first appeared in a large bowtie, purple gloves, and well-pomaded hair.
Though artists often add a couple unhinged details to his look, most often mussed hair
or outsize teeth, the Joker tends to keep himself as well-turned-out as a Downton Abbey
character.
Modern movie audiences have three very different Jokers to consider.
Heath Ledger's clown is a mangy monstrosity whose makeup visually flakes off throughout
the movie.
Joaquin Phoenix's take on the character looks to famous mid-century television clowns like
Bozo and Howdy Doody's Clarabell for inspiration.
Jared Leto's demonic wild child swaps formal wear for face tattoos and lurid purple coats
over a bare chest.
Each of these interpretations tells the audience something different: Leto's Joker is more
of a mafioso than a mastermind, Phoenix's Joker is a 1970s everyman gone off the deep
end, and Ledger's Joker is a nightmarish vision of urban decay.
But not one of them is as sharply dressed as the madman of the monthlies.
Some of those movie guys are just a mess.
"Do I really look like a guy with a plan?"
Doomsday's appeal is pretty much summed up by his name.
He is the reckoning at the end of Superman's adventures.
Appropriately, he is best known as the villain of "The Death of Superman."
The result of alien scientist Krypton's genetic engineering, Doomsday is a grey goliath whose
skeleton spikes through his skin.
Doomsday's incarnation in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was a very different creature
indeed.
The product of Lex Luthor's meddling with General Zod's corpse, this Doomsday was as
large and gray as his comic counterpart, but not quite as hard-edged.
Though spikes of bone emerged mid-battle from his skin, he starts out as a deformed grey
brute.
Moreover, this Doomsday developed the ability to shoot blasts of energy out of his hands
after absorbing the energy from a nuclear strike.
The Doomsday of the comics only develops this ability after his fateful battle with the
Outsiders Superteam.
Doomsday on film is a grunting, primal vision of brutality, something like the distant ancestor
of the comics version.
The feline fatale likes to keep it sleek.
The Catwoman of the 1966 Batman TV series accentuated basic black with glittering accessories
and a striking mask.
Batman Returns imagined Catwoman as a city girl pushed to madness, symbolized by her
visibly stitched patchwork of the catsuit.
Halle Berry's costume was shredded, but still as dark as the shadows.
The Dark Knight Rises depicted Catwoman as a burglar in matte black, with pointed stilettos
and cat-eared tips on her goggles.
These incarnations, though impressive in their cinematic vision, rely on small details to
do the heavy lifting of her characterization.
But the Catwoman of comics has a more varied wardrobe, ranging from emerald evening wear
to royal purple catsuits.
For all that, Trail of the Catwoman artist Darwyn Cooke's 2001 redesign was so immediately
iconic.
In it, Catwoman wears a simple catsuit and a cat-eared cowl, set off by flat-footed motorcycle
boots and flared goggles.
It's simple and remarkably practical, but its sleek details make it timeless.
Catwoman's taste might run to the extravagant, but when she's on the job, she keeps things
functional.
"What are we gonna do!"
"There's not much we can do, if that's who I think it is."
Being the literal god of war requires an impressive outfit.
Ares does just that in the 2017 Wonder Woman film.
With shining armor, spiked helmet, and enormous weaponry, War sure ain't subtle.
Ares of the comics follows suit.
In George Perez's classic tale on Wonder Woman, and Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott's recent revival,
he wears dark blue armor, a plumed helmet, and a billowing cape.
It's largely the same design as what ended up on screen, aside from one important difference.
In the early comics, Ares has no discernible body.
Every inch of flesh is covered, save a narrow gap in his helmet.
On any normal human, this would reveal a portion of the nose, lips, and chin.
On the comic character, however, there is only depthless darkness, studded with two
smoldering eyes.
Was it cool to see the man who played mild-mannered Remus Lupin glowering beneath a helmet?
Yes.
But it would have been equally striking to see his face disappear after doing away with
his disguise.
Remember when the villain of Suicide Squad opened an apocalyptic portal through the art
of aggressive belly dancing?
In Enchantress' defense, when you're a millennia-spanning interdimensional witch-goddess, you can pretty
much make your own rules.
That certainly applied to the character's wardrobe, which shifted from rags and tarnished
jewelry to a billowing two-piece affair, crowned by a rune-inlaid headdress.
Was it an outfit made for serious battle?
No way.
But Enchantress' powers allow her to do…other things.
"Please don't touch me.
Please don't touch me."
Introduced in a 1966 issue of Strange Adventures as "The Switcheroo-Witcheroo," the Enchantress
has cycled through many outfits.
But all of them are in her signature bright green and most feature a flamboyant cloak.
Perhaps her most unique costume is her very first: a classic witch hat, paired with a
harlequin-patterned mini-dress.
Not great for Suicide Squad, but perfect for the swinging '60s.
Doctor Poison is one of Wonder Woman's earliest villains, and one of her most terrifying.
A princess working as the head of the Nazis' poison division, she disguises her gender
under green doctor's gear and a mask with a rictus grin.
Her greatest creation was "Reverso," a poison that would force Allied soldiers into doing
the opposite of what they were told.
Doctor Poison isn't a princess, in disguise as a man, or working with the Nazis in 2017's
Wonder Woman.
But she is just as deadly.
In an intriguing twist, Doctor Poison's mask was reimagined as a series of flesh-colored
plates, affixed to her face to hide the scars exposure to her own creations wrought.
Those plates aren't just striking, but rooted in actual history: soldiers disfigured in
World War I brought about new innovations in prostheses.
Doctor Poison might not have been the leering specter of the Axis she began as, but she
filled Wonder Woman audiences with a comparable sense of terror.
DC's New Gods exceeded conventional notions of superheroes.
They've got fabulous powers, extravagant outfits, and wield technology capable of transporting
them across dimensions.
Steppenwolf is a New God, and his incarnation in the Justice League lived up to that race's
larger-than-life reputation.
He was a CGI colossus of armor, stone, and steel.
Beneath his costume he was oddly waxen in appearance, his skin a drained gray crisscrossed
by alien grooves.
Add in two bony outgrowths off his chin, and you had a truly fearsome-looking opponent.
"She's power.
And power is the only law!"
The Steppenwolf of modern comics is similarly grand, but he didn't start out that way.
He first appears in the New Gods series sporting green medieval armor, complete with a bycocket
hat, that makes him look more Robin Hood than New God.
But in modern renditions, his armor is red and black, accented by a skull worn at his
waist and red, claw-like stripes atop his shoulders.
In sharp contrast to the Steppenwolf of the movies, however, his comic incarnation is
notably handsome.
He wears a dark beard, sometimes twisted into long braids.
Movie Steppenwolf is utterly unknowable, while comic Steppenwolf is a man who, dressed differently,
could pass for a hero.
As a kid whose powers allow him to transform into a buff, superheroic adult in a flashy
red suit, Shazam embodies one of the most potent fantasies in all of comics.
Appropriately, his arch-enemy, Dr. Sivana, is boldly drawn.
Dr. Sivana, a criminal mastermind whose love of depraved science is matched only by his
ego.
"Give me your power, or die."
His appearance in Shazam! isn't too terribly far off the mark.
As in the comics, he is portrayed as a bald, smirking man who oozes ill intentions.
But unlike the villain Mark Strong portrayed on screen, the Dr. Sivana of the comics is
a hunched little man with an oversized head.
His thick glasses obscure his eyes, which, paired with the old-school lab coat he favors,
create nothing so much as the very image of the mad scientist.
Add in the diabolical alien worm, Mr. Mind, he is often seen with, and it all results
in a man you'd give a wide berth to on the street.
Ra's al Ghul didn't become the head of the League of Assassins through subtlety.
He clawed his way to power over the course of centuries, infiltrated the halls of the
wealthy and connected through genius and determination, and sired Talia al Ghul, herself one of Batman's
most formidable foes.
Accordingly, he cuts a fine figure: Ra's adorns his roguish good looks with emerald green
capes bordered in gold, intricately wrought jewelry, and often a lush length of fur.
Liam Neeson's portrayal in Batman Begins is a dramatic departure from this rich refinement.
There, Ra's blends into the shadows through muted suits and dark training gear.
He is less the distant master of a thousand deadly hands and more the hands themselves,
seeking to add Bruce Wayne to his ranks through subterfuge.
"You haven't beaten me.
You have sacrificed sure footing for a killing stroke."
Though his subdued aesthetic is indeed appropriate to that approach, one can't help but miss
the flamboyance of his comic incarnation.
The man who would become Ocean Master was born to power.
He's the type of guy who likes to refer to his trident as a "scepter," and dresses accordingly.
Orm wears purple scaled armor, a finned helmet that covers his eyes with blank red oblongs,
and a cape, even underwater.
Ocean Master's final costume in Aquaman is actually pretty darn close to what he wears
in the comics, including the cape.
But that resplendent outfit comes only at the end of the film, during the final face-off,
and is preceded by a host of other extravagant costumes.
He begins with dark armor of considerably more bulk than the sleek looks favored by
the other denizens of Atlantis.
Later, he dons another set of armor wrought entirely of gold, topped off by a finned crown.
Orm's costumes send one very clear message: he is to be obeyed, and he wants everyone
to know it.
Supervillain gimmicks range wildly in fearsomeness.
Sometimes you get the Joker, essentially the embodiment of chaos, and sometimes, well,
you get a guy like Captain Boomerang.
No one is exactly surprised to see a guy named Captain Boomerang in a well-worn track suit
and popped-collar trench coat in Suicide Squad, missing a few teeth and sporting some facial
scars.
He's a guy who revels in being weird and even a little off-putting, the kind of oddball
who fits in right alongside Killer Croc and Harley Quinn.
Captain Boomerang is just as weird in the comics, but with a good deal more panache.
Rather than a ratty tracksuit, he began as a man in a boomerang-patterned tunic, ascot,
and jaunty blue garrison cap.
Though recent incarnations have favored a more toned-down look, his looks remain well-cut
and elegant, and still often incorporate boomerang patterns and an ascot.
He might be strange, but he's going to look good doing it, even when he's bothering his
teammates with his boorishness and hijinks.
One can only imagine the horror Captain Boomerang of the comics would feel upon glimpsing his
motley film self, to say nothing of the latter's preoccupation with unicorns.
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