The Worst Superhero CostumesCase File #3: Rob Liefeld

In what could be called the "Fish in a Barrel Edition" of Worst Superhero Costumes, we tackle the costuming legacy of Rob Liefeld, former comics juggernaut and current symbol of all that was horribly wrong with the medium in the 1990s. To be fair, Liefeld is a convenient symbol of an overcooked, overextended corporate and creative atmosphere, a time of big guns, big money, and, on the whole, shitty product. He is, in other words, an unfortunate scapegoat.

But let's face it, there's also a reason the dude has become shorthand for "crap," that he is to '90s comics what Candlebox is to '90s music. (For proof, check out Progressive Boink's "The 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings.") To begin with, the guy couldn't draw the human figure to save his life. He couldn't draw feet, he gave everyone tiny heads and ridiculous muscles, and he went to the Wolverine Haircut Academy. And then there were the characters. Liefeld characters had one of four "powers"—giant gun, giant sword, giant knife, or some combination of the three—and they typically wore several layers of straps, armor, shoulder pads, pouches, unnecessary headgear, eye-searingly garish colors, and more pouches. Call it "hyper-paramilitary chic." Let's play a little game I like to call "Count the Pouches." The rules are simple: see if you can count the pouches in this picture:
Perhaps the purest distillation of the Liefeld aesthetic, as it were, is his most famous creation, Cable.

Cable ostensibly has some mutant powers, but the only one he ever seemed to use was his ability to carry more shit around than anyone else. Need gum? A Band-Aid perhaps? Cable is your man. Between the massive backpack, two swords, an outlandishly proportioned gun, and the cavalcade of pads and pouches, it's a wonder the man can move at all, let alone pass through doorways or get into a car. He just looks like the world's angriest hiker.

While Cable may represent the apotheosis of Liefeld's various costume tics, he is far from the most hideous example. Hell, I'm not even sure what is the most egregious case. Perhaps it's best to run down some of the candidates, and let you decide for yourself.

Luckily for Shatterstar, he has a name as insipid as his outfit. After all, consistency is important in the superhero game, and Shatterstar sucked across the board. It looks like an orderly at the local mental hospital couldn't remember if he was supposed to attend boxing practice, fencing practice, or football practice, so he just grabbed some equipment for all three and headed out the door. Throw in Billy Ray Cyrus's haircut and some Hasidic curls and you've got yourself the most batshit crazy "superhero" ever. Everything about this guy says "cross to the other side of the street"—it's like running into a wild-eyed homeless dude with an eightball jacket and a croquet mallet.

It's difficult to tell if the awesomely named Stryfe is an evil future version of Cable or the bassist in G.W.A.R. He certainly spells his name like he's in a metal band. The Marvel Universe's most deadly blender attachment, Stryfe is also its most carelessly caped villain. What material could stand up to his endless protrusions, spikes, and blades? An upholsterer's nightmare to be sure.

Liefeld didn't create Boomer (formerly worst-name-ever contestant "Boom Boom"), but he is responsible for dressing her like this. On the off chance that enough of these belts, straps, and buckles are unfastened to dislodge her from her unitard, she can always remember which outfit is hers; it's the one that says "Boomer" down the leg. Unfortunately, her hot-pink and yellow ensemble is just a flashy front for the insecure little girl who still has to wear painful, cumbersome orthodontic headgear into battle.

Easy target? Most definitely. But for these heinous transgressions against taste, Leifeld deserves all the grief he's gotten lo these many years. Forever blurring the line between superheroes and outpatient gun nuts, he helped make the 1990s unsafe for a generation of comic book fans.