Red vs. Black Part 1: What is the Superior Spider Suit?

To further commemorate Venom’s 30th anniversary CS has permitted me to make a few additional tie-in articles. The first of which will be a three part examination of Spidey’s classic costume compared to the iconic black suit.

History time!

First a little potted history.

Spider-Man’s classic red and blue outfit debuted in Amazing Fantasy #15 back in 1962.

Though it has been tweaked (e.g. nobody colours the spider on his back blue anymore) and subjected to different artistic interpretations, broadly speaking the costume hasn’t significantly changed since its inception.

In fact outside of some rogue choices Spider-Man never wore an outright new costume until Amazing Spider-Man #252 in 1984. This was of course the debut of the iconic black costume.

You can read more about the history behind the black costume in this edition of Cobwebs, but to give you the cliff notes version, a fan wrote into Marvel suggesting a new black and red outfit for Spider-Man. The idea was purchased and numerous creators threw in their contributions to the concept winding up with something noticeably different from the fan’s original suggestion.

Whilst it first appeared in ASM #252, in-universe it chronologically first appeared in Marvel Super Heroes: Secret Wars #8. In fact the story goes that there was such a fan backlash against the black costume when it was initially announced that then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter demanded that ASM writer Tom DeFalco junk it as soon as possible. DeFalco managed to dissuade Shooter, convincing him to keep the costume at least until Spidey was shown to gain it in Secret Wars. However by then the readership at large had fallen in love with the costume prompting Marvel to establish that Peter’s girlfriend, Black Cat/Felicia Hardy, had created several cloth versions of it, allowing the outfit to appear whenever they wanted.

The Case for the Black Costume

Looking at the costume it’s easy to see why the fans embraced it.

It’s sleek, simple, scary, and I’ve even seen people say it’s downright sexy. In fact because it’s black it actually looks  more like your average spider as well whereas most spiders tend not to be red and blue.

It proves the old fashion adage that black goes with everything.

But the costume wasn’t just a great new style for Spidey to sport, the design held some practical uses too.

For one thing it’s stealthier than the classic suit obviously. Day or night, the classic red suit sticks out like a sore thumb, whilst the black costume can at the very least lend greater camouflage at night or in the depths of the shadows. This was a fact even noted in Spider-Man #13, by Todd McFarlane.

Psychologically the costume is also intimidating, which (as Batman will attest to) has its uses when you are a crime fighter. This element to the costume was of course the driving motivation (aside from movie cash-ins) behind Peter’s re-adoption of the costume when he began hunting the people responsible for Aunt May being shot during the Back in Black arc.

From a creative perspective, the darker aesthetic of the costume also worked much better in stories (similar to Back in Black) with darker or grittier subject matter, such as the Death of Jean DeWolff or Kraven’s Last Hunt arcs. 

Additionally it being such a radical departure from what came before was likely a critical factor to its success at the time. Indeed Ron Frenz (one of the earliest artists to work on the costume) has remarked that when he first saw the designs for the costume, he didn’t realise it was actually supposed to be Spider-Man as opposed to just a new villain.

We might be used to them now, but back in 1984 many readers hadn’t seen Spider-Man wear something so totally at odds with his classic costume and combined with the belief that it was here to permanently replace the old suit, the costume had an impact no other one has ever had for the web-head. Not even the Spider-Ben outfit, which was genuinely intended to be a permanent fixture from then on, has had as much of an impact.

All in all the costume was a total success and continues to be to this day. It’s almost as iconic as the classic costume and has at least as many, if not more, admirers.

That being said…I’m pretty glad it didn’t last.

The Case for the Red Costume

I know this might not strictly speaking be the popular opinion to hold within fan circles, but not only do I personally prefer the original red costume, more importantly I think it’s honestly better  for the character and the series for Peter Parker to wear it as opposed to the Black costume.

To begin with the red costume is in truth actually a more impressive visual design than the black outfit and as such far more practical for the purposes of visual storytelling; not to mention marketing various products.

As the late great Len Wein mentioned in a 2007 documentary, the design of the red costume renders it distinctive and striking from almost any angle. It leaves you in little doubt as to what character you are looking at, even if you were to see just a solitary piece of the costume (like a leg or shoulder), that you are looking at Spider-Man. Which, for the purposes of marketing a character in a visual medium, is obviously a good thing.

That unique design also means artists can generate a lot of really great, dynamic visuals from the costume and have more variety with it when filtering the design through their own style.

In contrast, the black costume’s simplicity doesn’t work quite as effectively visually speaking as the red costume. Beautiful as it is to look at, consider that there is only so many ways an artist can tweak the design of the chest symbol, eyes or white patches on Spidey’s hands compared to all the different ways the red costume can be rendered.

Or think about how if a panel demanded you only see a shot of Spidey’s leg or shoulder out of context you’d be hard pressed to pin down which character clad in solid black you were looking at. But if you could see black webs on black changing into light blue you’d immediately catch on that this was a Spider-Man comic book.

Whilst definitely less realistically practical in a visual medium like superhero comics practicality has to be balanced out against visual appeal. This means that, even though the black costume is realistically more practical, the red costume’s greater visual appeal helps Spider-Man look more distinctive, thus giving it an edge over the black suit.

After all consider that the black costume’s look bears more than a few similarities to Nightwing’s now iconic black outfit debuting a decade or so later. And he’s far from the only one with a suit of a similar design.

This commonality in design has little to do with anyone trying to rip off Spider-Man and more to do with the aesthetic just being common, easy and at the end of the day visually effective.

In contrast though, very few characters (exempting derivatives of him in the first place) have outfits that honestly resemble Spider-Man’s classic suit, and the few that do immediately make you think of Spidey anyway.

However there are a few other reasons why creatively speaking the red costume ultimately is the better fashion choice for Spidey.

But we’re going to get into those out next time.