The Armored Body

The two primary paradigms of superherodom are the superpowered superhero, epitomized by Superman, and the non-superpowered superhero, embodied by Batman. Batman was the first of his breed, debuting eleven months after the Man of Steel in Detective Comics No. 27, May 1939. Created by writer Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane, he was a synthesis of several pop-culture characters, including the Bat, Zorro, Dracula, Dick Tracy, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, the Shadow, and the Phantom. While non-superpowered, Batman honed his mind and trained his body , becoming a self-made fighting machine. He was also armored with an ever expanding arsenal of specialized crime-fighting gadgetry, typically sharing a bat motif.

Over the years Batman's costume has come to integrate a number of protective mechanisms, such as bulletproof padding, primarily positioned around the bat symbol on his chest. The basic components, which were styled after Superman's, have remained virtually unchanged: unitard, trunks, gloves, boots, cowl, belt, and cape, the latter of which was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of an ornithopter. Both its color and design speak elegantly of night, fear, and the supernatural, as well as stealth, surprise, and concealment. Indeed, the costume's primary function is camouflage, shrouding the Caped Crusader in the darkness and deception of the night.

The concept of the armored body reaches its apogee in the figure of Iron Man, another non-superpowered superhero. Created by writers Stan Lee and Larry Lieber and artists Don Heck and Jack Kirby, he made his first appearance in Tales of Suspense No. 39, March 1963. The product of the Cold War, and specifically the Vietnam War, Iron Man's costume, like so many superheroes, is directly linked with his origin. Tony Stark, munitions manufacturer and inventor, is captured by the Viet Cong and builds a suit of armor from scrap iron to escape. Over the next few issues, the armor is redesigned, initially as a golden version of the original, and then as the red-and-gold armor that has become the character's trademark. Transforming Tony Stark into a machine, the armor, quite literally, embodies his power.

Like Batman, Iron Man serves as an effective metaphor for paranoia, but also as a metaphor for the quickly disappearing distance between the body and technology. Both these metaphors find resonance in the work of Thierry Mugler, Dolce & Gabbana, Pierre Cardin, Nicolas Ghesquiere, Rudi Gernreich, and Gareth Pugh, whose work invokes a heightened awareness of the frailties of the flesh. Meat and metal, skin and chromium coalesce to create a hybrid iconography of the body, as if poised in mid-transformation between human and machine.

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