The Postmodern Body

During the Iron Age of superhero comics (1980–87), the seeds of Postmodernism took root and, arguably, the first flowering was Crisis on Infinite Earths, a twelve-issue miniseries published by DC Comics from April 1985 through March 1986. Created by writer Marv Wolfman and artists George Pérez, Jerry Ordway, Mike DeCarlo, and Dick Giordano, Crisis was an attempt to restore clarity to DC's multiple narratives, which over the years had become plagued with internal contradictions. Most of DC's superheroes, including Batman and Superman, were given a makeover, one that was intended to simplify their histories and eliminate inconsistencies from their backstories, while also employing various Postmodern strategies to deconstruct the superhero.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, written and illustrated by Frank Miller, was published as a four-issue series (February–June 1986), and Watchmen, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, as a twelve-issue series (September 1986–October 1987). Through their concatenation of Postmodernist preoccupations, Dark Knight and Watchmen are conscious attempts to elevate the cultural prestige of comic books. They represent meditations on the nature of the superhero, as well as the nature of superheroism. Before the 1980s, heroes were seen as a social and political necessity, but Dark Knight and Watchmen questioned the absolutism of this assumption. Neither Batman nor Rorschach, the hero of Watchmen, enjoy the support of the consensus. Both are depicted as morally ambiguous, and Rorschach, especially, is portrayed as essentially psychotic. Like Batman, Rorschach is a vigilante superhero without superpowers, but unlike Batman, he lacks any veneer of glamour. He is known for his acrid body odor and his disheveled, down-at-the-heels appearance. His costume, among other items, consists of a trench coat with several missing buttons, and a latex mask with a Rorschach inkblot pattern. Rorschach has no qualms about killing people, and one of his methods of making criminals talk is breaking their fingers one by one.

Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns spawned a movement of "grim-and-gritty guy-with-a-gun" superheroes, the quintessential representation of which was the Punisher. Created by writer Gerry Conway and artists Ross Andru and John Romita Sr., he first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man No. 129, February 1974. The Punisher (Frank Castle) is driven to wage a one-man war on criminals by the deaths of his wife and children, who were killed by the mob after witnessing a gangland execution in Central Park. Like Rorschach, he is willing to murder his enemies, a threat made explicit by the death's head emblazoned on his costume.

The Iron Age's focus on death finds resonance in the costumes of John Galliano, Thierry Mugler, Alexander McQueen, and Walter van Beirendonck. Adorned with skulls, hellfire, and other symbols of mortality, they embody both the multifocal eclecticism and semiological complexity that characterizes the Postmodern body of both fiction and fashion and the darker terrors of our contemporary world.

Costume Designer Quotes