Marvel has long been the bestselling superhero publisher, and its characters became even more popular than ever thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The MCU became an unassailable juggernaut up until 2019, taking aspects of the Marvel Universe and bringing them to the greater pop culture. While it didn’t always do the best job of adapting the comics, one place where Marvel Studios always did a great job was with the costumes. They made their costumes as close to those in the comics as possible, and this made a huge difference. A lot of fans praised the movies unequivocally for the costumes, and said that the movies were more “comic-accurate” because of the sartorial splendor of the characters.
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Of course, actual comic fans know that the MCU was never really all that good at giving people comic-accurate costumes, they just did the minimum (which few even tried before them). There are so many fantastic costumes in the comics, and looking at where the MCU is now, there’s a good chance that we won’t see some of them on the big screen. These seven Marvel comics costumes are never going to become a part of the MCU, and that’s honestly kind of a tragedy.
7) Green Goblin’s Classic Costume
Green Goblin is an amazing character, one who has played an integral role in the history of the Web-Slinger. Norman Osborn, and his son Harry, both wore one of the coolest costumes ever, a goblin suit with a purple one-piece, boots, gloves, purple purse, and a hat. It’s a great costume, and we’ve never gotten anything like it in the movies. Norman made his MCU debut in Spider-Man: No Way Home, but he didn’t get any kind of costume. While the MCU usually tries for accurate costumes, if they were going to do that with the Green Goblin, we already would have seen it. We’ll never get this classic costume, and that’s a tragedy.
6) Rogue’s Original Costume
Rogue’s best known costume is the Jim Lee-designed number that debuted in X-Men (Vol. 2) #1, and was popularized in X-Men: The Animated Series. This is the look that everyone thinks of when they think of the mutant Southern Belle, and that’s almost certainly the one we’ll get from the MCU. The X-Men have some amazing costumes, and Rogue’s yellow and green with the leather jacket actually isn’t her best, at least in my opinion. I’ve always been partial to the original costume, a green and white number that was super simple and fits her character like a glove. It was brought back in the late ’90s, and she’s used modifications of it in the ’00s and ’10s. It’s a cool costume, but the MCU is definitely going to go with the ’90s costume.
5) Cable’s Year 2000 Costume
Chris Claremont’s 2000 return to the X-Men brought with it a lot of changes, including numerous new costumes. We’ll never see any of those costumes in the MCU, because no one but me likes Claremont’s 2000 run. However, there are some excellent looks from this period, including Cable’s. Most Cable costumes incorporate the ’90s cliches of pouches, guns, bandoliers, and shoulder pads; these are the things that people think of when they think of his costumes. However, the 2000 costume really didn’t have any of these things; it was a more traditional superhero costume than he usually wore (his late ’90s costume is also pretty great and more superhero-y, and we’ll never get that one either). The MCU will definitely go with the cliche ’90s costume, like Deadpool 2 did, so we’ll never get this superior one.
4) The Actual Iron Spider Armor
So, one of the things that a lot of people talk about when it comes to MCU Spider-Man is his relationship to Iron Man. His first two movie costumes were created by the eroic genius, with the second one basically being the MCU version of the Iron Spider armor. It’s even called the Iron Spider costume, but it’s nothing like the far superior comic version of the Iron Spider armor. The comic version uses Iron Man’s colors and Spider-Man’s simplistic design sense to create something simple that gets its point across. It’s an amazing looking costume, and it’s never going to be on the big screen unfortunately.
3) Black Widow’s Villain Costume
MCU Black Widow was first introduced in Iron Man 2, and was very different from the first appearance of the character in the comics. Back then, Natasha Romanoff was a Russian femme fatale spy at first who battled Iron Man, and mostly wore a black dress with a fur scarf, forearm length gloves, and a hat and veil. She wore this costume in several of her original appearances. The Black Widow of the ’60s is very different from the MCU versions, so we’re never going to get this version of the character, and even if we did at some point, she’s definitely not going to wear this costume.
2) Wolverine’s Black and Grey X-Force Costume
Wolverine has had some fantastic costumes over the years, and we got to see several of them in the MCU in Deadpool/Wolverine. At least, we got to see versions of them. One that the movie missed is the black and grey costume that the ol’Canucklehead wore as a leader of X-Force. This costume fit the team’s black ops feel, and it made Wolverine look scarier than ever. It’s a costume that fits the diminutive mutant to a tee in a lot of ways — it’s stealthy and it looks like the costume that someone who is going to kill you would wear — but it’s not really a “superhero” costume. It’s his killing suit and I highly doubt the MCU is going to go all in on killer Wolverine to the extent that he needs this costume in the movies.
1) The Hawkeye’s Purple Masked Costume
I’m going to blunt — the MCU Hawkeye costumes have always been kind of bad. They don’t look offensive, and they are technically comic accurate (the first one is a modification of the Ultimate Hawkeye costume, and his later costumes were based on the modifications made to the comics to make his costume look more like the movies), but they’re so boring. However, Hawkeye does have a fantastic costume in the comics that we’re never going to see and that’s the purple masked number he wore for decades. For my money, it’s one of the greatest costumes of all time, an example of amazing design elements and the perfect color (royal purple). The MCU, even if we get the big reboot everyone expects after Avengers: Secret Wars, will never put this costume on the big screen and that will always bother me.
What Marvel comic costumes would you like to see in the MCU? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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