Do You Think that the X-Men's Costumes Sometimes Look Too Much Alike?

[The Batlord]

Not all of the time, but some of the time, the X-Men's costumes seem to be color-coordinated, and/or share similar designs. It can be argued that it makes sense for a team to have uniforms that are... ya know... uniform, but it can also be visually uninteresting. I've never read the original original X-books, but along with the fact that the entire team was for the most part a bunch whitebread dudes, all of their costumes looked alike. Angel had wings, and Beast eventually got furry, but, aside from Iceman obviously, they kind of looked boring. I think a lot of the appeal of the post-Giant-Size X-Men was that they were so different: different nationalities, Nightcrawler's and Colossus' distinctive appearances, more diverse personalities, AND they had such colorful, unique costumes. They were in no way interchangeable, and the extreme visual differences added a lot to that, at least subconsciously. With a series supposedly about accepting diversity that approach made a lot of sense. It seemed to be the same way all the way up to the 2000s (please correct me if I'm wrong), and all of a sudden they went back to uniforms that mostly looked alike. I could be wrong, but besides Storm and Beast, who were always mainstays, the number of visually distinctive X-Men also seemed to drop to an extent.

Now I see Uncanny X-Men, All-New X-Men, and a lot of the other titles, and there's still a lot of the same costumes and whitebread characters. It's understandable with All-New, since it's actually about the original X-Men, but still... And Uncanny seems to be the worst offender. Sometimes I confuse Emma and Magik, then there's the Stepford Cuckoos, they all look totally human, and aside from the healer guy, the minorities are pale enough to be mistaken for white half the time. (This isn't an issue with racial diversity, I'm just talking about visual diversity.) Although the boring characters don't help.

That's something I liked about Uncanny Avengers: the costumes are totally different and it helps to illustrate the wildly different characters. Granted, they're a team divided, and that was kind of the same dynamic as the post-Giant-Size X-Men team, but I'd still like to see costumes that are more interesting and really make the individual characters stand out more.

[ImprobableQuestion]

It depends on how the artist approaches the uniform idea (witness the attempt to make the Teen Titans exclusively red and black). I think the "matching uniform" idea suits the X-Men more than most any hero-team, if only for the iconography. In my opinion, an X-Man should have absuit that is:
Partly yellow
Partly black/navy
Contains at least one X, usually formed from the yellow and black/navy pattern.

Anything else (the distribution of the colors, any additional colors, belts, pouches, etc.) Is character specific.

[CraigTheCylon]

Given that the main 'theme' of typical X-teams is shunned people of varying backgrounds uniting in the name of the one thing they have in common - mutation - I do like when they attempt to have something like a uniform approach. And, like ImprobableQuestion, I'd ideally go for a mix of yellow and blue bodysuits with enough space left open for individual quirks or anomalies. The original New Mutants team is probably the best attempt at that I can think of.

Regarding the current Uncanny run, yeah, I've mistaken Emma for Magik and vice-versa before. That's not really a 'uniform' though, it's two separate characters who both happen to be blonde women given individual costumes that look incredibly similar completely by accident. I forget the exact reason why Emma can't wear white now, and that would be the most obvious way to differentiate them...plus Emma's outfit is just worse in general, so I feel that should be the ones that changes.

More on topic, though - these days most X-characters are old enough to have picked a particular individual style and ran with it, so the uniforms are the exception rather than the rule. Only teams rocking them now are the 05 (who obviously come from a time where uniform was the norm) and X-Factor (who are corporate-run, so their costumes are basically the equivalent of those ******* polo shirts Apple Store employees wear).

[ohsnapulon5000]

i miss the era of "mutant fashion" in general. I would pay to see M in an hot red Silvestri era Inferno variant of her original X-Factor costume.

[Moriarty]

not really. though i too have confused Emma for Magik. but hey, at least the days of everyone wearing leather is long behind us.

[Agent Z]

I don't mind the identical uniforms as it does make sense for them. The characters are still distinctive by their faces, hair, skin, personality etc. Somewhat off topic, what did people think of the black costumes for the movies? I personally liked them and thought they made sense given the medium and by the third film I think they did try to make them more distinctive (i.e Kitty having pink accents on her uniform).

[CraigTheCylon]

Somewhat off topic, what did people think of the black costumes for the movies? I personally liked them and thought they made sense given the medium and by the third film I think they did try to make them more distinctive (i.e Kitty having pink accents on her uniform).

Awful with a side of ****. The kind of thing they could get away with back in 2000 (or 1999? someone fact-check) purely because comic-book movies as a 'big deal' hadn't been done in ages, so to keep the studio on their side they went with "let's make it look like The Matrix because that was popular!". So everyone basically looks halfway between G.I. Joe's Baroness and the gimp from Pulp Fiction but with claws/LaForge visor/crappy wig, etc. Worse, Bryan Singer couldn't bring himself to move away from that look, and it took until First Class to get some X-Men who dressed like sodding X-Men.

It just smacks of movie types being afraid of the source material and trying to exorcise or minimize anything that's a little bit weird, which with the X-Men means we get stuck with the core metaphor in a very dry state with nothing goofy or imaginative to make that pill easier to swallow. I'm hoping we've reached a point now where they can grow out of that funk - certainly, this kind of cowardice is anathema to making a Deadpool movie - but I'm still bracing myself for the possibility that, say, Apocalypse will just be a pale hunky guy with blue lipgloss wearing a leather jacket and maybe an ankh-shaped pendant because he's from Egypt.

[yogaflame]

Awful with a side of ****. The kind of thing they could get away with back in 2000 (or 1999? someone fact-check) purely because comic-book movies as a 'big deal' hadn't been done in ages, so to keep the studio on their side they went with "let's make it look like The Matrix because that was popular!". So everyone basically looks halfway between G.I. Joe's Baroness and the gimp from Pulp Fiction but with claws/LaForge visor/crappy wig, etc. Worse, Bryan Singer couldn't bring himself to move away from that look, and it took until First Class to get some X-Men who dressed like sodding X-Men.

It just smacks of movie types being afraid of the source material and trying to exorcise or minimize anything that's a little bit weird, which with the X-Men means we get stuck with the core metaphor in a very dry state with nothing goofy or imaginative to make that pill easier to swallow. I'm hoping we've reached a point now where they can grow out of that funk - certainly, this kind of cowardice is anathema to making a Deadpool movie - but I'm still bracing myself for the possibility that, say, Apocalypse will just be a pale hunky guy with blue lipgloss wearing a leather jacket and maybe an ankh-shaped pendant because he's from Egypt.

Very true. Not only did the sterilize the aesthetic in those movies, they whitewashed the characters(both literally and figuratively). Colossus wasn't Russian. Storm wasn't African. Banshee wasn't Irish. No one but Wolverine-Mystique-Magento-Charles gets to have a distinctive voice. I love the global mutant phenomenon being represented by a diverse cast, complete with unique points of view(and unique costumes).

The Uncanny X-Men team reflects that trend. Everyone has the same voice, the costumes are very similar and the narrative really only follows one person(in this case Cyke).

[Rosa Snarks]

NO.........................they might have the same color but sometimes the design varies.

[Arfguy]

The thing I can say about the X-Men is, even if they were to wear the same costume, physically...each of them are so different that they don't look the same. If you take the original X-Men, the only two I can think of that would potentially seem to be the same person, if you only took a black & white picture of their bust is Bobby and Warren.

Flash forward to All-New, All-Different X-Men and not a single one of them look alike. Scott looks different from Logan, who looks different from Sean, who looks different from Kurt, who obviously looks very different from Ororo and so on and so forth.

The X-Men have always been good at looking distinctive enough. Adding on a costume is just another way to differentiating them. Now, if they got some good costumes across the board, I'd be really thrilled!

[Fordel]

The X-Men having similar or matching uniforms is probably one of my favorite things about them. Something I wish other heroic teams would also do. I dislike the Hodge-podge looks most of the other teams seem to have.

They don't need to be identical, but I really do enjoy the unified theme with the colors and the X.