The evolution of Iron Man from his bulky original suit to the current look happened over the course of several redesigns, including a gold version of the original, the "Silver Centurion" armor of the '80s, and Football Pants.
Oh, Sue Storm. I don't know what possessed someone to redesign your costume as a swimsuit with a giant "4" cut out over your cleavage. Oh wait, yes I do. As you might expect, the Invisible Woman's costume reverted back to the bodysuit that Jessica Alba later donned in the movies, and the "4" costume now lives on only in infamy.
By far one of the most absurd costume changes in comics history, Speedball was a happy-go-lucky teen hero who made colorful energy bubbles, until one of his teammates accidentally blew up 612 civilians. He renamed himself Penance, as now dresses in a metal gimp suit with 612 internal spikes that stab him every time he moves. You know, as penance.
In the '90s, Aquaman ditched his original costume in favor of an updated look with long hair, a beard and a hook in place of his left hand, because his Super Friends gear apparently just wasn't piratey enough.
After Bruce Wayne had his back broken by the villain Bane during the 90s, another vigilante took over the mantle of Batman -- while wearing brightly-colored battle armor and excessive yellow pouches. He also eventually started killing people, forcing Wayne to take back the Batman name -- and the costume we know and love.
After his secret identity was revealed in the 90s, Daredevil faked his own death, had a breakdown, became a street hustler, and returned in a mecha-suit with razor shoulderpads. Mercifully, none of this lasted, and he returned to his old identity and costume for reasons that ultimately, don't really matter.
One of the most famous costume changes in comics history, Spider-Man's black suit was actually an alien symbiote that bonded to his body during an intergalactic conflict called the Secret Wars, but we're pretty sure it was really put there because everyone was tired of drawing all those webs on his classic costume. He eventually removed the symbiote and returned to his classic costume, except for a brief period when Aunt May was hospitalized and he decided to dress in a non-symbiotic black costume to express the darkness of his soul.
While a lot of folks (including Jughead) went punk in the '80s, Storm's transformation into mohawked, leather-wearing badass was less about the music and lifestyle and more about going down into the sewer and having knife-fights with super-powered gang-leaders. And THAT is punk as hell.
The biggest major change from Wonder Woman's traditional costume into something with pants coincided with the rise of the Women's Lib movement, but unfortunately involved her losing all of her powers in the process, which is kind of a mixed message. Much like bell-bottoms, her groovy costume soon disappeared in favor of a more classic ensemble.
The X-Men have worn a lot of colorful costumes over the years, but it wasn't until Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely gave the X-Men a more paramilitary-inspired uniform that they actually made sense for the mutant fighters. The more realistic take was also adopted by the movies, where they donned appropriate fitted black uniforms rather than neon spandex.
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Friday 30 October
By Jemaleddin
I'm curious to hear how well this works in practice. Getting Delicious Library to import all my trades a few days ago required a ton of manually typing in ISBNs, and RedLaser on the iPhone can't seem to tell one comic book apart from another except by publisher.
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Friday 30 October
By badgerbadgerbadger
I have one of these and it works really well. As opposed to the normal scanner, the comic one doesn't use the scanner itself to keep up with your collection like some other scanners do, mainly because publishers will often use the same barcode for an entire series. But it's pretty easy to just type in the name and year and easily sort titles and then you can use the scanner to then keep track of your inventory. it's pretty damn cool.
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Monday 02 November
By wrongrobot
I was thoroughly disappointed in this product, after researching all the other usual suspects available on the Mac side of the fence. They do a handy dodge when describing how their system actually works with comics when others like Delicious Library fail: they suggest that they have a comics database, which would presumably be a partnership with gcdb.com or comicbookdb.com, but instead, it's just a sticker-based barcode system and a scanner and the database software. Ie. take your 333,000 issue comic collection, apply individual bar code stickers to each effing book (at considerable per-code expense) and then manually enter the data in the database for all comics, then assign the bar code to the entry in the db. YAY! I appreciate what they are tying to do but this is a marketing maguffin to me: the product is more suited to a retailer or for-profit e-seller keeping track of inventory.
I looked at Booxster for a long time, as this software-only solution links up with the above mentioned comics databases. You can't scan anything, but since the bar codes on comics are worthless for unique ID purposes anyway, no great loss. But you can at least enter the comic issue or series or whatever and have Booxster look it up in the databases it links to. However, it turns out they are basically data-mining, as neither database team was ever consulted or agreed to be part of the product resource. And the most obvious route is the other direction: use comicbookdb.com to build your comic library, then export it to Delicious or Booxter or whatever. But that's pretty challenging on it's own, as the unique ID for the comic in the comicbookdb.com system doesn't come through the export.
The best solution I've found is to just build your collection online at comicbookdb.com. The one saving grace is that you can add a series name [Hellboy] and ask it to add all issues to your collection, so you don't have to enter each one. Additionally, you can set up subscriptions just as you might for a comicsaver file with your LCS, and then it will continue to update itself as new issues are released.
I had HIGH hopes for this product, but sadly, as Len Goodman would say: 'what's on the label is not whats in the tin!'
PS for those interested in trying the intelliscanner system out, if you buy from the mfr directly, there ar eno returns, but if you buy from thinkgeek, you CAN return it if it doesn't pass muster!