The Comics Alliance Halloween Costume Spooktacular 2014: The Best & Worst Store-Bought Superhero Costumes

If there's one thing that we can take away from the success of Guardians of the Galaxy, it's that it's easier than ever for kids to dress as their Sonic the Hedgehog OCs. Seriously, DeviantArt should load up on these things and a few palettes of spraypaint and make a killing when con season rolls back around. Still, it's better than I expected. For one thing, there's no picture of Rocket Raccoon on the chest, and for another, it's guaranteed to keep your arms and shins warm. I mean, you're on your own for the rest of your body, but I have it on good authority that cold shins are a leading health risk.

For the record, this will be the best of the Guardians of the Galaxy offerings.

In the run-up to GotG's release, I remember that everyone was shocked to the point of being alarmed that we were getting a major Hollywood movie that had Rocket Raccoon in it, but I didn't know that a studio spent literal millions of dollars on paying people to say the words "Ronan the Accuser" until I was in the theater, and it might have been the most shocking moment of my life. But that, friends is the world we are living in: A world with Ronan the Accuser merchandise.

Either way, this horrifying visage represents a huge missed opportunity, same as the movie did. How are you gonna make a Halloween mask of Marmaduke star Lee Pace and not include his magnificent eyebrows?

There's a full on Drax the Destroyer costume for the kids, but in practice, it looks more like you're dressing up as the tattooed corpse of Frank Reynolds, which would actually be pretty appropriate for a very specific sort of spoooooky Halloween. Because of that, I'm choosing to focus on just the masks. Despite looking virtually nothing like Dave Bautista aside from the broad strokes (I believe Bautista does in fact have two ears and only one mouth), they will allow you to portray Drax in any mood you could imagine, from hesitant to aroused, and then finally to satiated, as seen above.

These are, I believe, the only three emotions Drax has ever shown, but keep in mind that i mostly know about him from erotic fan-fiction.

Wait. Did someone say... erotic?!

;)

Oh right, there was a Captain America movie this year, too, and to celebrate that, we've got a Bucky costume! Er, a Winter Soldier costume, I mean. Spoiler warning? I guess?

Anyway, this is one of the "muscle chest" offerings, which are designed to give you a superheroic physique to match the character that you're dressed as, without all that pesky "working out" or "not eating an entire pizza by yourself, Chris." They're pretty effective, too, assuming that you don't mind questions about why your abs are oddly fluffy, and why your arm appears to have grown an entirely separate muscle at the shoulder.

And now, the horror portion of the evening begins.

If you've been following along for these annual trips down the costume aisle, you may have noticed that the "Second Skin" costumes have been rising in popularity over the past few years, and this time they got around to making the Ninja Turtles. It's not the tightness that bothers me, though -- although the belt placement at this costume photo shoot could not be more obviously on purpose of Donatello was holding a notebook over his junk -- it's the face. The cartoon face being stretched over a human head is one thing, but the longer you look at it, the more you can see the person's eyes peeking out from below Donatello's, just these dark pits beneath a flat green expanse. It's haunting, and when you throw in the truly disturbing idea of a Ninja Turtle with five fingers, the whole thing just starts to ramp up the creep factor.

While we're on the subject of haunting looks, we have this, and it is amazing. The one thing that the Wolverine movies have shown us is that you can actually make Wolverine's bizarre haircut look pretty decent in real life. I'm not sure what the secret to that is, but I'm going to go ahead and guess that it's not bundling up a bunch of synthetic hair, sweeping it back into a hairsprayed set of ram horns, and then sticking on a pair of perfectly squared-off mutton chops. This is less "Wolverine" and more "slowly being devoured by a fuzzy Metroid."

As far as the infamously terrible "sexy" costumes go, this year's superheroic offerings got off pretty light, at least in terms of what's new. There are still plenty of Sassy Green Lanterns and Miniskirted Avengers out there, but the only available Gamorra costume is more or less the standard version, and the same goes for Black Widow.

And then there's this, and... Folks, I'm not gonna lie. I kind of love it? I mean, yes, it is not a very good costume, and the spider webs remind me more of the targets from Smash Bros. than anything Spider-Man's ever actually worn, but if you're going to go for Sexy Spider-Man, then throwing in some web-shooter garters is a pretty brilliant touch.

Finally, we have this, and if you ever need proof that Deadpool's popularity has hit critical mass, look no further than the fact that you can buy a mass-produced Halloween costume that is actually accurate to the comics -- or at least as accurate as a mass-produced Halloween costume can be, anyway. But what if this was actually 100% accurate? What if this is actually what Deadpool's costume looks like within the Marvel Universe?

Wouldn't that be the single most appropriate thing for the character? Everybody else is hanging out in their perfectly tailored suits looking amazing, and Deadpool shows up in this loose-fitting thing that looks like it might actually be made out of trash bags, trying to pretend that a pair of red socks are actually boots. It's perfect.

This may actually be a Halloween costume that's even more accurate than the original.