[Jeddostotle7]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trivial Psychic

Well put...not to mention the bad asses of professional wrestling at that time such as Karl Gotch, "Strangler" Ed Lewis, Verne Gagne, Jim Londos, and Lou Thesz...who "worked" matches as we've come to know in the modern times, but were also legitimate shooters who could stretch you ten ways from Sunday if crossed them.

Yes, them too! Exactly!

My point isn't some kind of appeal to nostalgia, that "the old ways were better", but that there were cultural reasons that these visual tropes came to be in the first place, that people didn't view it as "underwear on the outside" back in the day but instead a straightforward evocation of the visual features of real-life examples of great physical strength, and that those evocations then began to reinforce themselves within the medium when superheroes themselves became the icons of physical strength and ability that future creators drew upon. At some point cultural views about clothing eventually changed to where some began to view trunks as silly, but to me that specific notion has always felt less like a straightforward natural development and more like people internalizing "schoolyard bullying over interests"-level of petty mockery towards the visual tropes of superheroes, or insecure worrying about it making them "too silly" and restricting superhero stuff from being """serious enough""". Superheroes don't need trunks to denote strength or fighting ability, of course not! There's so many more ways superheroes can do that now. But I don't think spurning them is really constructive, either. Trunks aren't something we need to let go of, when they can continue to exist alongside newer visual tropes and aesthetics.