Coming up with a great costume is hard. Especially when I didn’t like wearing costumes. I didn’t like drawing attention. So imagine how thrilled I was with myself when I came up with the perfect costume: superhero alter egos.
This costume style is awesome on many levels.
- It’s superheroes.
- Alter egos generally are normal clothes, so it is discreet. You don’t need a lot of special clothing items.
- You are in disguise while in disguise. You choose when and who to reveal what your costume is.
- It costs $20 or less. More if you want to add extra props.
I first came up with the idea in 2003. There were some tricky requirements when I came up with the idea. I was attending a costume party where there was social dancing. The costume needed to breathable and easy to move around in.
Perhaps the idea came to me when I was thinking about superheroes and then about their alter egos. Like Clark Kent. I grabbed some old sunglasses from my basement and knocked out the lenses. I bought a Superman t-shirt (granted the logo and the shirt was way too big) from the mall. I smiled to myself as I was a comparable Clark Kent.
For most of the evening, no one knew I was in costume as Clark Kent. My friends wondered why I had glasses until I opened up my dress shirt to reveal the “S” logo.
Tony Stark isn’t much of a secret identity for this narcissist superhero. The Iron Man movie was fun and I picked up a toy set of an arc reactor and glove at Fred Meyer for Halloween 2010. I lacked Robert Downey’s facial hair, but that added on with some of my wife’s makeup materials. This costume was less subtle with sound effects and glowing repulsor beam glove.
This year, while I was riding on the MAX to work n it dawned on me how easy Matt Murdock (Daredevil) would be as a costume. I purchased red sunglasses and a Daredevil t-shirt from Amazon. We wrapped a long stick with white duct tape and used a red marker for the blind walking stick.
While I was taking photos around work this year, someone gave me an idea for next year: Peter Parker.