Could the unused designs for the electric Superman costume be even worse?

I admit to being no fan of even the moderate changes made in recent years to Superman’s costume, the discarding of the red undies and the yellow belt. A part of that is an innate conservatism — but it’s a conservatism born of one fairly strong adage: that something that has worked without serious complaint for seventy years should be left alone. Now, without the red and yellow to break up the middle of the Big Blue Banana’s outfit, his big blue banana is even more highlighted and on display than it ever was before.

Of course, you also have the electric Superman-Red/Superman-Blue from the 1990s. Which was so beyond awful it almost defies description.

I was going through a comic preparing a post for sometime next week, and saw the above feature. Are any of these designs better than the finished product? I’m not sure. But could it get any worse? Please note that the Paul Ryan and Jon Bogdanove designs look like the artists peered into the future and saw comic book movie villains from the last two years: General Zod and Electro, respectively. And that the Dan Jurgens version makes it look like Superman should be teaching a spin class in a trendy health club or something.