Superman is a popular comic and movie hero developed in 1930’s by Joe Siegal and Joe Schuster. The Superman costume and concept evolved in many forms, but his current look came about somewhere in 1934.
According to me, there are some of the best possible reasons which answer this question. Likewise, I have described few-
Aesthetics and Super Hero Persona
Comic book artists took great strides to make powerful and lasting impressions. Right or wrong, this lead to emphasizing hyper masculine or hyper feminine characters to make the characters seem larger than life on such a simple format.
Now, it should be noted here that the wrestlers, circus performers, and superheroes weren’t actually wearing underwear, but rather tight underwear-like shorts over their leggings. As superheroes are generally incredibly gifted athletically and perform amazing acrobatic stunts while crime fighting, it was natural enough for this style of dress to get adopted by the earliest superhero artists for their characters.
While there have been many fantastical proposed origins of this seemingly odd modish style amongst comic artists -my favorite of which being that most superheroes lost their parents at an early age, so they had no one to tell them underwear goes UNDER your clothes -the true origin is pretty simple. According to Julius Schwartz (famed editor of DC Comics from 1944-1986 who edited the most famous of all external-underwear superheroes, Superman), this was simply modeled after the garb of aerial circus performers and wrestlers of the era in which the first superheroes proudly donned their underpants over their tights.
Two of the earliest major representations of this can be found in Flash Gordon (1934), which in turn was partially the inspiration for the garb of Superman (1938), with the principle difference being the colors of their uniforms and the fact that Superman had a cape (as far as I can find, the first major superhero to wear one).
Of course, if you still want to think of the superhero tight-shorts as underwear, given that Superman and others often wear their uniform under their normal clothes, it kind of makes sense.
According to me, there are some of the best possible reasons which answer this question. Likewise, I have described few-
Aesthetics and Super Hero Persona
Comic book artists took great strides to make powerful and lasting impressions. Right or wrong, this lead to emphasizing hyper masculine or hyper feminine characters to make the characters seem larger than life on such a simple format.
Now, it should be noted here that the wrestlers, circus performers, and superheroes weren’t actually wearing underwear, but rather tight underwear-like shorts over their leggings. As superheroes are generally incredibly gifted athletically and perform amazing acrobatic stunts while crime fighting, it was natural enough for this style of dress to get adopted by the earliest superhero artists for their characters.
While there have been many fantastical proposed origins of this seemingly odd modish style amongst comic artists -my favorite of which being that most superheroes lost their parents at an early age, so they had no one to tell them underwear goes UNDER your clothes -the true origin is pretty simple. According to Julius Schwartz (famed editor of DC Comics from 1944-1986 who edited the most famous of all external-underwear superheroes, Superman), this was simply modeled after the garb of aerial circus performers and wrestlers of the era in which the first superheroes proudly donned their underpants over their tights.
Two of the earliest major representations of this can be found in Flash Gordon (1934), which in turn was partially the inspiration for the garb of Superman (1938), with the principle difference being the colors of their uniforms and the fact that Superman had a cape (as far as I can find, the first major superhero to wear one).
Of course, if you still want to think of the superhero tight-shorts as underwear, given that Superman and others often wear their uniform under their normal clothes, it kind of makes sense.
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