10. The Savage She-Hulk
Not the She-Hulk we've come to know and love over the last, oh, 20 years or so, the one who would become a member of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers; the one who would come to be able to control her transformations and keep her sharp, lawyer's mind even while all hulked-out. That She-Hulk has long ago taken to wearing a sort of one-piece bathing suit costume that fits her like a body glove. Form-fitting yes, but hardly skimpy enough to land a place on this list.
No, I'm talking about the Shulkie in her original appearances, in the late '70s, 25-issue series The Savage She-Hulk (The one collected in the Essential Savage She-Hulk trade). This Shulkie was a lot more like her cousin Bruce Banner, whose gamma-irradiated blood, given to her in an emergency transfusion, was responsible for her turning into a female Hulk. Unable to control her metamorphous, Jen Walters would explode out of whatever outfit she happened to be wearing at the time, one that was several sizes too small.
Just as Banner always seemed to be wearing purple pants that tore at the knees when he hulked out, Jen was always wearing white tank tops, which tore along the sleeves, and hem the exact same way each time, giving her a plunging a neckline and just managing to cover most of her butt (presumably, whatever was underneath her rags was the first to be busted out of, but they never really got into that).
9. Supergirl
There have been at least half dozen Supergirls since Superman's cousin from Krypton first appeared back in the Silver Age (her first appearance is collected in Showcase Presents: Superman Vol. 1). As time has progressed, her outfits have grown progressively skimpy: The first Supergirl looked like a bobbysoxer, with a knee length skirt. By the '70s, she was rocking a miniskirt and a v-neck jersey. In the 90's, it was a belly-exposing ringer t-shirt. When Jeph Loeb and Michael Turner reintroduced a new version of her in Superman/Batman in the '00s, she was wearing her tiniest outfit ever. She retained the midriff-baring top, and her skirt had shrunk to a micro-mini, smaller than Batman's utility belt (Seeing as how she flies around in that tiny skirt, high above the heads and telephoto lenses of the paparazzi, one imagines the Internet in the DC Universe is loaded with up-skirt shots of the Girl of Steel).
Ironically, though she has one of the smaller costumes in the DC Universe this side of Starfire, she also has the biggest, longest cape. You think her prudish cousin would make her dress a little more conservatively, and cut a few inches off that cape to add to her skirt.
8. Fire
This former Justice Leaguer, currently co-starring in DC espionage series Checkmate, has had a variety of costumes over the years, most of them rather dated and lame-looking. But when she activates her superpower, whatever she's wearing disappears, burned off by the green flame from which she gets her power. Like a green female version of Marvel's Human Torch, she appears as a flying, naked figure, flames obscuring the details you'd only be able to see if she had a Vertigo book. On Cartoon Network's animated Justice League Unlimited series, the producers gave her a slightly more modest costume—when she turned her flame on, flaming pasties and panties appeared around her erogenous zones. Either way, it's a pretty hot look.
7. The Engineer
The Authority's resident scientist and communications officer traded in her blood for nine pints of nanotechnology, which coats her naked body and can shape-shift into a variety of weapons and tools, giving her impressive super-powers. Not to mention the appearance of a naked metal lady. In a sense, you could say she's one of the least skimpily dressed superheroines, as she's technically covered head to toe in a sheath of metal, but the metal's apparently so thin and form-fitting that the result looks like she's not wearing anything at all. The amount of detail readers see of her body depends on the artist drawing her.
6. Tigra
This former Avenger is probably the Marvel superhero most loved by the Furries in the reading audience. A woman with tiger-like powers—agility, speed and, um, stripes?—she wears perhaps the smallest costume in the Marvel Universe (not counting Namor, The Sub-Mariner, of course). It looks like she simply pulled a black string bikini off the rack, threw it on, and went to
Avengers Mansion. Oh well, when you've got striped-skin, I guess you want to show off as much of it as possible.
5. Shanna the She-Devil
Like Tigra, this Marvel heroine's costume consists simply of a bikini (Shanna’s is made of brown fur, however, since she's a jungle-woman who hangs out in the
Savage Land). So why is she one place ahead of Tigra on the list? Thank Frank Cho, the writer/artist responsible for the Marvel Knights Shanna the She-Devil miniseries. Like all of Cho's women, Shanna was so full-figured it seemed like her costume could explode at any second and, apparently, in his original pencils for the series, the costume did explode now and then, as well as slipping off. Rumors that Marvel will eventually release a Max version of the series, including occasional nudity, have long circulated, but is apparently still under consideration.
4. Red Sonja
Originally created for the comics as a Conan with boobs, this barbarian woman has seen a creative renaissance of late, thanks to Dynamite Entertainment's acquisition of the licensing rights and publication of a well-regarded monthly series and scads of miniseries and one-shots. Dynamite changed a lot about the character from her old days as a Marvel heroine, but not her costume—she still wears "armor" that, as a villain recently told her, barely protects her modesty, let alone her body. Consisting simply of a bikini made of widely-spaced chain-mail, it looks like she was wearing a glue bikini to a casino when she won the jackpot on a slot machine. She also wears a shoulder pad, so all together, about three-percent of her body is protected by armor.
3. Witchblade
Detective Sara Pezinni acquired a magical weapon known as the Witchblade, and apparently lost her shirt in the process. As well as her pants, socks, bra and panties. The 'blade can morph and shift into a variety of arrangements, making it the ideal weapon/costume combo. Particularly if the bearer of the 'blade wants to work on her tan while fighting evil, as in the Top Cow comics, Pezinni's Witchblade is like a morphing metal set of pasties and panties, with a knife attached (On the TNT TV adaptation, she wore a more concealing costume, perhaps because it's harder to skirt the laws of gravity in live action that it is on the comics page.
2. Vampirella
Sure, her costume may cover more surface area than some of the ladies higher on the list, but when it comes to scantily clad superheroines, Vampirella is a classic. She was wearing her strange, red bathing suit (like a bikini bottom with strategically positioned suspenders to hold it up) long before it was fashionable for superheroines to be exploding out of tiny costumes, and has been featured in more pin-ups than Bettie Page by this point. Like most superwomen, her costume has gotten smaller and smaller over the years, but unlike most of them, hers started out really small–way back in 1969. The skimpiness of her costume is accentuated by her accessories, too. In addition to the big, black boots, which cover more of her than the rest of her costume does, she has a little white, pointed, Dracula-like collar comically attached to the top. Hey, she wouldn't be a vampire if she didn't have a pointed collar, now would she?
1. War Woman
The star of writer Chuck Austen and artists Tom Derenick and Norm Rapmund's short-lived and controversial title Worldwatch was War Woman, a thinly veiled, more thinly garbed analogue of Wonder Woman. Like The Authority, which Austen often compared the book to (Saying it was like The Authority, only with more sex), most of the characters on the team were analogues of Justice Leaguers and Avengers. War Woman discusses her ever shrinking costume with a peer, noting that ever since one of their tops came off in a battle, they've all decided to wear less and less in the way of clothes (One of her teammates, Sgt. Mercury, is a speedster who runs around topless at superspeed). War Woman's costume is barely there, a pair of panties and pasties with some random chunks of armor here and there around her extremities, but unlike the other ladies on this list, she's often seen lounging around in various states of undress. Despite all the naked super-people and sex scenes, the title only lasted three issues. I guess comic readers like having something left to their imagination after all.
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