Twenty years ago, when Tim Burton made “Batman” — the one with Jack Nicholson as the Joker, remember — he put bat-star Michael Keaton in a molded suit with rubber muscles, which is more or less what cinematic superheroes have worn since.
Mark Newport has his own ideas about what kind of clothes make the (super)man. The crime-fighting garb he creates has more in common with a librarian’s sweater or those snowsuit pajamas with the feet in them you had when you were 4 than with sleek body armor.
He knits these costumes full size from acrylic yarn and even models them, letting his physical imperfections hang out, in sharp contrast to the myth of para-human invincibility.
Besides the Batsuits on view at the Renwick Gallery, Newport has made vestments for Spider-Man and Superman, as well as for his own original character, Sweaterman. He also makes comic book panel-like prints further satirizing the tropes of the fights-in-tights genre.
