(The) Darkness

Last year for Halloween I dressed up for the first time in several years. My friend Andrew talked 4 of us into doing a group costume with him. We were a band of supervillains called The Darkness. Or maybe it was just Darkness. We debated between the two and the difference was important. I can’t remember which it was now. We all had names that started with D. I think I was The Devastator. Or maybe that was someone else. There was The Danger and The Deliberator. I can’t remember the other names. Damn, it’s only been a year and already the details are sketchy.

Some details aren’t sketchy, however, like how much time we spent making these costumes. This wasn’t a deal where we just looked for crap around our homes or made one trip to Goodwill. Andrew doesn’t do anything half way.

The color scheme for our costumes was black and silver with red accents (I promise I was the only gay one). We ordered black unitards and printed our logo (yes, we had a logo) in silver on our chests. Our individual names were printed in silver down our arms, and we had a tramp stamp in back and surprisingly enough, I can’t remember what it said. Maybe some of the others can help me out with the details. We also had really cool silver utility belts with the logo on the buckle.

From there we each added our own accessories and embellishments. I had a cool faux leather looking black cape and wrist cuffs with three steel spikes out the side on each one. The wrist cuffs were made of scrap linoleum and paper mache. The boys did furry briefs. We bought some black Hanes and then sewed furry material onto the Hanes. The easiest way to sew on the furry material and make sure they would still fit was to sew it on while wearing them. I may or may not have accidentally sewn my furry briefs to my jeans. We affectionately referred to the briefs as “loin warmers”. The girls were totally against the loin warmers at first, but then we explained that the added fluffy texture would help disguise certain things that would be accentuated by wearing a tight fitting unitard, they were totally on board.

I found some cheap boots to wear but they only came up barely above my ankle and looked kind of lame, so I used left over furry material to extend the boots to mid calf. Kind of like leg warmers. Here’s a picture of us receiving our much deserved prize for best group costume. I don’t think the others will mind me posting this picture. I think there are much more embarrassing ones on Facebook from the late night photo shoot we did afterwards.