Oh yeah. I forgot something. Something else, less related to powers, but still something very important. You do need a costume.
Yes. You heard me. Yes, you do. You need a costume. I mean you need a Super Hero Suit. I don't care how powerful you are, or how stupid you think you look in it. In fact - the more powerful you are, the more important it is to wear a super-suit, and the more stupid it should look. The more powerful you are, the more outlandish you need to appear in your public appearances. It's important. This is not about looking cool.
It's about reassuring the public.
Superman knew what he was doing. Why do you think he picked that outfit? Because to his warped Kryptonian fashion sense, it looked cool? Because his mommy sewed it. Awwwwwwww!
No. That's all revisionist B.S.
Superman is no moron, and he's not nearly as naive as he deliberately comes off. That outfit was chosen by a very smart man, one with a keen understanding of human psychology. He knew that the idea of an invincible man-god suddenly swooping in among us, moving at will at speeds too fast to see, darkening the skies effortlessly lifting massive objects, pulverizing blocks of metal and stone, looking right through us with an all-penetrating gaze...people would lose their shit at the sight of that. They would lose their minds. They would panic. And if it got to the point where any Joe Normal on the street who you brush past could be - unbeknownstedly - an insanely powerful dynamo with world-ripping strength...believe me. Regular, fragile humanity would never be able to function in the face of that reality. They'd never feel safe again. We're talking irreversible psychic trauma on a global scale. Unless...
That CRAZY SUIT! Man, why's he wearing that crazy suit. And "WOOOO! Look at all the cool shi* he can DO with it!" SAY, JIM. THAT'S ONE BAD OUT-FIT!
The suit is a distraction. The suit allows people to feel safe. They don't feel threatened. How can they feel threatened? Look at what you're wearing. And once the tradition of the super-suit had been established, it even became fine and dandy for highly-powered heroes to try to design their suits with a more hard, grim, "bad-ass" look to them - because ultimately, everyone knows you are wearing a super suit. And ultimately, that's still ridiculous.
The ridiculousness is calming, to the general non-powered public. It allows them to compartmentalize-off the unwordly terror that human-seeming people with superhuman powers ought to inspire. It gives them a safe box to put it all in. The suit itself - that's the safe box. If somebody jumps out wearing one of those things, doing the unthinkable - Oh! That's okay, that's just another of those superheroes. That's just what they do, it's okay. Later, the public looks around - nobody's wearing a set of circus-issue jackass pajamas? Ok. Whew. Exhale. We can feel safe not thinking about it for a while. For the time being.
The public needs that division. They need it desperately. The public can't deal with the idea that just ANYBODY, walking around in STREET CLOTHES, is going to maybe pick up a car and throw it. The public cannot handle that. It breaks the understanding.
If you're going to do the derring-do, you got to wear the duds, dude. It's the rules.
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