As white hot as they were in the 80s, it was not a good decade for X-Men costumes. Wolverine's redesign was probably the best of that whole bunch, and all they did there was change the color of his tights.

Osborn was attempting to add a horrific aura to his costume, which--along with the name--would be seen as off-putting to anyone he encountered. I believe his post-Ditko evolution--illustrated to be physically imposing in and out of costume--made the Green Goblin be the threatening megalomaniac of the Spider-Man end of Marvel. It was one thing to have him be a thin weirdo in his earliest appearances, but the necessary mix of the strange with physical power sold the man and the costume, despite the elf boots and withcy hat.

This is one that never struck me as weird when I read the comic as a kid. It was only many years later when I saw people talking about it on the internet that I realised how it looked to most readers. I can kind of see what they mean now but it still seems to me not too different from, say, Dr. Doom's kilt or the Marvel Hercules, or whatever.

Is that Night Girl??? The Bêlit look suits her (albeit barely)!

They obviously didn't solve the problem of global warming in the XXX century.

Ah, but what may that bouffant hairdo hide? That is the question...





Night Girl should clearly have been the Leader of that team!

Cassaday is sill doing scale mail......



It consists of overlapping scales, with segments linked together by wire.

This is chain mail....



It is made of interlinking metal rings.

You can see the contrast in this image of "Blackfish," from Game of Thrones...



His torso is covered by a scale mail cuirass and he is wearing a chain mail shirt, under that, to protect his arms.

What Simon and Kirby tried to do was indicate the rings of chain mail, the way Hal Foster did, in Prince Valiant.....



Note Foster's stippling technique tends to indicate more of the rows and columns that the ring form. If you look at the picture above, the rings have a sort of snaking pattern, with the inner rings in shadows and the connecting rings in light. In the filming of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, their chain mail was actually knitted material, simulating the rings of armor. In the Lord of the Rings, they used rubber rings, painted metallic grey, silver and gold. Foster was better able to capture the patterns of mail, than Simon & Kirby and Kirby solo. Many modern artists followed Kirby's trend of indicating parts of the ring loop, rather than the linking portions. That turned more and more into scales, over time, until Kevin Maguire made it completely scale, in Captain America, Sentinel of Liberty.

Wally Wood had the technique down, in his work.....



Of course, Wood was doing his own inking, while Kirby was usually inked by someone else.

Perez followed Kirby's lead and was better than most, though he also tended to put more detail in it. He could get overly scaly, too.