Is that why they gave them bigger butts? Marvel revives its Swimsuit Special, with 'designs for new costumes coming soon to Marvel Rivals'

Spider-Man and Psylocke on the cover of a Marvel Swimsuit Special — (Image credit: Marvel)

Marvel Comics has announced it's bringing back the most '90s thing this side of jorts—the Marvel Swimsuit Special. Marvel Swimsuit Special: Friends, Foes & Rivals #1 will be published in July, and promises to "also include designs for new costumes coming soon to Marvel Rivals, the mega popular multiplayer video game from Marvel Games and NetEase Games."

Marvel's Swimsuit Specials were an infamous moneyspinner aimed primarily at horny teenage boys in the 1990s, and it makes a kind of sense to revive today when the entire internet is openly horny at all times.

One of many strange things about the Swimsuit Specials was how many of the men had their own logos on their banana hammocks, meaning the Punisher hit the beach with a giant skull covering his area. I guess that's the kind of thing we can expect to see in Marvel Rivals? For maximum fidelity to the comics they'd have to bring back that gross yellow skin tone they gave Psylocke, but let's hope they draw the line there.

When Season 2 of Marvel Rivals came out, players noticed the men really did have bigger butts than they used to. (Then it turned out a couple of the women did too.) Given how much NetEase has leaned into the sex appeal of Marvel's characters and the thirstiness of its player base that didn't seem like it needed explaining, but I guess it makes sense if the summer wave of cosmetics will see all the dudes rocking nut huggers.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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