One reason superheroes wear costumes

One reason we try to draw the attention of the bad guys is to give them a focus to concentrate on besides general mayhem and destruction. "Come after ME!" is what we are saying. Getting the bad guys to focus on you is important for many reasons, but the main reason is to make them keep coming after you so that you can get more and more familiar with their habits, behaviors, psychological make-up, etc.

Think about this: Most super villains are mentally unbalanced to one degree or another; it's partly why they are super villains! Most all of them possess obsessive/compulsive behavior, which we take advantage of by constantly coming after them and defeating them so that we become a target of their psychological compulsions so that they will focus on us instead of just wantonly causing destruction.

Getting supervillains to draw their obsessive/compulsive behaviors towards us is one way of controlling them. It's a vicious circle that we put them in. We beat them time and time again because we have fought them so many times, and because of their obsessive/compulsive tendencies, they keep coming back for more.

As you might imagine, this tactic can get very dangerous for the superheroes, as well as a source of a great deal of stress. It's because of this stress that superheroes often band together into teams. We help each other by being a sympathetic ear for when we feel the need to vent about the umpteenth time that a supervillain has attacked. And of course, we'll team up to beat the bad guys.

Some of the more observant of the supervillains are even aware of this tactic of ours, and yet they stay caught up in it - so strong is their obsessive/compulsive disorder. One even referred to our constant battles as a "macabre dance", and I suppose in a sense that's what it is. Whatever it is, whatever they want to call it, so long as they keep coming back so that I can keep stopping their evil plans in their tracks.

We superheroes have to stop them each and every time, because the fate of the world could literally hang in the balance. We beat them by learning about them and what makes them tick. The more we learn about their motivations and tactics and the how and why they do what they do, the sooner we can take them down. Utilizing their obsessive/compulsive behavior against them is one such useful tactic.

If supervillains had more self-control, then they wouldn't keep falling into this trap time and time again. But then if they had more self-control, they wouldn't be supervillains.