Especially prevalent in old Superman titles of the 50s and 60s. Earthmen and aliens both sported them. Do they have an equivalent in the real world? These things, as worn by Jor-el. They had them in the far future, too. As worn by pink guy on the left.
Cars had fins, why not futuristic clothing?
They kind of resemble the car tailfins that were popular in the 1950s and 1960s.
Some of the early versions of iron Man’s armor had similar shoulder thingies.
Pretty sure it’s just standard “space-age” design.
Similar fins may also be seen on the shoulder guards of historical armor, such as the retiarius gladiator or on medieval armor. The medieval shoulder guards are called pauldrons, although the vertical fins are not standard.
Big shoulders are also a sci-fi trope, such as with Shoulders of Doom or Vertical Mecha Fins, although these are probably a later development.
Those are spaulders. Been around for centuries.
On Scottish highland dress, they are called wings.
The dress is called a terno and the sleeves, if you need to refer to them specifically, are called butterfly sleeves. Here’s Pia Wurtzbach, Miss Universe 2015, wearing one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Miss_Universe_2015_Pia_Wurtzbach_waves_to_the_Malacanang_Press.jpg
On a doublet, those would be wings, but they don’t stand straight up like the sciffy examples, since part of their original function was to cover the sleeve point (lacing) eyelets.
On pauldrons, they’re just called “neck guards”. I’ve never encountered a specific historic name for them, though I don’t doubt they existed.
They’re not, historically, a feature of spaulders, which are much simpler shoulder defences than pauldrons.
I think the sciffy examples are more related to doublet wings (and a general Raygun Gothic “fin” aesthetic - ) than armour neck guards, personally.
FWIW, the guy in pink is Cosmic Boy, one of the founders of the Legion of Super-Heroes and all-around good guy.
I love the “REAL–NOT IMAGINARY!” banner.