One of the resident gamers and coders over at the Titan Network has done what many had asked for -- get the City of Heroes Costume Creator to work in a standalone mode.  Basically, he wrote a little application that directly  calls the costume creator function from the City Of Heroes client without needing to log in.

You will have access to all costume pieces, including those previously locked behind paywall as well as NPCs.

Please note, you do need to have either the City of Heroes I23 or I24 Beta client installed.  The link to the program and instructions can be found here:

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,7288.0/topicseen.html

Enjoy! ( ' :

1. we have not edited the original client in any way.  Another executable was written that merely calls functions within the existing client resources.
2. we are *not* distributing game clients, just the tiny application that was written.