From now until 2008, I’m gonna have a little fun and post images. Some of them I’ll have comments about, others I’ll just be posting to say “Hey, cool, look at this!”
I don’t know who drew this. I do know that it was commissioned by an ad agency in India, to advertise a health club, which is too bad because it implies that the image is intended to be mockery. I don’t read the drawing that way; it seems to me that the illustrator actually drew Batman with a great deal of sympathy. I like this drawing.
Other ads in the series included a fat Superman and a fat Spiderman. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they didn’t do a Wonder Woman; I think the far harsher way our culture views fat women would have made it impossible to do a Wonder Woman ad that didn’t seem mean-spirited.
Have you seen the fat Wonderwoman site? It’s a collection of exactly what the title says. Some of the pictures are gorgeous – powerful or sensual or both – and some are flat-out mockery.
I love this picture of Batman, though, he looks so pensive.
There was actually a Marvel series set in the distant future where the society had degenerated into a kind of dystopia, and Spiderman was a middle-aged, balding man trying to help his daughter. He was also quite fat (which didn’t really affect his ability to climb walls), and portrayed in a very sympathetic manner, as a concerned father.
It’s interesting to see superheroes dealing with issues commonly associated with the middle-aged, particularly with the physical neglect that comes with the mid-life crisis. Those sorts of things make a superhero more convincing as a human being, imo.
There was actually a Marvel series set in the distant future where the society had degenerated into a kind of dystopia, and Spiderman was a middle-aged, balding man trying to help his daughter.
Was that the unfortunate series where Peter Parker ending up killing Mary Jane through slow radiation poisioning?
“Is he strong, listen chum . . . “
I like the image too. I’d like to see a series of fat-Batman comics in which Batman (maybe a successor to the “current” Batman) is clearly competent, muscular, happy, and able to kick butt, but also happens to be overweight as well. In real life fat people can be athletic, happy, and competent. Why not in superhero comics too?
Only fat superheros that I can think of are meta-examinations of over-the-hill superherodom like The Incredibles or Watchmen. No actual superhero is fat – which, when you think of heroes where their power appears absolutely effortless (like Superman) is actually kind of suprising. How does Superman work out?
I like the image, because Batman is still on patrol, but taking a break. Maybe the point they’re trying to get across is “look, he’s so fat, he can’t keep his patrol up, he has to sit down and take his utility belt off his fat gut,” but thin Batman is bound to take a few breaks once in a while, and I wish he would. I like the idea of Batman as a person doing his job and resting once in a while, and he’s still attentive to his surroundings anyway. And he’s clearly not in bad shape, since he’s on top of a building. What’s he gonna do, take the elevator up?
I have wondered for a long time about the point Silenced is foo brings up. I don’t have a problem with Batman being a mezomorph, it is hard for me to imagine an actual human who gets the constant work-outs that Batman does being as fat as, say, me. But does Superman actually burn many calories floating, flying, and lifting cars like they’re toothpicks? Or worse yet, why has every Green Lantern (from Earth) been a cut mezomorph? He has a wholely human physiology, but he uses a ring that lets him do ANYTHING just by thinking about it. He literally never needs to move a muscle. Do they ever show him using the ring to lop off pounds and add muscle mass just to make his body plausible?
everybody’s forgetting the Legion of Superheroes – they had Matter Eater Lad and Bouncing Boy. i’m not so sure about ME Lad, but Bouncing Boy could kick SERIOUS ass.
You’re right, amp, the portrait is rather sympathetic. Yet for Batman, it’s pretty subdued. None of that psychologically warped menace he is known for.
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Well, Mr. Incredible uses chains attached to train cars ;) Superman could probably design something that would work for him.
Hm. Actually, I think it was in one of the JLAs, possibly NWO, there was a narrator blurb about GL’s oxygen producing force field ‘maintaining muscle tone’.
At the time I thought it was just a throwaway line to remind people that he was in space, but now I see not. ;)