The sleeker SUPERHERO
Posted on Monday, August 20, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Style/199108/
Want to look like Superman or Wonder Woman ?
Back to the gym, then — and back to the drawing board. The new look in tights is a sleeker physique.
A sign of the change is cartoonist Christopher Hart’s new book, Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist (Watson-Guptill ), the latest in Hart’s series of how-to-draw books that have sold 2. 5 million copies. The way to draw today’s superhero is to, “Streamline... stylize... simplify,” the book instructs.
The same advice could apply to real-life workouts, as well. Comic-book heroes are among pop culture’s mightiest influences on how people want to look.
Superman has been a fitness trainer of sorts from the first time he lifted a car overhead, in 1938 — and looked super doing it.
The Man of Steel is one answer to the question: How much muscle does it take to look manly ? But there’s a trickier follow-up: How much is too much ?
The comic-book fantasy of humongous muscles “wore off when fitness gained widespread appeal,” Hart says, “because, seriously, who wants to look like that ?”
Superman never had to wonder. His strength came from being a “strange visitor from another planet.”
But Batman showed a different way — the hard way, but a secret that worked for other heroes besides just him: He hit the gym.
“Individual preferences were based on the ambitions and arrogance of one’s fantasies,” Jules Feiffer writes in The Great Comic Book Heroes (1965 ). “I suspect the Batman school of having healthier egos.”
Bat-fans probably paid more attention to yesterday’s comic-book ads for muscleman Charles Atlas’ mail-order course on bodybuilding. The ads promised to show even the scrawniest kid how to beef up.
HEY, SKINNY ! Atlas developed a kind of isometric exercise he called “Dynamic Tension.” He sold it with a comic-strip ad that showed “The Insult That Made a Man Out of Mac.” Mac is the humiliated runt who vows to beef up and get even with the big bully who kicked sand in his face. “His transformation from spindly ectomorph to beefy mesomorph... occurs in the space of only two panels,” Gene Kannenberg Jr. says in his analysis of the enduring ad for the comics history magazine, Hogan’s Alley. Mac and the reader alike zip through “all those nasty, sweaty exercises,” as if “Mac merely has stepped into a phone booth to transform himself.” Manly Mac socks the bully. It’s a knockout punch, and no wonder if the bully never saw it coming. Mac must have been gone at least a year, in real time, to work his way through Atlas’ demanding lessons, Kannenberg estimates. Here’s one, for example: Do push-ups between two chairs, one hand on each chair, toes on the floor. Do at least 50 a day, Atlas orders — morning and night, no slacking. Atlas died 35 years ago, but his muscle course remains available as a book, Ten Steps to a Better Body (2005 ), and online at www. charlesatlas. com. The Web site still asks, “Are you tired of getting sand kicked in your face ?”
Atlas was strong — famous for pulling a locomotive — and plainly fit, but not heavily muscled. His physique resembled the caped superhero on the cover of Hart’s Simplified Anatomy.
Broad in the shoulders, narrow of hip, smooth-looking, a balanced grace about him: It was the look of masculinity in Atlas’ time. It was the look he shared with actors Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger ) and Burt Lancaster, who got their upper-body builds from having been circus trapeze artists.
But comic-book heroes crunched and strained even more to attain a Bluto-esque look of muscles on top of muscles. Mac was the “Hero of the Beach,” but he looked like a twerp again by comparison.
The Thing clobbered, the Hulk smashed, and Captain America’s sternum bowed out as big as a Buick.
Batman appeared to be made out of concrete blocks in the 1980 s’ comic-book saga The Dark Knight Returns.
Superman got the sand kicked in his face by an even bigger bully, the massively evil Doomsday, in the 1990 s’ Death of Superman.
The Mighty Thor is back now, and it looks like he spent the last couple years on a Bowflex.
“The gigantic muscle guys of comics are still popular and here to stay,” Hart predicts. “It’s the ultra-expression of the hero.”
But today’s superheroes save a different world — one in which the biggest hero of all might be a fireman, and the all-too-mighty sports star with the cannonball muscles is apt to look like he’s on drugs.
“A lot of that look is obviously unattainable except through chemistry,” Hart says, “which is the antithesis of good health.”
STRIDE WITH THE TIDE Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist calls for superheroes with powerful legs. (“ A heroic upper body on top of two twigs looks weak, ” Hart cautions. ) Tremendous triceps. (“ Poor little triceps. It works so hard. But is it anyone’s favorite body part ? ” ) And a “barn door” back. (“ A huge area of the body. ” ) But the new design adds “a charisma built on personality and magnetism, not just bulk.” The goal is a hero more in superstep with the times. “The new men’s magazines, for example, aren’t bodybuilding magazines.” Hart, 49, says. “They’re about looking good, feeling good and living a fulfilling lifestyle. You can’t do that if you can’t even fit into a suit.”
Here’s a question-and-answer with the author:
Q. What prompted the new look ? What happened to the comic-book fantasy of having muscles like Conan the Barbarian, all bulges and cords and veins ?
Hart: If you read comics, you’ll see that there is less fighting today and more conceptual drama. Comics are more allegorical. So people need to relate to the characters. The character, therefore, has to look more human.
You’ve got Spider-Man, for example, who fights his battles with guile rather than brute force, and who is, not coincidentally, vastly more popular than many of the bulky action costumed characters of yesteryear. Q. How much real anatomy does today’s comics artist need to know ? Hart: Enough to stay ahead of the reader ! Seriously, you can’t make up the muscle groups. And when the body moves, the muscle groups change shape, so you have to be familiar with it all.
Q. Does all this concentrating on muscles make you more aware of fitness ? Do you have an exercise routine ? Hart: I’ve always been extremely involved in physical fitness. I work out about five or six days a week, and have been doing so since I was 15. I play singles tennis, run and lift weights. Will exercise help me to live longer ? Who knows ? Who cares ? The point is, exercising makes me believe that it will, so at least I’ll stop worrying about my health, and have free time to worry about other things.
“It’s the Superman complex, isn’t it ? If you’re more powerful than a locomotive and can leap tall buildings at a single bound, what do you have to worry about ?” — fantasy novelist David Eddings
Christopher Hart is the Connecticut-based author and illustrator of the art instruction bestsellers, How to Draw Cartoons for Comic Strips and Manga Mania. His next of about 30 books will be Drawing Dragons and Those Who Hunt Them from Watson-Guptill in September. His Web site is at www. artstudiollc. com.