Superheroes in Speedos

[Mildly NSFW]

I spent part of my New Years weekend at my brother’s house, digging through his big box o’ comics and trying to determine which ones were mine. As it turns out, my adolescent self bought every X-Men comic ever published. And I mean all of them, even the Gambit series (and I don’t even like Gambit!). Fortunately, my embarrassment was somewhat diminished when I realized that my brother had even worst taste (lots of early Image Comics). The great find of that evening was the Marvel Swimsuit Special from 1992. Neither of us admits to buying it (I accused him, he accused me, so things go) and I don’t remember ever reading it.

Cover by Marc Silvestri


And I’m surprised I don’t remember it, because it sticks in the mind, though not for the reasons you might think. There’s plenty of poorly-drawn cheesecake of course, and there’s more than a few unintentionally hilarious pin-ups, such as Psylocke in a swimsuit that’s near identical to her “work” clothes.

By Jim Lee

And since this is the early 90s, big guns were a mandatory accessory, even at the beach.

By Brian Stelfreeze

But what makes this comic so memorable is how amazingly gay it is. Most of the time, homoeroticism in superhero comics is buried in the subtext. But in a swimsuit special, subtext is only wearing a speedo.

By John Romita, Jr.

By Jae Lee

By Joe Jusko

And the best of the lot…


By June Brigman and Tom Palmer

To put it bluntly, the swimsuit specials were spank material for nerdy teenage boys (I doubt this comes as a surprise to anyone). But Marvel has generally marketed its superhero material towards straight boys, so why all the beefcake?

Was the swimsuit special throwing a bone – forgive the pun – to  gay readers and straight female fans? Or was the inclusion of half-naked men simply meant to counter the complaints that this book blatantly objectifies women (as if the rest of Marvel’s titles didn’t).

There’s a third possibility: the (mostly) straight, male artists wanted to draw pictures of idealized young men, and their (mostly) straight, male audience wanted to look at those pictures. There’s a homoerotic appeal, but it has less to do with a desire for men than the wish to become a desirable man. Superheroes are a fantasy of physical perfection, as straight men define perfection. But most nerdy guys fall far short of the ideal, being either too skinny or too fat. They’d rather be Nick Fury, a mountain of muscle and chest hair who casually smokes a cigar while the girls oogle his ass. Or they’d like to be Colossus, the embodiment of raw power (in leopard skin underwear). The juxtaposition of beefcake and cheesecake allowed the reader to shift from the fantasy of being the perfect male to the fantasy of acquiring the type of hottie that only perfect males can acquire.

There’s no debate that this comic was puerile, but it’s a smart puerile that understood it’s target audience. Superhero comics are empowerment fantasies, and excluding males from the swimsuit spreads would actually exclude them from the fantasy altogether.

25 thoughts on “Superheroes in Speedos

  1. I can’t believe they have that “she walks in beauty” quote on Psylocke. Sheesh.

    The logic you’ve got here (guys like to imagine being perfect guys) is the inverse of the fashion magazine rationale (girls like to imagine being perfect girls.) I think there’s something to it…but I don’t think that’s all there is. Superheroes show fairly clearly that men like to consume fetishized images of men. You could read that as repressed homosexuality (for straight men anyway!); you could read it as heterosexual fantasy…or you could read it as meaning that in our culture men can desire men and have it reinforce heterosexuality.

  2. A lot of males also look admiringly for an Alpha.

    It’s amusing that this critique appear on the Tcj-hosted Hooded Utilitarian.

    Tcj’s sister mag, Amazing Heroes, was the first comics venue to host a Swimsuit Special, ripping off Sports Illustrated and being ripped off in turn by Marvel.

    Speaking of the Gay/Marvel Swimsuit connection– I give Marvel lots of credit for featuring an openly Gay couple in one of its swimsuit issues: Northstar from Alpha Force, and Hector from the Pantheon.

  3. “men can desire men and have it reinforce heterosexuality”

    Noah- an interesting point. Though very few straight guys are comfortable admitting, even to themselves, that they “desire” other men. Which leads me to think that the appeal of this comic depends on a certain level of obliviousness to the homoerotic content.

    Alex- so I did a little surfing on the Internet … was the Amazing Heroes swimsuit special in black-and-white? I don’t think that would go over well with the target audience.

  4. I get down on my knees every night and thank God that I stopped Marvel comics shortly before their swimsuit specials started. Yikes.

    With hindsight, I can’t help wondering why DC never published anything similar. It’s not like they were much less pandering, IIRC. Maybe they just didn’t have enough of the “hot” artists at the time?

    Cheap shot 1: if only Dave Sim had released a Soul-sucking Void Special.

    Cheap shot 2: Pretty much everything Beto does is a swimsuit special.

    (And I like those both those guys, lest another critical clusterfuck get started)

  5. I always approve of Sim-bashing.

    As for why DC never did a swimsuit special: when you take away the fishnets and stiletto boots, the swimsuits would actually be less sexualized than the costumes that DC heroines normally wear.

  6. Well, I didn’t personally intend my comment as Sim bashing- merely pointing out that Jones’ description could semi-accurately describe half of the actual content of Glamourpuss. I happen to think Sim is one of the most innovative cartoonists ever.

    Also, Richard, the Amazing Heroes specials were indeed in b + w. I got a big stack of AHs including those, mixed in a box of what was supposed to be Comics Journal issues. They were pretty appalling actually, an interesting mixture of fan art and slumming pros. You should pick one up some time if you don’t have to pay too much- wish I still had them- I’d send them to you :)

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  8. I think a large part of it is that having the guys around is just part of the overall joke. Superhero fans like seeing their favorite characters in different situations — how many superhero fans won’t pick up a copy of Criminal but buy those Marvel Noir books? I remember being a super-hero obsessed kid, and any time I saw one “my” characters in any context, I’d get a little thrill of recognition. That’s a huge part of being a super-hero nerd. If you left out the guys, you’d just be leaving out a lot of people’s favorite characters, plain and simple.

    That said, I think there’s plenty of truth to every other aspect you bring up, but I think they’re all subservient to the above.

  9. “There’s no debate that this comic was puerile, but it’s a smart puerile that understood it’s target audience. ”

    Haven’t read these swimsuit specials, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say, if the guys are just posing around, its probably not smart puerile.

    If you’re going to do the “guys like to imagine being perfect guys” thing, surely something like Gen 13 is better at it?

    http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/gen13

    You can have half naked guys along with half naked girls, but give them bad guys to hit!

  10. I don’t know, I haven’t looked at them probably since they came out, but I remember the Swimsuit specials being pretty self-mockingly aware. Honestly, I liked them as a kid. I thought they were clever and absurd. An idea so dumb, and that knew it was so dumb, that it was great.

  11. I have a certain amount of evidence that the swimsuit issues thoroughly understood their target audience and pandered to them with uncanny perspicuity. That evidence being — this post has been picked up by io9, newsarama, and CR, and has generated a mammoth amount of traffic from the home page. Superheroes in swimsuits — two decades later, people still want to look at them.

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  14. Jason- I think you’re right about the tongue-in-cheek tone of the book, but self-mockery is not contradictory to homoeroticism. In fact, joking about being “gay” (but not really!) is how straight guys deflect homoerotic tension. At least that’s what I remember from college.

    As for the book’s popularity, Marvel must have struck a cord with its readers because they published at least 3 more of these things (and other publishers like Image released their own swimsuit specials).

  15. Richard,

    Of course! I never meant to say it was contradictory, and in fact I said that all the other aspects brought up were also present. I just think the primary motivating factor behind the enterprise is “here’s a funny situation to put our characters in” and then artists finding ways to put all the popular characters into that situation. That many of the popular characters then lends itself to either knowing or unknowing homoeroticism and everything else discussed. But I think one leads from the other.

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  18. It’s not homoeroticism; it’s just beefcake. And it was deliberately included beefcake. As mentioned at the time in the comics press Marvel wanted these things to be roughly gender balanced. Pretty boys posing next to the pretty girls posing for those fans who like the first more than the latter and all done tongue in cheek. Marvel may have pandered to fanboys, but the fangirls too had their favourites…

    It also makes it more interesting for the artists themselves, as the bodytypes of Marvel’s male heroes are that much more diverse than those of the typically perfect heroines.

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