Heroic Build/Analysis

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Muscles count as much as shape.

I in fact believe that musculature is an important part of this trope. Even when not displaying the character in a typical post, comic book artists will go to great lengths to layer upon layer muscles and their definition onto the heroes bodies. Male and female forms will have have their body structure in fact strongly impressed upon us by the muscular definition and in some bad cases that leads to what, when you think about it, must be a body missing some joints and bones in important cases. Muscles that you probably just wouldn't so developed on a normal person such as the Serratus Anterior (aka Boxer's Muscles or "The things that seem to be bursting out of Superman's ribs all the time") or the lower insertion of the obliques being highly peaked to emphasise female hips (see every bad drawing of Supergirl). That sort of error is so common and cases of the builds without the over the top musculature are so rare (Kingdom Come managed to knock me for six just by doing so), that the pic should show it off.

We must consider the trend that has been continuous upheld as part of the bodybuilder image since The Edwardian Era, has appearred in art frequently ever since the Classical age and is immortalised in our many ancient sculptures. Muscles count, whether we are looking at the sculpted precision of Eugene Sandow or the flesh obsessed madness of the Dark Age of comics as explemified so well by the artistic calamities of Rob Liefeld.