Comically Pronounced Abs

A rant, if I'm being honest

Apr 11, 2025

I was once a comic book geek. A collector, even. I bet you didn’t know that. But I was. An aspiring illustrator, I was constantly sketching superheroes and supervillains—real ones, ones I imagined myself, my friends as superheroes. I even had a subscription to Captain America for a year or so. Beyond the subscription, I had a few piles of comics that I stored in a box on the floor of my closet. They got ruined when our basement flooded. I don’t think there was anything too valuable in there. Financially valuable, that is. I’m a sentimental guy and a packrat, so I’d love to still have them around. But none of the comics I owned were gonna pay for my kids’ college. Here’s one:

Invaders #1, which I had, goes for $60-200 online. Mine wasn’t “mint”, as they say, so it would’ve been on the low end, maybe help my kids buy a pizza for their college study group.

Maybe more on my overall comic fandom some other time, but today I wanna get more hyper-specific.

Abdominally hyper-specific.

MENTAL EXERCISE:
I want you to think of the person with the most impressive abs—maybe you know them personally, maybe you’re just thinking of some chiseled modern-day statue like Chris Hemsworth or, I dunno, Julianne Hough? Regardless of who you’re picturing, now I want you to think of that same person wearing the tightest, ab-sucking shirt your imagination can conjure up, the kind you have “pour” onto somebody. Do you have a picture in your head now? Yes? Good.

Does your picture look like this:

How would one go about getting those kinds of abs and then that kind of abdominal definition THROUGH the costume material? What even is this skintight, sheer-but-infinitely-durable-and-often-bulletproof material? I get that we’re talking about super soldiers and the fittest bros to ever bro, but….have you really ever seen someone’s (Hemsworth, Hough) abs through a shirt or even athletic wear to such an unbelievably dramatic and defined degree? Captain America up there is sporting a ten-pack. TEN! It might even be a twelve-pack, depending on how you’re counting.

Efron over there on the far right is showing hints of abs, good for him. But most photos of compression shirts actually are like the middle photo with the saucy reveal, where you have to actually lift the proverbial hood to see the super-engine.

I realize it’s rich and ironic and otherwise laughably inconsistent that 1) I’m willing to suspend disbelief when it comes to interplanetary superheroes and super soldier serums and gun-toting & quick-quipping raccoons with best friend talking trees and multiverse time travel and infinity gauntlets and schools of mutants but somehow draw the line at “unrealistic and exaggerated depiction of abdominal muscles”, and 2) I’m perhaps just jealous, being in possession of precisely <counts carefully, counts again just to be sure> zero abs. Or one big hulking ab, depending on how you’re counting.

BUT! My issue with comic abs doesn’t stop there.

In comic books, even the most wildly, freakily mutated characters—like Abomination or Man Thing or whatever—somehow, when a freak accident of science metamorphoses them beyond recognition, it still made sure to give them enviable six-packs. The mouth and nose are mutated or gone altogether, but the abs are still doing work.

Nature cruelly transforms you into a horrific freak of nature, but—as consolation—gifts you some new all-world abs.

Reader, will it surprise you if my issue doesn’t stop there either?

It doesn’t. I’m not trying to be Neil Degrasse-Tyson and suck all of the fun out of fiction. But I’ve got one more: let’s talk about super-armor that’s forged to look like… muscles? Like, wouldn’t you engineer your armor for maximum protection, rather than optimizing for….similarity to and/or exaggeration of human abs? Is it suppose to deepen the intimidation factor? “Whoa, guys. I don’t know if we should fight this guy. Look at his armor’s abs,” said no superhero/villain ever.