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Your favorite comic book superheroes caught in compromising, mundane and very HUMAN positions
05.26.2015
10:11 am
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Superheroes capture our imagination because, for the most part, they are ordinary people who have been granted some particular power and must reconcile the responsibility of that power with the fact that, at heart, they are human beings with regular human faults and complexities.

Indonesian photographer Edy Hardjo has made it his mission to demonstrate this reconcilliation between superpower and ordinary human behavior. Hardjo’s work uses humor to show us that, in spite of their given better-than-human abilities, superheroes are just regular schmucks like the rest of us. Hardjo’s photographs give us an insight into the mundane worlds of The Avengers, Wolverine, Spiderman, Batman and other characters from the Marvel and DC universes.

Hardjo utilizes 1/6-scale figures and Photoshop to produce hilarious and sometimes risque insights into the the everyday life of a superhero.

These are some of our favorites:
 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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05.26.2015
10:11 am
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‘The Flying Man’: Darkly original short film asks ‘What if superheroes were psychotic?’
07.10.2013
05:24 pm
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The superhero genre has always played with the concept of vigilantism, albeit usually very lightly. Superman, Spider-Man and Batman were always thought (by some element of their own society, at least), to be renegade crazies, taking the law into their own hands. Of course, Batman actually did work with the cops consistently, and all the big ones usually fought crime with the express intent of sending wrong-doers to the police, to await a fair trial.

In this beautiful, unsettling short film, “The Flying Man,” a powerful Übermensch actually takes it upon himself to be judge, jury, and executioner. Unlike the usual underdog superheroes of comics, where the audience is meant to casually rationalize their operation outside the rule of law, we are left completely chilled as he drops people from dizzying heights to their terrifying deaths with a sadistic resolve. He is in no way the protagonist, or even an anti-hero: he’s a terrorist.

Authorities are unsure of his motives or origins, or even what metric the flying vigilante uses to judge the guilty. The people are terrified, and the “distant” cinematography lends a realistic disassociation to his terror. There are no close-ups of gore—but you don’t need them to be utterly horrified.

I love a good popcorn superhero flick, but I would love to see this completely unprecedented concept for a psychological thriller adapted to a feature-length.
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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07.10.2013
05:24 pm
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Andreas Englund’s paintings of an aging Superhero
08.30.2011
07:05 am
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DM pal and acclaimed writer Steve Duffy passed on these amusing paintings by Swedish artist, Andreas Englund, who says of his art:

“Humor can be the carrier of messages that are otherwise hard to convey. For me, it liberates my thoughts and ideas from pretentiousness while at the same time it opens doors to new routes and angles.”

As Mr Duffy points out, even superheroes get old, and “this’ll be you, one day.” Well, yes, but maybe without the lycra cat suit.

See more of Andreas Englund’s paintings here.
 
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Via Empty Kingdom, with thanks to Steve Duffy.
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.30.2011
07:05 am
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Urbanism Through the Lens of Superheroes
05.13.2010
12:00 am
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Star Wars Modern posted about the urbanism of superheroes, and the birth of the superhero as a new archetype of the Depression-era city. As our modern times become more like the era the superhero was born in, it’s no surprise that this time we have turned to superheroes to save us once again, even if only in the realm of our imaginations, and albeit this time largely in movie form instead of comic books.

In his book about the creators of golden age comics, Men of Tomorrow, Gerard Jones writes:

The superman was scarcely a new idea and was in fact a common motif of both low and high culture by the early Thirties, the inevitable product of those doctrines of perfectibility promoted by everyone from Bernarr Macfadden to Leon Trotsky. The word had descended from Nietzche’s Übermensch through Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman, but it was easily wedded to ideas neither Nietzchean nor Shavian. In Germany Adolf Hitler was claiming that a whole nation of supermen could be forged through institutional racism and Militarism, and his popularity was rising steadily. In America the idea of eugenic was being explored as Ivy League universities… Even leftists could use the word: a Cleveland radical named Joseph Pirincin argued in his lectures that socialist production methods would create a ‘superabundance’ of goods and opportunities, would make the citizens of a socialist future a ‘veritable superman’ by our current standards.

That Depression Era mash of eugenics, nationalism, and progress/self-improvement, when introduced into the settings of the already popular crime pulps, gave birth to two enduring strains of superheroes: those that are inhumanly-super, like Superman; and those that are merely humanly-super, like Batman. Each has a place, an urban setting. More than childhood trauma or costume choices, it is these negative spaces that surround the heroes that make them what they are.

Superhero Urbanism (via Star Wars Modern)

The Null Device has an excellent commentary on the post, as well.

(Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book)

Posted by Jason Louv
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05.13.2010
12:00 am
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Tibetan Artist Paints Superhero Thangkas
03.31.2010
05:56 pm
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Thangkas are the primary artform of Tibetan Buddhism—and, in my opinion, the most advanced visual art form in the world. If you’ve seen these things up close—the Rubin Museum in New York City is a good place to do so—you know that Western art, outside of perhaps Hieronymous Bosch or similar artists, just doesn’t hold a candle in terms of complexity of discussing states and modalities of consciousness.

That’s why it’s particularly awesome to see them combined with that other world art form, superhero comics, in the work of Tibetan artist Gade, who swapped the Buddhas for the Hulk, Spiderman, Ronald McDonald, Ultraman and others.

The wild pop art of Tibetan artist Gade transforms famous superheroes into mandalas and religious icons. If you ever wanted to see Batman as a Buddha, this here’s your huckleberry.

Gade mixes Western comic-book heroes (and Ultraman!) and traditional Tibetan artwork to showcase the totemic status of superheroes and the effects of globalization on Tibetan culture. The below works are from his December 2008 Making Gods exhibition at London’s Rossi & Rossi gallery.

This is brilliant, and was just waiting to happen. Dear God nobody do a Twilight one, please. Please.

(io9: Superhero Thangkas)

(Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas—the best coffee table book of thangkas I’ve ever seen)

Posted by Jason Louv
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03.31.2010
05:56 pm
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