Is that a Batarang in your utility belt or...?

So, I had actually meant to write about this piece when it first came out on the Comics Alliance blog but, well, I didn't.

Back on January 19th Adam Wheeler penned a little OpEd about "The Myth of Sexy Superman and the Search for Superhero Beefcake". I will say up here in full sight that some folks might take exception to some of the images that accompanied the piece, though there is absolutely no nudity and, in point of fact, were any of the characters depicted in the illustrations female instead of male, they would simply look like panels from an off-the-rack superhero comic.

Which was really what made Wheeler's "Sexy Superman" so well timed and such an interesting read. While debating the depictions of women and sex and violence in comic books is hardly new ground to be covering, the launch of DC's 52 and some of the decisions that were made for that universal re-boot seems to have made everything old new again.

But here's what really excited me about Wheeler's article.

I felt like I was in graduate school again. See, I was a theory kind of guy. Nothing made me happier than a course listing that promised a semester's worth of sticking things under the microscope. It was the closest I ever came to taking apart a car's engine to see how it worked.

Consider this passage from Wheeler's "Sexy Superman":

"But it's not equivalent. Superhero men are idealized, yes, but they're rarely sexualized. While women are presented as broken-backed boob hostesses whose every move is a bend-and-snap designed to flatter and entice the presumed-male, presumed-straight reader, the men are sexless paragons of strength, with propaganda poster good looks that serve as visual shorthand for their masculine, heroic bona fides."

The sound you are hearing is the beating of my tell tale heart.

"...presumed-male..."

"...presumed-straight..."

"...sexless paragons of strength..."

"...visual shorthand..."

Freaking catnip.