What’s kinesiology? It’s the study of anatomy, physiology, and mechanics of body movement, particularly the human body. As a comic book fan and someone who did his graduate work in kinesiology, the physiological elements of super powers hold a certain fascination for me - even though trying to apply real world human physiology to a world where people can fly, turn invisible or fire lasers from their eyes is purely mental mastur…well, I won’t go there. I don’t need those kind of Google hits.
Setting aside the odd physical properties of the various superhero universes there would seem to be some common ground with our own universe from which to draw comparisons. But you have to be careful when examining things too closely since much of what’s available for interpretation is filtered through artistic impression. Take eye color. I would wager that 80-90% of all superheroes are depicted with blue eyes. Why do you suppose that is? We could come up with all sorts of exotic answers but the most reasonable is blue is pretty and vibrant and colorists like using it. How about height? Artists have a tough time with this one, particularly in large team environments like the JLA or the Avengers. The natural tendency seems to be to lump all the males in at about one height and the females a few inches shorter. Now you'd think any quasi-normal height distribution would dictate that, in addition to a large number of taller than average hero types, there would also be some short superheroes, some average sized superheroes and maybe some really, really tall heroes - like maybe 6'9, 6'10" or greater. But for an artist this would be extremely tough to depict consistently and accurately. It's tough enough to deal with height using the relatively narrow distribution we currently see. It’s probably unfair to point to any one book, but what the heck, I need some images to punch this thing up. So for example, here’s the cover of Identity Crisis #2:
This isn’t too bad, Hawkman, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) and Green Arrow are the same height, Flash is a bit shorter and the two gals are shorter yet. For some reason I’ve always thought of Hawkman as being taller than the two green guys, but I can live with this. Now here’s an interior frame:
Zatanna and Black Canary seem to have grown and Green Arrow is noticeably shorter. Is this a problem? Not really. But it demonstrates how tough consistency is when related to the physical form. I don’t think it detracts from the story here or in other books but it does make it pretty much impossible to examine height in any meaningful way. I will say that a disproportionate number of superheroes are really tall. Say 6’4” or greater. And I’m just talking about the normal types who have become heroes not aliens, mutants, meta-humans or what have you. (A little trivariate analysis of eye color, height and skin color of all superheroes would be pretty interesting…to me anyway.)
Now I’m not bringing these attributes up as part of the kinesiology discussion but rather to show how difficult it is to judge certain physical factors due to the way they’re portrayed by an artist(s). So my discussion will be more from the hypothetical viewpoint. How does stride length affect the Flash? What is Green Arrow’s resting heart rate? What type of force does Hulk need to make the jumps he does? And would plyometric training help him improve his distance? How many turns should Thor need to throw his hammer? Okay, I’m reaching there, but you get the idea. (As an aside, has there ever been a character who threw javelins? A big guy could easily carry a dozen or so in a huge quiver and they’re the perfect size for building in all kinds of electronic gadgets.)
I promise to try and make it as fabulously entertaining as all of my posts. (That’s a joke – but you probably knew that.) And I’ll try not to retread ground already covered by The Science of Superheroes and in order to keep that promise I’ve ordered the book and will actually read it. So that's the plan, and the first thing I plan to explore: Superspeed.
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