So much awesome.

[electricland]

Comparative Sex-Specific Body Mass Index in the Marvel Universe and the "Real" World

(via improbable_blog)

Comments

[ramaxela.livejournal.com]

I read that on girl-wonder over the weekend. Neat!

[cosmicbob.livejournal.com]

I notice that they didn't pick my baby, She-Hulk!

[electricland.livejournal.com]

They explained that:

Teenagers and those whose powers or mutations can alter their body mass or sex were excluded from selection. (Big Bertha and Luke Cage were excluded; Bruce Banner was included; the Hulk was excluded.)

Makes sense, really.

[ice-fighter.livejournal.com]

I tried to impress my friend with you're hilarious link. He had this to say:

"...the person who wrote merely consulted marvel.com for the body mass of the characters rather than the official handbook of the marvel universe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Handbook_of_the_Marvel_Universe
so for ultra geek points the person would have to check the differences between marvel.com and the handbook!"

This kind of insider information available only those happy few writing a PhD on superheroes!

[ice-fighter.livejournal.com]

How embarassing. I made a spelling mistake - and I'm too much of a luddite to figure out how to fix it. The shame!

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Is OK. You can't go back and fix comments (well, you can delete them and redo them if you really, really care).

I agree the article would need some polishing before it was truly ready for prime time -- for example, with comparisons to athletes' BMI rather than just the NHANES data. I'd be interested to hear if the Official Handbook gives stats for the female characters that are less anorexic. Doubt it, though.

[karenhealey.livejournal.com]

Hey, I wrote it at work. Checking the wesbite was a heck of a lot less likely to get me fired.

I promise that when I start writing my own PhD on superheroes in July that I'll pull out all the geek stops!

Karen Healey.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I was so tempted to go off and do some supplementary analysis myself using Olympic athletes (http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/athletes/athletesbyname.shtml) as a comparison group. Maybe when I have more time. Stats aren't listed for every sport, but there's some nice data in there.

In fact, you could so totally do that and then submit it to one of the medical journals for an end-of-year issue (http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/171/12/1433).