Anatomical Follies

October 11th, 2005

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

I am a big fan of Gary Frank’s art. It is the only reason that I’ll still flip through an occasional issue of Supreme Power. Still, I have to call him on this instance of bad anatomy.

The set-up (from Supreme Power #17): Mark Milton (Hyperion) is hanging out in a local strip club, eyeing the dancers. And by eyeing, I mean “using his x-ray vision to see everything.” (Of course, if he has x-ray vision, one wonders why he feels the need to hang out in a strip club in the first place). Regardless, Milton spends some time looking at a particular dancer (slightly censored to keep this blog family friendly).

scene from Supreme Power #17

It’s a fascinating panel, with the art showing both her external appearance and her bone structure and internal organs. Unfortunately, that’s exactly where the problem lies. Take a look at her left leg.

scene from Supreme Power #17

The yellow arrow shows where her kneecap ( “patella” in doctor-speak) should be; in fact, Frank’s drawn a nice bulge in the skin there. Look at the bones now. The green highlights where the patella is. Not even close. Similar problems exist for the rest of the lower leg bones and anatomical landmarks.

In all fairness, it’s a tough concept to draw, but just a quick check of his own anatomy (go ahead and do it yourself: bend you leg and check where your kneecap is. I’ll wait) would have shown him his mistake.

5 Responses to “ Anatomical Follies ”

  1. Aaron
    October 12th, 2005 at 8:34 am

    I’m going to disagree with you both. I think that the external bulge at the yellow arrow is due to the tibial tubercle. The patella doesn’t articulate with the tibia, rather it has a joint with the femur. I would say that the bulge at the 10-11 o’clock position is more likely due to the patella, which is shown low riding where it is. It also strikes me that the bones look more “elbowy” than they should.

  2. Scott
    October 12th, 2005 at 8:39 am
    Official Comment

    I thought the bulge below the yellow arrow was supposed to be the tibial tuberosity — which is nowhere near where the tibia is drawn. You’re right, it does look more like elbow bones than knee bones.

    Here’s a few images I found on the web:

  3. David Oakes
    October 12th, 2005 at 10:01 am

    Having looked up tubercle (hey, I was Genetics, we didn’t care what it coded for), I am going to have to agree that the “bump” in question was intended to be the bulbuous end of the tibia. The lmp below the yellow arrow is either shadow or musculature.

    But it still means that the anatomy is off, because if it is the tubercle, then she has some very thick skin. In fact, not only are the knee bones set too far back, they seem to be about 2/3 the size of her leg. The tibia should run right along the main shadow along the front of the leg, not down the back! Obviously Mark is Kryptonian, and is having trouble focusing all the extra lenses in his eye, leading to “floating knees”…

    (Human anatomy as “Magic Eye” 3D image. Ouch.)

  4. boolean
    October 12th, 2005 at 11:22 pm

    I guess Frank wasn’t expecting people to be looking that closely at her _knees._

    Plenty of, um, other things to distract the eye. ;-)

  5. Sean Duggan
    July 8th, 2007 at 12:55 am

    You know, the whole “X-ray vision” as a means of seeing people naked thing is somewhat overrated. Unless your ability works like something actual like X-rays (which raises all kinds of interesting question of radiation damage from your indiscriminate scanning), the odds are that there’d be all kinds of problems with scanning through levels of clothing to the flesh. Does your vision exclude certain materials? Certain densities? Certain depths? I suspect that most such abilities would basically give you the ability to replicate the Visible Human Project on people. It’s an interesting thought exercise, though.

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