The Secret to Superhuman Strength - August/September 2024 Edition of Devin's Chicago Comics Book Club Digest

Also, Some Thoughts on Fitness Culture

Hello, everyone! We had a good group this week, though we were a bit overshadowed by the Democratic National Convention being in town. I took the opportunity to hype the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE), which took place that weekend (Saturday, August 24 and Sunday, August 25). [It was wonderful as always, though I’m not sure I’ll have time to write about it the way I did C2E2. Lots of great independent and alternative comics creators, and I ran into a few friends!]

The reception to this comic was largely positive, though fans of the Fun Home musical felt that was the superior work. There was a wide range of familiarity with Bechdel’s bibliography among those present, and some had different reactions based on that. Personally, I thought this was a good companion to Fun Home and even stood above other comics of hers in some respects. Others in attendance who didn’t understand the references to “the dad book,” “the mom book,” or “the comic strip” were not as confused as I thought they might have been and felt encouraged to seek those books out. One person who couldn’t make it emailed me to describe The Secret to Superhuman Strength as “cerebral yet revealing,” but wrote that the ending could have had a bit more weight to it. We all agreed that there will probably be another volume about mortality before Bechdel retires completely. The most heated discussion we had centered around one person’s rejection of the idea that “death gives life meaning,” an assertion made towards the end of the comic. This led to some personal revelations about our own experiences with death and dying. The person who initially objected clarified that it isn’t death that gives life meaning, but that life already has meaning regardless of how or when it ends. Our next meeting will be Wednesday, September 18 to discuss Light Carries On.

What We're Reading

September 18 - Light Carries On by Ray Nadine

October 16 - Gideon Falls, Volume 1: The Black Barn by Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino

November 20 - Earthdivers, Volume 1: Kill Columbus by Stephen Graham Jones and Davide Gianfelice

Next month’s selection is on hoopla, which is good because there aren’t many physical copies available. Please comment with any future reading suggestions below! I’ll try to organize another poll before we meet in September, since we’re cutting it a bit close again.

Shameless Self-Promotion

As I mentioned last month, I’m in an anthology that will be published by

Geek Collective

. Please give the Kickstarter campaign a follow! I’m not sure when it will launch, but I’m really excited. It’s so crazy to see my name in bold on the campaign page next to

Jonathan Hedrick

and C.J. Hudson from

C.J. Hudson's Warn Everyone!

along with so many other talented people. A preview of my story starring Madam Shadow, Psychic Detective has been making the rounds on social media thanks to Joey Galvez.

And this is just the first panel! Wait until you see the rest of it.

Project: Weird Wild West has reached the inking stage! From there, I’ll be passing the finished artwork on to the letterer. This is the third time I’ll be working with artist David Escobar and my fourth with letterer Buddy Beaudoin. It’s a reunion of the CyberSync and Archetypes team! This is the longest piece I’ve done with either of them and it’s shaping up really well. In addition, I can announce that this project will have a four-page backup comic with artist Federico Peters. I’ll have more to share in the coming months!

The Blackout comic with art by Michael Howe that I’m developing is moving along nicely. If you’d like a little behind-the-scenes preview, check out Michael’s live art stream from Wednesday, August 14 or his live art stream from Thursday, August 29. I’ll be handling the printing of this comic, too, which will be my first time doing anything of that sort. I’ve been working on mocking up back matter and the inside front cover. Stay tuned for more, as with everything else!

It’s not all good news, as I had to withdraw from the folklore/horror anthology I mentioned in my last newsletter. Maybe someday I’ll start a feature or subsection here shedding light on how difficult creating comics can be sometimes. I’ve got stories! Lol

For three years now I’ve been teasing an animated webseries titled Nonprofitable on my YouTube channel. I don’t want to share too much too soon, but we’re nearing a premiere date!

Finally, CyberSync is available for purchase.

About What We’ve Read

Not a lot to dive into around this month’s comic. The Secret to Superhuman Strength was named by The New York Times as one of the Best Graphic Novels of 2021 and it won Publishers Weekly’s 2021 Graphic Novel Critics Poll. Vulture interviewed Alison Bechdel about it, too.

On a peripheral note, the topics of spirituality and brand loyalty both played heavily into the overall autobiography and a reference to Dr. Bronner’s soap gives me an excuse to share this Nib comic that sheds some light on that topic.

The latest NEWS digest is available here. The next NEWS digest will be posted in two weeks.

Some Thoughts on Fitness Culture

The three industries around which my professional life has revolved are Big Pharma, Big Tech, and (for lack of a better term) Big Fitness. When I was still in college, I had temp jobs and internships at a pharmaceutical company where I witnessed firsthand the kind of evil shit that results in keeping needed medicines prohibitively expensive and unleashing an opioid epidemic to line executive pockets. Many years later, my employment history in middle age has included jobs at multiple companies that mine personal data in a sector that is responsible for crimes against humanity.

In between these careers, I worked at a health food cafe. I started as a sandwich maker, quickly got promoted to handling the finances and inventory of a franchise, and ended up representing the company at several fitness expos in the Midwest. As part of my job, I had a gym membership and personal trainer, a massage therapist, and access to meal planning reserved for competitive fitness models. I told myself I was promoting physical well being and healthy eating habits. I was trying to help people! While my Big Pharma and Big Tech experiences filled me with embarrassment and remorse, I thought Big Fitness was something of which I could be proud.

I was wrong.

In The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel recounts a quest for self improvement and fulfillment. Unlike her, I found myself thrust into a subculture of which I knew nothing but which quickly became my entire identity. I had few friends outside fellow gym rats and few interests outside work. This was my first big step outside the evangelical church that had defined me through college and young adulthood. If I’d been more self aware, I might have recognized how I had traded one judgmental, sanctimonious friend group for another.

I reacted with revulsion to the idea that fat people could be healthy, or even happy. Since leaving fitness culture behind, I’ve realized how so much of what I thought I knew was factually incorrect, sometimes to a dangerous degree. I thought I knew how human metabolism works, that it’s impossible to be fat and healthy, and that BMI was a valid metric. In reality, no amount of diet books would teach me how human metabolism works; it is very much possible to be fat and healthy; and BMI is junk science predicated on racism and bad math.

In reality, fat shaming does not work. If anything, it increases depression and exacerbates health issues a person may have. I’ve had friends develop eating disorders in adulthood because of gurus and experts. In the “post truth era” we’re living in now, this has extended to embracing conspiracy theories (“The body positivity movement is a psyop funded by sugar companies!”) and transphobia (I’m not going to link to either of these lunkheads, but you can look up the Dilbert guy showing off his abs or anything to do with Joe Rogan).

There is a shortage of healthy eating in the United States, but it’s not because people are lazy or want to be unhealthy. There are systemic issues at play that those who scold people who don’t conform to their diet plans or fitness regimens completely ignore so that they can show off their triceps. Real-life complications surrounding health and wellness get flattened to “thin equals healthy” and “I got in shape, why can’t other people?”

It was easy for me to brag about being in excellent shape, but not everyone has access to a gym membership or a personal trainer. Some people I know can’t even afford a dumbbell from Target, despite working multiple jobs to make rent, and when are they supposed to work out anyway? It’s easy to scold parents about feeding their kids McDonald’s, but what if that’s the only food that parent can afford or is available?

In a country that treats poverty and obesity as moral failings, an industry devoted to increasing the guilt and shame of people dealing with those conditions is a real sin. And it is compounded by the denial of basic human rights like healthcare, the refusal to provide food for children, and housing instability and income inequality.

I’ve gone into some of the class issues at play, and I don’t have the time or space to get into how gendered the toxicity of fitness culture can be. Just about the only thing a woman is told to do more often than lose weight is “smile.”

I did learn some valuable lessons in my time as a “gym bro” and I still try to be active. As someone who works eight hours a day behind a desk and has a side hustle that involves more sitting, I can’t afford not to be. I stretch and take walks, eat leafy greens with most meals, and limit my snacking and sweets. But if we’re going to complain about the junk science about Subway, we should also complain about the junk science around supplements.

This essay touched on more subjects than I intended. I probably could’ve expanded on some of them, but I was down to the wire again. Lol Feel free to share any thoughts or comments below! Please subscribe if you haven’t already. Thanks for reading. See you next month for Light Carries On by Ray Nadine!