Batman isn’t the hero we deserve.
I mean, think about it. The guy is a bored billionaire, driving around in his special self-driving supercar (essentially a Tesla), hanging on a wire outside apartment buildings, and spying on the unemployed people in Gotham (thanks for the layoffs, Wayne Enterprises!). When Batman isn’t beating these citizens up personally—using “less lethal bat-a-rangs” and military-grade combat armor—he’s ratting ’em out to Commissioner Gordon.
Screw you, Batman—and you too, Robin. Because we have a better pair of superheroes for the year 2020. The Beef Bros.
“We kept stumbling across side-scrolling, beat-em-up video games [from the ’80s and ’90s]. Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Double Dragon,” says Sitterson. “Those games are awesome . . . the only problem is that the base-level assumptions of those games are really ugly . . . it’s very much like this reactionary fantasy of a world where crime is so out of control and nobody is doing anything about it, so it takes the mayor to strip off his shirt, beat everyone up, and get his daughter back.” (Note: That’s literally the plot of Final Fight.)
What was born from those discussions was “a revolutionary, leftist take on superheroes.” Beef Bros. It’s a story about two extraordinarily ripped gentlemen (aka the Bros), fighting street-level crime. But instead of promising authoritarian justice by punching on problematic thug stereotypes, they serve the community to stop the real bad guys: murderous cops and unsympathetic landlords.
Cannon has a long history of drawing hyperbolic muscular forms, a practice he likens back not to ’90s comic books, but to Renaissance art and its obsession with the chiseled human body. “Superhero framing and nude art are, at their heart, the male or female form pushed to its limits,” says Cannon. “There’s all these different ways to show the human form, and I try to pull those into my influence. Otherwise, every page is just a guy with his fist toward a viewer. If you only look at comics, that’s what you draw every time. And that’s boring.”
“This is not a meditation on violence,” he adds.
So far, it’s found an audience, as the comic has raised over $20,000 and counting. That’s enough to green-light the first issue, but another $15,000 is needed for a second. Even in these highly partisan times, where defunding the police is packaged as a leftist ideal, the creators of Beef Bros say the comic has won over the begrudging support of many conservatives on Kickstarter.
“There are people much farther right on the spectrum [supporting it],” says Sitterson. “Beef Bros has an aesthetic, ethos, and thesis. It’s a fully formed thing. People might not fully agree with all of it, but there’s something inspiring to a piece of art that fully commits to the direction it’s headed in. And I think it’s clear to people that’s what we’ve done.”