What would a superhero's newborn look like? Brazilian illustrator Lucas Eduardo Nascimento, who publishes as Dragonarte, answered that question with a series of single-panel comics set in a hospital maternity ward. In each one a proud father stands behind the nursery window beside a nurse, and among the rows of sleeping babies one newborn is already showing his famous parent's powers.
Spider-Man's baby hangs upside down from a web, Batman's watches from the shadows in the rafters, Wolverine's has the hair and a cigar, and Iron Man's is welding a machine in his crib. The twelve scenes below include DC and Marvel heroes alongside a few guests from outside superhero comics: RoboCop, the Alien xenomorph and Chuck Norris.
Who drew the superhero babies?
Nascimento is a Brazil-based illustrator known for humorous pop-culture comics, and his watermark, www.dragonarte.com.br, appears on most of the panels. Copies of this gallery shared online sometimes credit a site called "Dragoart", but the watermark on the panels points to Dragonarte. The panels shown here carry hand-signed dates from 2014 and 2016, and the series went viral again when sites such as Bored Panda and My Modern Met featured it.
Every image uses the same template, which is what makes the series work. The background never changes: a window, a nurse, a hero, a ward full of identical cribs. Only one crib differs, so the eye goes straight to it, and the joke lands in a second. He has since drawn other series about the daily lives of superheroes and famous characters.
The nursery, scene by scene
Martian Manhunter
J'onn J'onzz, the green shape-shifter from Mars who joined DC Comics in 1955, stands with arms crossed while the nurse panics on the phone. His baby has turned into a mass of green tentacles that grabs the screaming babies around it, while one unbothered newborn takes a selfie of the chaos.
The Flash
The Fastest Man Alive holds one crackling baby while a yellow lightning trail zips across the ward and an empty crib shows where his child should be. Super-speed in a newborn is presumably the nurse's worst nightmare.
Hawkman
The winged hero stands proudly while the nurse holds a frying pan, and the crib in front contains not a baby but a large egg. The joke treats Hawkman's bird theme literally.
RoboCop
The cyborg police officer from Paul Verhoeven's 1987 film is not a comic-book superhero, but he fits the series perfectly: his child is a chrome toaster, with two slices of toast popping out. A machine father gets a kitchen-appliance son.
The Thing
Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four, the orange rock-skinned hero Marvel introduced in 1961, looks on as the nurse covers her mouth in shock. His baby is a small heap of orange stone in a nappy, crying in its crib.
Wolverine
Logan, in his checked shirt and jacket, smokes a cigar behind the glass. In the crib, his baby has the same pointed hairstyle and side-whiskers and is also smoking a cigar, which horrifies the nurse.
Aquaman
The King of Atlantis, who first appeared in DC comics in 1941, smiles beside the nurse. His baby's crib has been replaced with a fish tank, and the blond newborn swims happily underwater.
Batman
Batman stands silently while the nurse gestures in alarm. His baby has left the crib and is perched on a beam in the ceiling, glowering down at the ward in the shadows, exactly like his father on a Gotham rooftop.
Spider-Man
Spider-Man watches as his son hangs upside down from the ceiling, wrapped in white webbing like a cocoon. The cover image of this gallery puts this scene side by side with the Thing's baby.
Iron Man
Tony Stark, with the glowing arc reactor on his chest, watches his son at work: wearing a welding mask, the baby is assembling a machine labelled STARK, with sparks flying. Genius inventor, genius inventor's child.
Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris is an actor and martial artist rather than a superhero, but internet "Chuck Norris facts" turned him into a near-mythical figure in the 2000s. Here he stands with arms crossed while his baby, sword on his back, kisses the nurse, and the newborns around them include one with a red headband.
Alien surprise!
The last scene swaps the hero for the Xenomorph from the Alien films, with hearts floating around its head. Its offspring is an egg that has hatched a facehugger, now clamped on the frantic nurse's face, a nod to the creature's life cycle in the 1979 film.
Why the joke works
The series takes a simple question, what if powers were inherited, and gives it the most ordinary setting possible. A maternity ward is a place of tired nurses, identical cribs and proud fathers, so anything super stands out immediately. The nurse is the real recurring character: shocked, resigned or under attack, she is the one dealing with the consequences.
It also plays with something comics have explored for decades. Superheroes' children do exist in official stories: Batman's son Damian Wayne, Spider-Man's daughter Mayday Parker, who became Spider-Girl, and Franklin Richards, the powerful son of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman. Those stories usually ask whether a child should inherit a parent's mission. Dragonarte's version asks a funnier question: who changes the nappy?
Heroes, villains and a few outsiders
Not every father in the nursery is a hero. RoboCop comes from a film, Chuck Norris from real life and internet folklore, and the xenomorph is a movie monster that would be the villain in any other story. Mixing them in keeps the series surprising, and the final alien panel ends it on a twist that fans of the 1979 film will see coming one second before the nurse does.
Versions of the series shared online include other characters too, such as Deadpool and the Human Torch, so the twelve images here are a selection rather than the complete set. More of the artist's work can be found on Dragonarte.
Sources: Dragonarte (Lucas Eduardo Nascimento), My Modern Met en Español: what if superheroes had babies, Bored Panda: children of superheroes by Lucas Eduardo Nascimento.
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