Wing-a-dings

Recently, I was thinking about flight in comic books and it occurred to me that quite a few Marvel characters have dumb-ass under-arm wings. I thought I'd see if there was a correlation between these stupid things and the ability to fly.

First, Spider-Woman.


I'm not a big Spider-Woman fan, but it looks like in her first appearance she had the armpit wings (from here out referred to as "pit-wings"), and I know she has them now, so I'm just going to say that she's always had them. And she's always been able to fly. So, pit-wings=flight. Also, Spider-Woman is sexy. Not sure if that is related to the pit-wings though.

Next up, Black Bolt.


I like Black Bolt. He never talks, yet commands the respect of an entire ancient culture. I dig that. Plus, when he does talk his voice levels cities. I dig that too. At first I thought the pit-wings (from here out referred to as "pitings") are a no-flight item. However, according to Wikipedia, Black Bolt can fly, although I've never seen him do it. Admittedly, I haven't read that many comics with Black Bolt in them, and he was never the main character in the ones I have read, so I'm going to go with Wikipedia on this one: Black Bolt can fly. So once again, pitings=flight.

Finally, Spider-Man.


For a very long time, Spider-Man had these armpit web things for some stupid reason. Granted, both Spider-Man and Spider-Woman's pitings were made of webbing ("wepitings"?), and it may skew the results, but I couldn't think of anyone else that had pitings. Anyway, if you didn't know already, Spider-Man can't fly. So here we have pitings=bad costume decision. Maybe Spider-Man's pitings weren't intentional. Maybe his spider DNA just squirted webbing from his armpits. I don't know. I haven't heard that that's the case though, but maybe someone should get on retconing that. Dan Slott, I'm taking to you!

What have we learned from this? Well, if you can fly you can have pitings. If not, you look like a 'tard. I think the reason is that if two people see a superhero with pitings the conversation goes something like this:

"Hey, what the hell is coming out of his/her armpits?! That looks retarded!"

"Oh yeah, well at least that 'tard can fly!" Obviously, if that 'tard can't fly, he/she still looks retarded.

If I had a point when I started this, I've forgotten what it was.