Q&A: Eye of the Cyclone, godfather of superhero and spandex fetish
Welcome to our Q&A with Eye of the Cyclone, one of the Internet’s longest-running superhero fetish sites. The Eye of the Cyclone was generating stories and images of superhero, wrestling and spandex fetish from basically the very beginning of the explosion of the world-wide web. Nowadays, the ubiquity of superhero fetish images on sites like Tumblr, Instagram and YouTube mean that it’s a lot easier for superhero fetishists to find community, but EOTC was there first, and for many kinksters, it was one of the first sites that took the fetish seriously. Today we sit down with its creator Neil Page and ask him a few questions. We’ll find out why the site has endured so long, how he selects such hot models, and his predictions about the future of this fetish and community.
Q: Neil, How did you start Eye of the Cyclone? What year was that?
A: The format of the site in its present form started around 2005. Before that, it was still called Eye of the Cyclone, but it was more of a scrapbook of images I had photographed and sourced starting in 1998.
Q: What difficulties did you run into in the early years?
A: When I first started it was difficult finding costumes readily available to use in the stories. So I got used to using base dance unitards and customising them myself, slowly creating my own stable of characters.
Q: Did you have a moment in the site’s history when it started to pick up steam and become more popular? What was the cause for that surge?
A: There was never one time I experienced that. The site slowly gained momentum, hopefully due to more superhero live action images and movies being accepted, and not as a novelty or joke factor.
Q: How do you define superhero fetish for yourself?
A: I have always had a thing for comic book superheroes from a very young age. I knew I saw something different in that other people didn’t. The sight of an anatomically correct fit man in skintight suits got me excited in ways I didn’t understand at the time. Along with my wrestling fetish, I also was inspired and stimulated by the elements of good guy vs. bad guy and a battle in hot tight gear.
Q: What’s the purpose of Eye of the Cyclone?
A: The original purpose was to bring to superheroes into a live action format. Keep in mind that when I first started in around 1998, there were not many images of this kind around, either in the media of web. When Eye of the Cyclone was a free homepage on AOL, the aim was to share my view of my superhero and wrestling fetish. I wanted to see if any other people out there “got it”. Hence the name Eye of the Cyclone (Cyclone was a name I took on as a name in the gay wrestling world). It’s wasn’t until 2005 that I decided to take it to a professional level with the members sections and making it a paid site.
Q: Your site is different than others, because you actually make comic book panels and focus on the fetish aspect of the superheroes and villains. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
A. I always thought the panel and frame-by-frame images were essential for a superhero comic book. I was intrigued on making this live action stills via photography. I have been asked why I don’t do more video, even though I do small video clips. I feel the strength of the site is its photo comic book format. I still try to keep the characters and storylines as interesting, horny and also with humour as much as I can. The essence of a good superhero showdown with the clean cut hero in danger of being defeated and corrupted by and evil and perverted villain.
Q: Are there requests for stories or fetishes that you’ve had to turn down?
A. I love getting requests or suggestions for the site. Many of those I try and include on upcoming photoshoots. I steer clear from extreme fetish requests. That does not have any place in the superhero fetish.
Q: How do you find your models?
A.I used to use a lot of people I met through the gay wrestling world. These days I hire many models from various sources online.
Q: You feature many body types, from lean and athletic to bodybuilder-like, stocky and muscle bear-ish. Can you talk about why?
A: From publishing the site online for many years, I have had many requests for all types of superheroes, from young agile spiderman types to more mature beefy hulks. I try and incorporate as many different types as possible. When I hire a model for a shoot I usually tailor make the hero to suit his build and type.
Q: You used to produce DVDs. Why did you stop? Will you do more video work in the future?
A: I produced on DVD in the past called “Divide and Conquer” the trailer is still around on my youtube channel. The reason why I didn’t follow these up with more, even though we did have a sequel planned, was down to the lack of time and resources to do so. Because the site is updated every week, I didn’t want the main focus, the site, to suffer from this. You never know -- in the future we might get to produce another video, It was great fun to do and an extreme learning curve.
Q: Do you attend events in the UK for superhero fetish? What is the scene like over there?
A: There are no Superhero Fetish events over hero in the UK. I do attend gear fetish events that sometime do have a superhero gear element to them, I always try to gear up as much as possible. The gear fetish scene is building and diversifying from the main ones of leather and rubber, which can only be good news.
Q: What’s been your most popular storyline on EOTC?
A: There have been many stories had their popularity during their published dates. But one that seems to remain a favourite was the introduction of Supersonic and his battle with the Xtractor.
Q: What predictions can you make about the future of superhero fetish as a recognized kink?
A: I can only hope and wish it grows and is more recognised from new guys on the scene along with experience fetish guys. There is definitely is more of a crossover happening with the guys who are into bondage that now recognise the superhero-in-trouble aspect, long may it grow. Let’s face it -- we all need a superhero in our lives!
You can find Eye of the Cyclone at eyeofthecyclone.com. They offer free previews and offer paid memberships. You can also find EOTC on Facebook and Twitter.
I Want to Liberate Men From Baggy Shorts
During the last half of this past season of The Amazing Race, contestant Matt spent two episodes wearing spandex tights putting his whole lower body on display. Always in action, sometimes he would be perfectly framed, and a nice pause and perfectly timed screenshot would reveal the glory of his ass and legs.
This season of the reality show features Tanner & Josh a team that wears tights under their shorts. This is all they’ve been wearing since the race began. The two have amazing looking bodies. They are hot guys; I want to fuck them both. But I also want to liberate them from those baggy shorts they insist on wearing over their tights!
In a recent episode, “Get In There & Think Like a Dog”, Tanner had to perform an aerials tango, an artistically beautiful moment, queered by an unexplained partnering (I assume to match weights when performing an aerials section of the dance) in which the men danced with men and the women with women. Tanner, a Texas boy, was comfortable in the moment, even if he wasn’t the best dancer and his leg and foot work was pretty good for an amature.
What was key however, was that his legs were on display– but only from the knees down. Bare feet, tight, spandex covered calves. It was both a beautiful and sexy moment, ruined by a pair of baggy gym shorts. Had Tanner taken off the shorts and danced in his tights, thereby displaying a male body, comfortable and free within a material that is so often negatively associated with being a constricting and binding fabric it would have been a moment that is not only sexy, but shows the the perfection of the male body, at least from the waist down.
Obsessing over Matt and Tanner's spandex coated legs caused me to wonder why we don’t see a lot more displays of the male body like this one in cinema, television, and in the real world.
During the era of Greek art, the male body was put on display, it was objectified as the perfect specimen. Men were carved from marble, their body showing others the perfection that was close to godliness, cast into marble, nude, not just as art but as an example for the perfect body.
Today, we still have the perfect male: athletes and actors, put on pedestals for their perfected bodies. And yet I feel their display is treated differently. One could say it is the constant "fear" that men who look at other men must be gay, but it could also be that society as a whole prefers to see the female body objectified and put on display than that of the male counterpart.
We live in stifled society. As mentioned the Greeks and later the Romans perfected the art of sculpture of the male body. The Romantic era brought about a more effeminate and yet still on display male. Through this period, men of certain classes dressed in tight, tapered pants or in some cases, tights and stockings. Obviously the fabric wasn't spandex, that's a 20th century creation, but the look produced was that of a male leg and often a male crotch on display.
Now, in the 21st century, we still feel the effects left behind by the prudish values that Victorian society clamped over the freedoms of the earlier Romantic period. We were taught that our bodies were private, something to keep to ourselves. While the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, feminism, and gay rights movement has changed this quite a bit, full displays of the nude body still skew more toward female bodies. The fashion industry puts the female form on display, seen as a perfect form showcasing the nude leg, shoulders, bare arms and midriffs. The male form, on the other hand, is often shown as something to be hidden behind jackets, jeans, and baggy clothing. With the exception of fitness fashion, the male body is often hidden under many layers of garments. Even as children most of us were told that if something were too tight, it wasn’t our size, and that the bigger and bulkier the better. In other words, we have learned that we should hide our male bodies.
In the case of tights, something that normally is just worn by women or hair-bands from the 80s has branched from something athletes can use for practical uses, to something weekend warriors can wear to show their toughness.
While spandex is slowly but surely becoming mainstream, it isn’t yet the norm to wear your tights everyday in every part of the world. Liberal, urban areas are the places where it’s acceptable so far, and even so, it’s not like guys have replaced jeans with tights. They’ve replaced them with joggers and I have mixed feelings about this. I used to wear sweatpants growing up, only to be made fun of for being “unfashionable,” and now they are all the rage. Joggers seems to be applicable to anytime, anywhere. That said, the fit looks great on most guys and it begins to bleed the line between spandex becoming something that belongs in the gym and something that belongs on the street in that the fit and cut, in many ways, replicates that of tights.
But until there is a day that a man can go grocery shopping in a bodysuit is the day we have fully saturated the common space. In the sporting world this is commonplace. Since moving to Toronto I’ve seen a guy in head to toe 2XU and another in a tribal print cycling suit, while having tribal arm tattoos, it was quite the sight. But I don’t see it all the time, as many men are still unsure of themselves in tights. Advertisements still show men wearing shorts over their tights and in real life many do when working out.
Being covered head to toe in spandex is being of two worlds. On one hand you only have a thin layer fabric keeping you from being totally naked to the whole world. On the other hand, you are still completely clothed, sometimes with only your head exposed. Guys treat it like it it’s actual nudity, and therefore they cover it with baggy gym shorts and hoodies. If guys can start to change their point of view, and treat spandex like any other article of clothing, they won't feel naked, they'll feel liberated.
Real Stories of Superhero Fetish: Captain Spandex
The thrill of anonymity; the ego-boost of exhibitionism; the look and feel of hard muscle under silky, stretchy material; the fantasy of transformation and power that comes with roleplay: Superheroes have always been a source of immense excitement for me, but it’s very difficult to trace my superhero fetish back to its roots. In some ways, I feel it’s always been with me.
Captain Spandex as Clark/Kal-El
As far back as I can remember, I was devouring Spider-Man and Superman comics, swooning over reruns of the classic Batman TV series, and waking up early every Saturday to watch the adventures of any superhero cartoon within reach. Seeing costumed heroes on the pages of comics, or in animated form, was a thrill. Seeing those same heroes in the flesh, on a TV or movie screen was an obsession.
Once in a while, as I channel-surfed, I would catch Nicholas Hammond as The Amazing Spider-Man, or Michael Gray as Shazam. The stories were always enjoyable, but when Adam West in the Batman TV series or Christopher Reeve in Richard Donner’s film Superman were on-screen in costume, my focus was absolute — I’d watch the hero’s body, comic-made-flesh, as muscles and power radiated under spandex and cape. There was something different about those two that stood out above the rest: they were icons of confidence and power that I worshipped because I felt these were things I lacked in a childhood tainted by alcoholism and abuse. Seeing Batman and Superman come to life meant that they were real in some way, and that their abilities (realistically possible or not) were something I could adopt for myself as a means of escape.
The Captain at rest
I always wanted to be Spider-Man or Superman for Halloween, and once in a while my parents would indulge me. One day, around the age of eight, my siblings and I joined some other kids at our baby-sitter’s place. One of the other kids had come as Batman, in what I (inaccurately) remember as the most perfect reproduction of Adam West’s costume, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Of course, when you have Batman in your backyard, you are obligated to play Good Guys Vs. Bad Guys. That day, I let Batman defeat my pathetic bank-robber of a villain. And perhaps, I gave in a little too easily when Batman pinned me to the ground and held me there. At that age it was just fantasy, but I loved it nonetheless.
I maintained a sometimes-secret obsession with Superman and Spider-Man all through my childhood and teen years, complementing old fantasies with new ones about being treated with super soldier serum, finding Green Lantern’s power ring, or being given Shazam’s powers by a benevolent old man. There weren’t many outlets to explore the obsession, but I tried. How many other pre-teen boys snuck out of the house to see Superman IV in theatres just because the bad guy wore gold tights?
In high school, my childhood fantasies transitioned to sexual awakening at the same time as the late-80s fad of spandex in men’s locker rooms and sports fields spread throughout the continent. I had a crush on a boy in my class that was ramped up to epic proportions when he began to wear long spandex shorts in gym class — the plain black kind, with golden yellow panels on the outside of the legs. I secretly obsessed over him when he wore them and would take the locker next to him hoping that our bodies would accidentally touch. I asked my mom if I could have some of the same kind of shorts, but she said they were for girls. I was left wondering how they felt to wear, and my fantasy side wondered if they gave him extra athletic power… not unlike the alien suit worn by Ralph Hinkley on “Greatest American Hero”.
Once I had linked my school crush with spandex and superheroes, my fate was set. It was sealed when I masturbated for the first time around the age of 14. During that first time, I was overcome by the thrill of wearing a pair of cycling shorts I had secretly bought at a local thrift shop and kept hidden from my mom.
When I began to live on my own in university, I was free to explore my fetish at will. In addition to adopting a steady gym habit -- look good in spandex was always my mantra -- I began to collect pieces of lycra-based athletic apparel. I bought shorts, shirts, wrestling singlets, and a dive skin. By this time I had discovered a number of great communities on the Internet — gearfetish.com and spandex-party.com among them — where other men shared pics of themselves in gear, connected about their fetishes and fantasies, and found kinship with people like me, who until then had never imagined anyone else shared my kinks. My fetishes hadn’t been kept secret from my lovers up until that time, but none of them ever really embraced them; they’d allow online connections with other members of the community, but never fully-accepted coming home to someone lounging on the couch in full-body lycra. I remember a day when my ex suddenly stopped as he came down the hallway and spotted me in gear: “that’s going to take some getting used to,” he said. It was only through connecting with other people from Internet sites devoted to my fetishes that I began to assert my hero complex as a healthy and important aspect of my sex life.
As progress from my exercise regimen increased, so did my confidence. I began to use exercise as an excuse to wear spandex in public, taking up running and cycling and almost any other activity that provided an excuse to wear my favorite pieces of clothing. All of these items were cherished, but were never really close to what I really wanted — a Superman costume of my own. Many years later, once I graduated and started working a steady job, my regular habit of trolling eBay for cheap spandex revealed a decent Superman costume that someone was selling. I didn’t hesitate to bid, and I won the item. A few weeks later, I raced home from work and suited up for the first time, shaking with extreme excitement as I literally transformed into the same hero I’d idolized growing up. Looking in the mirror, I felt invincible, confident and irresistibly sexy. Within days I was addicted to the thrill of being Superman, and shared that thrill by adding superhero pics of myself to my online profiles.
Captain Spandex in iconic spider skin
People liked my spandex and superhero pics, which made me post more, which attracted more attention and views. In turn, I was encouraged to post more explicit pictures, merging my sexuality with every possible combination of gear that I owned, and occasionally adding props such as heavy chains. All of this activity in the online community led to longstanding friendships and online roleplays, live one-to-one webcam sessions, and more. I was loving it, and I began to make a bucket list of other costumes I wanted: Spider-Man, Shazam, Flash, Green Lantern, Captain Canuck, Cyclops, Wolverine… any hero that dressed in head-to-toe spandex became a hero whose skin I wanted to inhabit. I began to call Halloween my Annual Spandex Festival, and my friends got used to seeing me out in public as Superman, Spider-Man, or Wolverine. During these outings I discovered the pure joy of being a masked crusader in public. Anonymity freed me from feeling judged, and comments from strangers fueled my addiction even more. (“Not many guys could pull off Superman. You totally do.”). These days, comic conventions provide additional opportunities to suit up as a hero for a day, and as excuses to cross additional heroes off my costume list. I do it whenever I can. I most recently donned my really-good Spidey suit to a big comic expo in my hometown and had the time of my life. It justified working on two new Spidey-variant suits to wear to future cons.
One of the advantages of being a gearfetish.com member is the exposure to all kinds of other fetishes and kinks. Throughout my late 20s, my interest in spandex, superheroes, and muscle grew to encompass bondage, dominance, submission, leather, and more. My assertiveness about my own online persona, a growing expansion of leather-only events into “all-fetish” events, as well as my willingness to try new things, eventually connected my alter-ego and online handle Captain Spandex with a leather fetishist and kinkster that I met on recon.com. Our one night stand — involving latex and superhero gear, of course — soon blossomed into something more significant, and almost four years later the two of us are happily married and celebrating everything about each others’ kinks and fetishes.
That brings us to the current day, where Captain Spandex continues to post to Tumblr, connect with other heroes online, and thrives as a husband whose sexual adventures often include spandex, hero gear, dominating (most of the time), or being submissive (occasionally), and bondage. The good Captain’s super-strength is derived from his celebration of muscle, exhibitionism, and brightly-colored spandex in all its forms. My superhero alter-ego and his kinks do not define me, but they are deeply ingrained and kept close to the surface — skin-tight and oh-so-deliciously concealed under a business-like demeanour. My body thrums with the heartbeat of a hero. As far as Captain Spandex is concerned, real heroes still wear tights.
Editor's note: We are proud to introduce Captain Spandex, and active community member and ongoing contributor to How to Kill a Superhero. You can follow Captain Spandex on Tumblr. Want to share your own story of superhero fetish? Please email your entry to au@howtokillasuperhero.net and write "Guest Blogger" in the subject.
The Role of Spandex in Superhero Fetish
For each of us, as we have seen, the base of our fetish is something totally different and for some it is more than spandex: neoprene, rubber, leather, and for others, sports gear. Our fetish is something personal. For me it was a jock thing, but also a superhero thing. For both, it was the freedom to wear these items of clothing so freely, so publicly and be completely blasé about it. Athletes especially get me: they walk around in spandex like it is nothing at all. It means the world to me, and jocks drive me nuts!
Spandex, Lycra or elastane is a synthetic fiber known for its exceptional elasticity. It is stronger and more durable than natural rubber. It is a polyester-polyurethane copolymer that was invented in 1958 by chemist Joseph Shivers at DuPont's Benger Laboratory in Waynesboro, Virginia. The word spandex comes from the word “expands”.
The very birth of spandex is something otherworldly, cooked up in the lab around World War II like a science experiment. It's a direct result of the industrial age as synthetic fibers became more widely used for clothing. What always surprised me about the material is that many comic-book heroes predate that creation of spandex. Prior to that a cotton or wool blend was drawn on heroes and villains (or worn on TV and film versions), and it just doesn’t do the same job. The look is all wrong. But then spandex appears in the visual consciousness of the 20th century: Now the superhero costume makes sense" skintight and allowing all their muscles to be on full display, spandex becomes a thin shield for the naked male body. It is all that is keeping the body from being fully displayed.
Spandex fetishism is a fetishistic attraction to people wearing form fitting stretch fabrics or to the wearing of items of clothing made of such material. Spandex garments are often worn by swimmers, ballet dancers, wrestlers, rowers, cyclists, contortionists and circus performers, and spandex fetishists may incorporate fantasies about these activities into their particular fetish. One reason why spandex and other tight fabrics may be fetishized is that the garment forms a "second skin", acting as a surrogate for the wearer's own skin. Wearers of skin-tight nylon and cotton spandex garments can appear naked or coated in a shiny or matte substance like paint. The tightness of the garments may also be seen as sexual bondage. Another reason is that nylon-spandex fabric (preferred by many spandex fetishist) is often produced with a very smooth and silk-like finish, which lends a tactile dimension to the fetish - as well as a visual one. The pressure of tight garments against the genitals can become quite sensual.
What’s interesting is that while the definition mentions many of the jocks that wear spandex, including circus performers, but no mention of superheroes. True, we may be a niche within the fetish market, but nonetheless, spandex and superheroes walk hand in hand. Yet with the advent of Under Armour (God loves gays or he would have never given us Under Armour) it made spandex mainstream at the same time that Hollywood was taking spandex away from the superhero.
PHOTO GALLERY: The Role of Spandex in Superhero Fetish
Spider-Man and Superman still sport spandex (The Amazing Spider-Man was kind enough to make reference to it) but for the most part (and I blame the X-Men films for this) leather has replaced spandex. Nothing against leather, but looking at The CW’s Flash costume, I can tell you that you can’t run in leather. Of course, superheroes are a fantasy, so technically, they can do whatever their creators say they can do. But, luckily there is still hope: after many were up in arms about the new Fantastic Four trailer making no mention of the classic Fantastic Four suits, the sexy Miles Teller has informed us otherwise.
Going back to the Wikipedia entry, we see that rubber, neoprene, leather and spandex in particular for our case are something that as the definition explains, leads itself, in its very essence to bondage. One-piece suits are something that traps the body; we become a slave to clothing, something we should be able to control. It gives power to an inanimate object yet that power is kinda liberating. Many of us probably agree that we feel at our best when we are in our gear. I know for me, I feel more like a man trapped in a wetsuit or in spandex than any other time. The sensation of my physical body being contained and controlled by a mass-produced, lifeless object is such a turn on. Often seeing the empty shell of a suit or tights is the bigger arousal; the anticipation that it will house a body and contain it… add in the superhero cosplay complex, and it becomes even more interesting.
If only that were an actual line...
The idea of the hero and the idea of the alter ego entering that suit to become something new. Even in the real world the ideal of cosplay is to become your favorite hero via costume. Cosplayers have often said that this is a childhood fantasy, becoming the characters they looked up to and wanted to be in their youth. Like many of us in our teenage years, as puberty hit, we realized we didn’t just want to be them, but be with them. Cosplay becomes a space where people with a superhero fetish can see their heroes as living adults; but also as sexual beings.
While I’m all for the recent movement of cosplay is not consent as a way to create safe spaces for cosplayers at cons, I do feel that cosplay works as a visual medium. Like any visual medium it calls upon being looked at; in this case we are looking at people. It requires a gaze. The issue of objectification is problematic, but in truth anytime we post something online the point is that it is going to be looked at. Cosplay adds another dimension: we already look at the heroes in comic and here they are in the flesh. The mind can run wild with what to do with these characters and cosplay roleplay allows us to bring fantasy into reality and meld the two together.
Strange beginnings create a strange fetish; fictional characters wearing an artificial skin imbeds into our fantasies and now as grown men we wish to fulfill the fantasy. Like Roland, we too take a journey to discovery, to finding the limits of our fetish and fantasy as well as the extensions – will it stretch as far as the very fabric we love and adore? My vain attempt to create a definition only points out how open and undefined our fetish is, even if on the surface it is pretty basic. What does Spandex do for you as a fetish material? Tell us in the comments. For more images of superheroes in spandex, visit our 20 Iconic Images of Superhero Fetish or visit our Tumblr.
About our contributor iFitz
Hello everyone, very excited and happy to be part of the team and the community. I just moved to Toronto to pursue a masters in film and sociology (the former being my major passion). I’m 28 and really excited to be seeing this superhero fetish community develop. You can read a lot more in the story I previously wrote, but my fetish also includes wetsuits, athletic gear (spandex obviously) and shoes, mostly athletic shoes. I’m a little shy but online I’m game for chat and e-mails so drop me a line at ifitz@howtokillasuperhero.net
The Hottest Superhero Costume of All Time
We want to hear from you, the readers, on a very important question about superhero fetish.
What do you think is the hottest superhero costume of all time?
Your answer can come from three sources: Comics, TV and Movies. It's all fair game. Please link us to the image, too. And tell us why this particular superhero's costume is just so damn erotic for you.
Here's a few classics to get your minds and your libidos going. Leave us your entry in the comments!
