Superheroes Bowing

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About

Superheroes Bowing refers to an artwork in which DC and Marvel superheroes are bowing to a group of medics walking through a hospital hall. In late April 2020, the artwork gained popularity as source material for edits, with the doctors replaced with various characters.

Origin

On April 20th, 2020, amid the 2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic, the official Telegram channel for the Department of Transport of Moscow^[1] posted two versions of an artwork by an unknown author in which DC and Marvel superheroes bow to a group of masked medics walking through a hospital hall (shown below, left and right). On the same day, Russian news website DTF^[2] reposted one of the artworks.

On April 22nd, DTF^[3] user alex twit posted the earliest known edit of the image.

Spread

On April 22nd, 2020, Twitter^[4] user @ononhareket reposted the image, with the post gaining over 1,200 retweets and 19,200 likes in four days. Within one hour, @ComicsBarselona^[5] reposted the image, gaining over 3,300 retweets and 8,600 likes. Later on the same day, a thread^[6] about the artwork was created on 4chan's /pol/ board, garnering over 340 replies.

On the same day, Twitter^[15] user @fallen_shopfag posted a Big Chungus edit of the image that received over 290 retweets and 1,000 likes in four days, marking the earliest viral meme based on the artwork (shown below, left). Later on the same day, Twitter^[7] user @BowlcutThanos posted an edit of @alegaxi's^[8] repost of the image, editing in an NSFW image of Thanos into it (censored version shown below, right). The tweet received over 910 retweets and 7,400 likes in four days.

On April 23rd, @fallen_shopfag^[16] posted a template for the artwork and several edits. On the same day, Twitter^[9] user @HenryKrinkle reposted the original image, with the post gaining over 1,300 retweets and 17,600 replies in three days. In the thread, Twitter^[10] user @PlutonisIsDead reposted @fallen_shopfag's Big Chungus edit, receiving over 780 retweets and 5,900 likes.

On April 24th, 2020, an anonymous 4chan user reposted^[11] a template for the artwork to /pol/ board, with users in /tv/,^[12] /pol/^[13] and /co/^[14] posting multiples edits of the image in the following hours (shown below).

In the following days, the format gained significant popularity online, with notable edits being posted on 4chan, Twitter, Facebook and other websites.