The Official Newspaper of the Diocese of Little Rock
The superheroes of Subiaco Academy swooped in to attend prom April 30 and ever since then, their images have been flying around the globe at lightning speed.
No, it’s not the work of Superman, per se, but rather thanks to a photo of five Subiaco students posing with their dates, their dresses color coordinated to match the superhero T-shirts underneath their tuxes. The girls can be seen pulling open the boys’ black tux shirts to reveal their hidden superhero shirts.
The photo, taken by freelance photographer Johnny Bolinger and posted on his BN Focus Photography Facebook page has gone viral, with 382,000 likes, 300,069 shares and 23,000 comments on the original post as of press time. That’s not including the millions of re-shares and likes it’s amassed with coverage from media outlets, including “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” “Inside Edition,” The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed. International news agencies have also been reaching out to the school for a chance to reprint the photo and to find out what makes the students at Subiaco so super.
“We all thought it was crazy that a picture on a small photography page went viral and is being seen by millions of people,” said Superman, junior Caleb Phillips. “We were just surprised more than anything by it. We just thought it was going to be another prom picture.”
In total, eight students wore superhero shirts under their formals with their matching dates.
“We’re all in shock around here that it went viral. It shows the boys in a good environment,” said Pat Franz, director of admissions. “We are just a regular school for regular boys who are going to turn into great young men going to college. … We have students from 18 states and eight countries. Students are getting e-mails from their friends in China or Korea or Russia saying they’ve seen the Subiaco photo.”
Subiaco Academy, in Logan County, is an all-boys Catholic college preparatory school for grades seventh through 12th, which includes boarding and day students. The students, though not all Catholic, follow the Benediction traditions of the monks living at Subiaco Abbey.
“There is the reputation of how private schools can be stuck up or they think military school, (but) they’re not. We go here for the higher education,” said Iron Man, 16-year-old Aaron Brooks, who joined the Church in December thanks to the monks’ influence. “There’s fun mixed into it, which makes the school just work.”
Phillips said the superhero fascination began making its way into Subiaco long before prom, namely, during spring football, when members of the team began buying Under Armour Alter Ego superhero gear including socks, cleats, shirts and gloves.
Prom chairwoman Judy Brooks said she and another Subiaco mother chose the theme “A Night of Heroes” back in October, but didn’t tell the boys until January.
So while other students throughout the country were busy figuring out who to take to prom, the Subiaco boys had more pressing decisions to make first.
“I’ve always liked Superman since I was little, so it was a pretty easy choice for me … he had super strength, he could fly and do the right thing and help other people,” Phillips, 16, said.
Phillips said his favorite superhero movie thus far was this year’s “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” which made for a fun night of joking with his friend Batman, Ryan King.
“We still haven’t come to an agreement on who won,” Phillips said.
For Brooks, Iron Man was the obvious choice.
“He’s just my favorite superhero. I love all his suits and technology,” Brooks said. “To be honest, he gets a little cocky and I’ll be honest, I do get a little cocky sometimes too.”
While the girls primarily just found matching dresses, Brooks said that Captain America’s date “is actually way more a fan of Captain America than he is.”
Though 17-year-old Zach Franz was not in the viral photo, he was one of three other couples who also dressed the part.
“I am a fan of Spiderman. … I just like superheroes in general, most of the new TV shows coming out and movies,” Franz said. “It was just a cool idea because so many other people have done it, but none are actually matching like ours,” he added, referring to their dates matching dresses.
Judy Brooks, Aaron’s mother, said the parents ordered the superhero shirts, but “we didn’t know how they were going to show it.”
“We said you guys have to remember you can have your T-shirts on but this is a formal event,” meaning that just T-shirts and dress pants were not going to fly, she said.
But the boys had a plan that their dates were more than happy to play along with. Sophie Sewell, 16, a member of Sacred Heart Church in Charleston, said all the girls were “pretty excited about it,” and finding dresses to match their superhero was easy.
So as five of the boys lined up in the Subiaco courtyard with their dates, each girl pulled open a boy’s formal shirt, revealing superhero shirts and surprising the photographers. Bolinger, a full-time Fort Smith police officer who started photography as a side business along with a friend about six months ago, said he was there to photograph his cousin’s son, Caleb Phillips.
Bolinger reached up above a bunch of other photographers to nab the shot, edited it and posted it on Facebook later that night.
“It had about 300 to 400 likes on Sunday morning. Then around 2 p.m. on Sunday, I noticed it had over 100,000 views and several thousand likes,” Bolinger said. His photography page, which had 329 likes, has skyrocketed to more than 23,000.
“It’s crazy. I couldn’t believe it. It first really started to sink in when Eliza Murphy from ABC called me while I was sitting at my desk at work,” Bolinger said. “That was pretty shocking. Then it was just one after another.”
At the time of the photo, the boys also were hardly thinking about any far reaching effect that the photo might have.
“We just thought it was a cool idea, but I wasn’t even worrying about the picture,” Aaron Brooks said, instead focusing on asking his date, Sophie Sewell, to be his girlfriend.
“I was worried about what she was actually going to say. I asked her right after the picture.” She did say “yes” to Iron Man.
The couples were then whisked off to prom, held at The Lodge at Mount Magazine in Paris. The venue was decorated with tall buildings, giant Jenga and a variety of “Boom!” “Pow!” comic book phrases.
Mass was held for the students at 5:30 p.m., followed by a formal dinner, then onto dancing and games, ending the night with a pizza party.
“We’ve all had so much fun,” Sewell said. “The whole viral photo is just the icing on the cake.”
Eventually, the photo will slow in popularity, but that begs the question — what’s next?
“I have another prom shoot for a girl and I’ll tell her on the front end, ‘I’ll try to make you famous, but I can’t promise you anything,’” Bolinger laughed. “I don’t know if I’ll ever have another viral photo, but I hope so because it’s been a pretty cool ride.”
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