Volkswagen camper vans may not possess the power of Superman or the speed of The Flash, but artist Andrew Mark Hunter still considers the trusty transports superheroic.

A trip to a VW show spurred the lifelong comic book fan to create a series of Photoshop drawings featuring Batvan, The Amazing Spider-Van and Camper America, among other four-wheeled parodies of popular Marvel and DC Comics characters, as seen above.

"I did the Supervan one first, but my favorite is the Vantastic Four pic," said Hunter, 40, who works as a tattoo artist at Rampant Ink in Nottingham, England. "I think it's got the most going off in it," he said in an e-mail interview.

The images in his collection all start with the Volkswagen Type 2 van, which was introduced in 1950 – about halfway between Superman and the Fantastic Four. The forerunner of the minivan, the VW microbus became a favorite of hippies in the '60s, often sporting paint jobs at least as wild as Hunter's superhero color schemes.

After publishing some of his superhero camper-van images in magazines for Volkswagen enthusiasts, he's hawking his 12 VW–comic book mashups as iPhone skins and cases, as well as art prints on archival paper and stretched canvas. Hunter also sells a postcard pack of all 12 for $20 (postage included) and will print the images at custom sizes. (E-mail him him for pricing and don't forget to ask about his Spider-Man tattoos.)

The standard Man in most superhero names makes for an obvious starting point, but some of Hunter's creations – like Dub-Mariner and The Silver Surfbus – take the spoof a little further. See them all in the gallery above.

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