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ALIAS #17

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17:09 / 09.12.02

From The Savage Critic: December 4th 2002 at ComixExperience

I just have to say the idea of seeing Ant-Man have sex is only a few steps more appealing than seeing Aunt May have sex. [...] Still, other than the horrible vision of Ant-Man thrusting heroically into our protagonist (which I am afraid will be burned into my nightmares for some months to come), I can’t help but give this a Very Good.

Can anybody reading Alias give me a brief description of what exactly visually is in issue 17 about "Ant-Man thrusting Jessica"?? I mean, it either is a comic-book transmigration of a Cronenberg-film scene, or the guy above is a bit impressionable, as most of these cases are, but I will be grateful if you let me know, so my morbid-sex glands have something to digest.

Its just that I am craving to be delighted by those burning nightmares...

Matthew Fluxington

18:37 / 09.12.02

This does little to change my opinion that the majority of Alias is little more than slash-y "what would superheroes be like in bed" crap for lonely fanboys to wank over...

Did Ant-Man have anal sex with her too?

19:29 / 09.12.02

Maybe he crawled up her bum.

19:55 / 09.12.02

I think Alias is excellent, and constantly improving.

But, yes, Ant-Man II - Scott Lang, is shown from hips above grunting as he 'thrusts' into the title's heroine, Jessica Jones. Until she asks him to stop.

And, no, he doesn't crawl up her bum.

Incidentally, that Cage thing is only implied.

The majority of Alias is about a female, ex-superhero, detective doing detecting. It has very expressive art.

2 or 3 pages out of, thus far, 300 or so does not comprise a majority.

Matthew Fluxington

20:23 / 09.12.02

Yes, it was implied in the sniggering "whoa, what a slut" tone which I'd normally expect from a Howard Stern second-banana or a Kevin Smith movie. Mallrats, to be specific..

21:10 / 09.12.02

No it wasn't.

What rubbish. I saw nary a joke about it therein - please, talk about something you know about and save me this bother.

00:59 / 10.12.02

Flux, besides Ultimate X-Men, what the hell are you actually reading?

Matthew Fluxington

01:22 / 10.12.02

Yikes, I would not want to be associated with Ultimate X-Men, though I do keep tabs on that comic.

The only monthly comics which I regularly buy as of right now are New X-Men, X-Statix, Vertigo Pop London, and The Filth. I keep my eye on Uncanny X-Men, The Ultimates, and Ultimate X-Men. Everything else that I read, which makes for the bulk of my comic reading, does not come out on a monthly or regular schedule. Jessica Abel, Daniel Clowes, Adrian Tomine, Seth, Chester Brown, David Rees, Joe Matt, and Dash Shaw are some creators whom I will buy new material by when it is made available.

01:59 / 10.12.02

So you're wrong?

I apologise for being like this, but Alias has been extraordinarily good thus far, and to lump it, as you have, with the 'fanboy set' (which means?) and apply some negative connotations is damaging.

And, as we see, incorrect - yes?

Besides, one look at Michael Gaydos art (which fails utterly to resemble anything like Avatar comics standard fare) should affirm that.

Matthew Fluxington

02:22 / 10.12.02

I have read enough of Alias to form an informed opinion about it - I know that Gaydos art is muddy and not especially interesting to me; and that from what I've read of Bendis in Alias and elsewhere, there is nothing to suggest to me that he is anything more than a middling talent who has been able to market himself well in a field in which his mediocre writing can be mistaken for quality given the competition.

It would seem that you and I have very different standards for what can be considered "extraordinary" in comic books.

02:30 / 10.12.02

It would that. Although the two writers whose titles you've quoted above are also my two favourites - perhaps we're not so different after all.

Still, you've not read Alias #1, have you? And yet you felt you could pass judgement on it.

All of which leaves you looking a wee bit silly.

06:00 / 10.12.02

I bought issue 1...and read a couple of other issues in the store.

The book sucks.

06:24 / 10.12.02

Incidentally, that Cage thing is only implied.

You're right, I just pulled the first issue out of the closet and it doesn't actually show his big black cock going into her heroic little bottom but...

Lucas will feel guilty about this.

He's a decent guy and a buddy and he'll fell bad about this.

But that feeling will pass.

Because he'll look back and remember this was the one night that I let him do anything he wanted.

And even though he'll know it's wrong, he'll smile to himself.

He just woln't be able to help it.

Then he'll feel bad again.

But I can't say that I care, really.

I don't care what he feels like.

I just want to feel something.

It doesn't matter what.

Pain.

Humility.

Anger.

I just want to feel something different.

God, I wish I could post the picture of her face that goes with this marvelous bit of dialogue. Anyway, Cage is taking her from behind, her face is all twisted up, and shes talking about "I let him do anything he wanted"...pain...humility...anger. "I just wanted to feel something different." Either this is an anal scene or she has issues with the fact that hes black. Which is it?

I think Gaydos' art is decent but his layouts and the way the story flows from panel to panel need some work.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:15 / 10.12.02

I have profoundly mixed feelings about Alias, and indeed about Bendis, but I would suggest that so far "superhero sex" has occupied - what - about four frames of seventeen issues? It would be far more accurate to say that it's obsessed with superheroes drinking, or indeed superheroes hanging out in pavement cafes, which has occured as many times and at far greater length than any naughty stuff.

I don't find it astonishing or incredible within the narrative that in the course of a year and a bit Jessica Jones has had sex twice, or even had unwise sex twice. What is, I suspect, goingto piss me of is the revelation that she is only having sex at all because she was molested by Doctor Octopus or something equally wanky.

I'd certainly say that, if you are going to criticise a comic, it might be be best to criticise the bits of it you *have* read, rather than the bits you haven't. But nobody ever listens to me.

What does offend and disgust me is this Scott Lang fucker. When did he become Ant-Man? God, you turn yur back for a moment.....

09:35 / 10.12.02

Well, I'm sure Flux can speak for himself but it looks like he read at least one issue and is basing his opinion of the book on that.

I always assume that comic writers are going to use the first chapter of the story to set the tone of what is to follow. The Invisibles led off with a molotov cocktail and some drug use. Alias led off with some anal. Woofuckinhoo.

11:40 / 10.12.02

in the course of a year and a bit Jessica Jones has had sex twice

My goodness, this is serious stuff! Thanks God this is not for kids, becuase this is really something you don't want children to learn or even to follow. I think now I'm beginning to understand the nature of the Max-Adult titles, hell, twice in a year, poor girl.

Whatever, from what I've read about the critically praised Alias and here in this thread, this thing of super-hero sex appears to be quite in its proto-form, I wonder what will be the next evolutionary step of the topic within the comic books medium.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:50 / 10.12.02

DVDA?

I waswrong, by the way. I think it was three times. She got pissed and shagged the sheriff.But not, to my knowledge, the deputy.

11:54 / 10.12.02

Look, I'm all for a piece of ass. ok? I'm just not going to spend $3 on a comic that centers around a sex scene. And thats what the first issue did. It was a crap way to start a series and I didn't think the subsequent issues were much better.

I can't believe I've wasted this much time talking about this...

Matthew Fluxington

11:58 / 10.12.02

Yes, I did buy Alias #1, it's still around the house someplace too. I read the next three issues out of interest in the shop, and I've read through subsequent issues here and there out of morbid curiosity. Yeah, yeah, I was exaggerated the 'superhero sex' thing, but I still think my criticism of it, and all the other 'superheroes doing naughty things', which I think is the whole point of the book. The detective stuff seems like a tacked-on excuse to do the Powers thing in the 'seedy underbelly' of the Marvel universe.

12:40 / 10.12.02

I think you're doing more than exaggerating, Flux. I'm not an Alias fan, but I've read a friend's copy of the hardcover. It's difficult to make the case that "superheroes doing naughty things" is the point of the book, let alone that the first issue revolves around the sex scene.

Maybe sex scenes in comics are so shocking because we're not used to them?

Maybe they're shocking because readers don't have sex?

Maybe it's shocking because Jessica behaves like a human being?

Matthew Fluxington

12:49 / 10.12.02

Oh come on. There's nothing 'shocking' going on in Alias. If there's anything shocking about Alias, it's that anyone would consider Brian Michael Bendis a good writer. There are loads of excellent comics with sex and drinking etc, but Alias uses the crutch of the Marvel Universe as its hook - "whoaaaaa! DOOD! Superheroes FUCKING! That's GOT to HURT!". It's very crass, and the fact that this thread was starting in reacting to a "DOOD! Superheroes FUCKING!" scene does little to change my opinion that this is Alias' chief selling point aside from being one more thing for Bendis completists to buy. Or people buying it thinking that it is an adaptation of the television show of the same name, I guess.

13:06 / 10.12.02

I'm just not going to spend $3 on a comic that centers around a sex scene.

You've got a point. Believe me, I've spent more than that on comic books with sex scenes. That's why I asked about Alias, since it is in the "mature" line, and from the reviews I've read "sex" was barely mentioned beyond issue #1.

If there's anything shocking about Alias, it's that anyone would consider Brian Michael Bendis a good writer.

Although I am not particularly exalted by Bendis' writing, I do believe it is out ot the question to discuss if he is either a good or a bad writer. Lets face it, the man already is a famous comic book writer, so whatever he writes, as ill conceived and rehashed as it may be to your taste and others, it is probably well written simply because well known publishers put it in paper, in trades, in HCs, and also gets attention from the media. Those authors you mention you are reading are at the very top of the wave in comic book writing, they know the job, but believe me, there are miriads of absolute disasters being written and printed all over the world that will make you cry for the lamest Howard Mackie' Spider-Man stories.

13:17 / 10.12.02

Oh, I hardly think so. If anything, I think the bar for good writing is far, far lower on a franchise book like SPIDER-MAN, because it's the brand name, and not the quality of the stories, that's selling the books.

I mean, if your principle held true, then the best-selling books would inevitably be, by definition, the best-written. And this is demonstrably not so.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:52 / 10.12.02

Perfectly good points, Jack, and te idea that one is a good writer just because one seems a better writer to a publisher than many other ones is a very dim one, but the poverty of that counterargument it doesn't alterthe fact that Flux is arguing very, very badly here.

Essentially, Flux, you have admitted that you've read the first four issues of Alias (which I'm far more happy to see criticised as Bendis ripping off his own Powers premise (and dialogue)), and then returned to flip through it irregularly since. In those four issues one page was taken up by superhero sex. Subsequently, the central character has had sex twice more, once with a superhero and once without. (I'm afraid I've been unfaithful, darling." "Oh George. Was it at least with a condom?" "No, darling. It was with a supehero. Which is still safe, but in a different and more Skrull-related way"). That's not an enormous amount of sex.

Far more worrying is that she has had sex for bad reasons, or while drunk, or while drunk for bad reasons, and was so "freaky" that she ended up locked in a cell overnight for safekeeping. This suggests a) that Bendis has some of the same probems with sexuality and sex that much of his readership probably share, and b) that she was nonced up by Doctor Fucking Octopus. Now *that* is going to be crass. I don't think suggesting that minor Marvel characters get drunk and have sex every so often is in itself terribly "crass", though....if you're understudying Hank Pym what else are you going to do?

13:58 / 10.12.02

Okay, by badly written I mean the evident lack of knowing the bare craft of comic book writing. I mean a lack of the specific grammar of the craft. This impacts in the overall quality of the product making it practically of $ 0 value. When you have poor characterisation, lack of ideas, no narrative core, bad taste, a tendency to explicitness, you get poor quality, and of course good sales if you have a brand name on top of it, but by "baddly written" I mean un-publishable things. I wish I could scan a few samples and post them around, but I think I put them in the garbage years back.

I occasionally get glimpses of this while watching some TV serials, where either the director got drunk at the montage room or had a stroke and his sonny did it for him.

From this standpoint, Bendis is a comic-book writer who knows the deed, excellingly well, myself and zillions of people would say. The quality of his works of course varies, as it happens with most mediums that have anything "serialised" beyond a #12th issue, and I also think some are hitting the nail when they say that Alias is sort of a Powers in the Marvelverse. But the man is a natural born comic book writer.

13:59 / 10.12.02

There's nothing 'shocking' going on in Alias.

I agree - just forgot my quotes in the earlier post. Although I must admit you seem very worked up for someone who claims not to be shocked, or to have read the complete series.

If there's anything shocking about Alias, it's that anyone would consider Brian Michael Bendis a good writer.

As I said, I'm not a fan of Alias or Bendis. I think he's vastly over-rated, myself.

Alias uses the crutch of the Marvel Universe as its hook - "whoaaaaa! DOOD! Superheroes FUCKING! That's GOT to HURT!"

Do you have any concrete examples, or is this just a gut feeling? Because if the pupose of the book is to be exploitative or tabloid, it's failing miserably. As you say, it's not shocking. Therefore I find it difficult to accept that it's using "superhores doing naughty things" as a hook - not least since the number of pages with sex scenes can be added up on one hand.

If anything, I think the bar for good writing is far, far lower on a franchise book like SPIDER-MAN, because it's the brand name, and not the quality of the stories, that's selling the books.

I don't know that this is true anymore - witness what Grant did to the readership of JLA and the chart history for Spider-Man and the top-tier DC characters.

I agree with Haus that the sex scenes themselves are fine, and that the trouble is Bendis' subtext re: molestation.

16:40 / 10.12.02

Yessss!

I feel like Begbie, after he's thrown that pint glass.

Hey, as far as I'm concerned Bendis reads like a good TV writer, generally. Occasionally, he's a bit irritating, but this and 'Daredevil' are just constantly hitting it for me currently. And, if I must qualify my enjoyment of the comic, I'd say that I stuck with it initially because of the excellent portrait provided of Jessica, because that first storyarc had a bit of a bullshit ending, and the second was something of a 'shaggy dog tale', although it had some marvellous Sienkewicz abstract pieces thrown in. Since then, though, I really think it's ironed out all the kinks and is droppin' bombs, regular like.

Whether or not that's due to Jack Fear's 'brand recognition', as I pretty swiftly dropped Powers, I don't know. I do think the guy writes a single protagonist better, though. And further, a single solo female protagonist, doing a lot of first-person narration, which we don't see very often in any media, compared to alternatives - and a lot better than 'The Minx', which is the only other title I can think of offhand I've read that does likewise.

I think there's a problem here with just how eager you are to distance yourself from the sex-starved fanboy stereotype, Flux. "Sex and comics! Superheroes, no less! Not for me, then... I'm not like those other people who read these things. They're wankers." Which is understandable to a point, having seen some of the regulars in comicshops - but what are you trying to prove here? That you're Bizarro-Fanboy? - because that's how I'm reading it. Also, saying "X is a hack" or "comic #whatever is shit" isn't really valid debate (nor is it encouraging of such, no matter how superior you try to sound) because I can just counterpoint with "No, X is great. And that comic is excellent." And at least I'm not being a moany bastard...

As for the possible nonce/molestation storyline, I'd go for the latter - as noncing suggests underageness doesn't it? But this is simply what we call 'speculation', so let's save it.

One positive, though. I expect regular Alias discussion from now on.

16:47 / 10.12.02

A bit off topic, but still on Bendis, anybody here reads Ultimate Spider-Man? I have to admit I don't find interesting most of the "Ultimate" aspects of it, but it manages to horribly hook me to keep on reading.

Murray Hamhandler

21:38 / 10.12.02

...using "superhores doing naughty things" as a hook...

I thought that was The Pro...?

03:54 / 11.12.02

For me, it doesn't matter how few pages out of how many are devoted to the sexual lives of these characters - it still comes down to that old argument we've had many times over, which is whether or not this kind of thing is appropriate at all in a story that features characters originally created for children's entertainment.

The thought of Brian Bendis sitting at the computer, alone in his study, brow furrowed in concentration as he struggles to satisfyingly craft a serious sex scene involving fucking ANT-MAN (or, as the case may be, Ant-Man fucking), is comical. The thought that there is a significant number of people who have the desire to actually read such a story is less funny, and to me, very tragic.

I'm reminded of Ethan Van Sciver's comments here a while ago in which he stated that he felt an obligation to stay true to the intentions of the original creators of any character he drew. Read any of the numerous interviews with Jack Kirby and it's very clear that he never intended Ant-Man, or any of his characters, to engage in explicit violence or drug use or sexuality, or any of the earmarks of the modern "Mature Readers" superhero comic - he was making his stories for kids.

It's an incredibly sad, absurd, and infuriating comment on the state of the industry when writers can debase the creations of others and pass it off as sophistication and innovation.

07:01 / 11.12.02

Would it make a difference whoi was fucinh who if Jessica didn't have any powers and ant man was just a regular joe?
If this was strangers in paradise(sorry if I'm picking a bad example,I'm afraid I've never read it) would it be high art?
As I see it marvel is just trying to expand its stories out into areas that it's current readers don't currently read.I'm enjoying alias quite a lot.I'm enjoying reading about a fucked up detective who used to be a superheroine, emphasis on fucked up and detective.

08:55 / 11.12.02

Is it ok to write Cage having sex, though? Seeing as he was a blaxploitation knock-off (different argument entirely, there) and walked around saying 'Sweet Christmas', which I'm sure was meant to hint at something.

11:00 / 11.12.02

it still comes down to that old argument we've had many times over, which is whether or not this kind of thing is appropriate at all in a story that features characters originally created for children's entertainment.

...says the guy drawing a book with prostitutes.

Matthew Fluxington

11:42 / 11.12.02

If this was Strangers In Paradise would it be high art?

I feel a great swell of sympathy for anyone who's going to confuse that comic for high art, because if it is, I guess that Dawson's Creek is too.

12:37 / 11.12.02

You may also consider this splitting hairs, Cameron, but Scott Lang is not a Jack Kirby creation - a quick spot of research shows he first appeared in Avengers #187 by Michelinie/Byrne (as Scott Lang), and Marvel Premiere #47 as Ant-Man, done by the same team. Now, if John Byrne is up in arms, which he probably is, then that's just funny...

Like Brian Hibbs (see Sebastian's link above) I had no particular desire to see that scene, but rather read a good comic - as subjective as that clearly is. I feel satisfied that I have done so.

The argument you use here is extended across to titles like New X-Men, too. I've read people complain, on a variety of the various comic sites I trawl, how that used to be for children, too - which I'd accept for the Kirby era, but not the Claremont one. It's also the same argument I've read, again extended, about retconning characters into being homosexual - and you wouldn't believe how upset these people get about Rawhide Kid. Or introducing homosexual characters. Because the very nature of their minority status is, of course, sexual. So, where do you place the boundary wall on acceptable/unacceptable? Is Morrison pushing it with his use of Cyclops and Emma? Because one of these is a Kirby creation, and yet clearly has a sex life, and has done so for a couple of decades at least. Is he 'debased'?

My experience of reading X-Men stems from my early teens, and I've always considered it to be a teens book, and still do so. To suggest teens never add sex to this (or any) equation is dubious to say the least. When Kirby created characters, from the 30's to the 60's the predominant comics market was, indeed, children - it isn't now.

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