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If I post a lengthy little ramble, I'll lose the capacity to get online for several days. Just about every time.
Before anything, in reply to whomever asked for more examples of male-rape as necessitating (in comics) that one of the involved need be, apparently, gay: There's 'The Authority' (whcih was, to memory, redrawn from the original more-blatant-ness) but besides that, just off the top of my head, there's, well... Who in 'The Invisibles' was raped? Right. Fanny. And while the Cassidy blowjob thing in 'Preacher' to me, had more to do with addiction and desperation, there wasn't exactly a shortage of comics readers at my then-local shop, shortly thereafter, who were willing to jump straight to it being proof that he was gay, and therefore perverse, and therefore, should y'know, have his balls kicked up through his spleen, or something. Then there were the Sex Detectives. I hate to pile these at the 'Preacher' doors, 'cause I like the series and I don't think it was intended to be hate-the-homosexual night, any more than I buy the line that said it was racist because the only black characters we ever see shoot people.
As far as using rape to up your villain's evilness, I stand by my long ago assertion, here on Barbelith, that in a world where somebody can turn you green, give you feathers, then melt you like icecream so you're running sweet and sticky through the fingers of your lover... in this complicated jet-ape world, the fate worse than death just isn't the level of violence things can escalate to, even if you posit it as the height of our real-world violence. Which, I don't. Because, if nothing else, even in the real world, we can (a) up the ante, and (b) lasershark. Rape is bad, nobody ought to be arguing this, but I'm thinking back on a friend of mine, years ago, and well, rape with a broken bottle is worse. Rape with ebola, is worse. Um... torture, in general, can get very involved. Anybody remember the haunted house issue of 'Hellstorm' back in the day? Ellis introducing the innocent Marvelites of yore to real-world torture devices and some writer's daughters in a broiling in a singing bronze barrel shaped like a bull?
Pulling out rape as your trump card, as your end-it-all, is just... this is why we can see rape scenes in comics and laugh at them. That's how it gets funny.
Did the friend of GL get raped for being gay, or did he just get beat up? I only vaguely glanced in that green direction, during those issues, so I honestly don't remember.
Somebody threatened/alluded-to it with the Pied Piper, some time ago, probably in an issue of 'The Flash' but maybe not.
I won't count 'Dykes to Watch Out For' because it's simply not mainstream. Either in the 'comics shop' sense, which means tights and capes, or the everybody reads'em syndicated strips garuanteed to show up in your local paper, repetitively, as they've done for the past thirteen to thirty years. I mean, honestly, 'Peanuts' is far more mainstream than 'The Flash' or 'Gen 13' but it's easy to forget that when your into comics, I guess.
It's not too prevalent, I suppose, but really, there aren't that many gay characters in comics. There just aren't. At least, gay men. Women can be gay. It's alllowed. Because, y'know, they have soft bits. And they need to still be kinda attracted to men. Because they are, y'know, under the pretense.
But men...
There's like dearth of flirting in mainstream comics. I mean, that's all The New Improved Very We Assure You Very Gay Rawhide Kid ever did in his recent outing. He flirted. Marvel Boy flirted. Spidey and Luke Cage are absolutely flirting almost every early issue of 'New Avengers'. Warren Ellis characters basically all flirt.
But ASS number the first - Superman, clouds, blue blue sky and John Byrne complaining about how Quitely cheated the audience - and the fanboys go nuts: Supes was totally giving them the eye! All of them! And you, me, that girl down the street, and your poor sainted virginal parents - the same parents whom another comic insulted by proxy, when it surrendered Monica Rambeau's mother to cheerleading weasels.
Even if Quitely drew a seductive Superman, what's the beef? How can that be so threatening to these people? I mean, Pogo's clearly been giving the eye for years, but I don't feel the need to dig up Walt Kelley and have it out with him, right?
I've lost track a bit, which is slightly embarrassing, but really, the whole miasma's really annoyingly baffling. It's weirdly uptight, but uptight to a desire-for-public-flogging way.
And it's being marketed at us. Really. That the only way we, the audience, regardless of the realities of our invidiual being, our sexualities or ethnicities or predilection to heavy chemical abuse and flower arrangement, we the audience, are being told, essentially, that we cannot sympathize or empathize with a gay man, unless he's raped, a woman, unless she's raped, or, given the way things are going, Aaron Stack and Krypto the Superdog. Unless they're raped.
How often are women skewered or killed-through-the-crotch in comics? Versus guys? To be fair, maybe it should be boyfriends in the fridge, so the writer can try to wrestle an envagination metaphor out of it. Then have Doom shed a tear on the side.
Imagine 'The Filth' and Baldy Person. His cat. The society they lived in. The pedo suspicion sweaty thing. The pathos. No, let's let Blacksperm Boy at him for a few rounds, and then we'll understand that he might be suffering, that he had sadness in his life. That's how these marketing arrangements, the majority of these kinds of stories seem to be coming off. Insulting.
I don't know how Maggie Sawyer or Rene Montoya made it this long without.
I'm going to avoid mentioning 'Alias' except for just this, to get the gears turning and let everyone draw their own conclusions from memories or rereads. It had some good stuff, but really, the climactic last surge...
I've like jumped backwards to when every thread here was somehow reflective of (somebody's) sexuality. Don't know if that's sentimental or just creepy. |
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