Marvel, Marvel, you are a HOUSE of bad ideas.
http://blog.newsarama.com/2007/05/23/no
Set up a branch of your company to produce official porn doujinshi for this sort of thing. Seriously. Get it over with. If Maki Murakami can do it--that is, visual pornographic works independent of the canon continuity she's set up, featuring her characters going at it in every pairing combination possible whether it makes "sense" or not, independent of canon continuity--so can you.
Man, I think people must've seriously just burned out on the MJ maquette thing. I would've expected so much more outcry to this cover than it seems to have gotten. Although I personally did, I can understand how people wouldn't have had so much of a problem with it. This? Reeeaally should offend people if it's not a teaser for actual Marvel pornography.
I am an avid consumer of yaoi doujinshi and slashfic and art, I produce some of the latter, I like character-based porn, but I THINK (and maybe I'm nuts, hoohoo) that that sort of treatment of established characters has a very SPECIFIC time and place where it's appropriate--which I say based on the assumption that not all female Marvel heroes are characterized by utter helplessness in the face of sexual threats on their person, even though based solely on this cover I would think that at least three of them are... That's why I can admire Maki Murakami's treatment of her Gravitation manga series, both in terms of marketing and in terms of creative responsibility: Plot and character development and just a little bit of fanservice go in one graphic novel, titilating sex sequences and undiscriminating character pairing and rape go in another. Fans want one, they'll go get it; fans want both, they'll shell out the money for both (happily enough, I'll add). And all without alienating or marginalizing a particular group of consumers. Fancy that.
I think, maybe, if Marvel were to adopt this method of marketing, the consumers who enjoy prehensile slimy tentacles writhing threateningly and dripping viscuous fluids over the bodies of three of your superheroines, looking uncommonly helpess in their chains and vulnerably unzipped bodysuits, can get it. The consumers who enjoy those same three superheroines doing, well, capable superhero things, can get it. If a consumer- well, I've explained this bit already. And I think we can easily believe that Marvel, having the opportunity to make an extra buck off consumers buying multiple products, won't pass it up by being altruistic about it: "No no, we'll give you your story and your OOC porn in the same issue, so you only have to buy one if you want 'em both!"
Sex sells. I get that. So sell sex (tentacle porn, doe-eyed helpless female soldiers, whatever)--to the people who want it. Plus, I think with that strategy in place, all this desperate posturing might'nt spill over so heavily into your more saliently canon media, which we can be sure is going to make another group of consumers (and potential consumers!) happy as well. Will there be complaints that Marvel's profiting yet again on catering to the "lowest common denominator"? *shrugs* Maybe, but I wouldn't consider it as justified considering that now you could actually say, "Well, it's supposed to do that," without being ironic. And again, as a doujin consumer, it would be very hypocritical of me to begrudge anyone else their completely canon-independent porn ^^ Of course, I guess this gives rise to a new problem--based on previous bodies of work, we can probably assume most of the Official Marvel Porn Comics are going to be produced with one group of like-minded consumers in mind. Strangely enough, I for one will not be on Marvel's back about this--I wouldn't trust them to give me what I wanted. Anyway, baby steps, and all that.
Anyway, I do have a bit of AU!Apollo/Midnighter art I've been meaning to get back to since puting it on the backburner for finals. (And hey, Wildstorm actually gave us what amounted to doujinshi once in the Midnighter series--don't tell me Marvel couldn't make it work XP)
http://blog.newsarama.com/2007/05/23/no
Set up a branch of your company to produce official porn doujinshi for this sort of thing. Seriously. Get it over with. If Maki Murakami can do it--that is, visual pornographic works independent of the canon continuity she's set up, featuring her characters going at it in every pairing combination possible whether it makes "sense" or not, independent of canon continuity--so can you.
Man, I think people must've seriously just burned out on the MJ maquette thing. I would've expected so much more outcry to this cover than it seems to have gotten. Although I personally did, I can understand how people wouldn't have had so much of a problem with it. This? Reeeaally should offend people if it's not a teaser for actual Marvel pornography.
I am an avid consumer of yaoi doujinshi and slashfic and art, I produce some of the latter, I like character-based porn, but I THINK (and maybe I'm nuts, hoohoo) that that sort of treatment of established characters has a very SPECIFIC time and place where it's appropriate--which I say based on the assumption that not all female Marvel heroes are characterized by utter helplessness in the face of sexual threats on their person, even though based solely on this cover I would think that at least three of them are... That's why I can admire Maki Murakami's treatment of her Gravitation manga series, both in terms of marketing and in terms of creative responsibility: Plot and character development and just a little bit of fanservice go in one graphic novel, titilating sex sequences and undiscriminating character pairing and rape go in another. Fans want one, they'll go get it; fans want both, they'll shell out the money for both (happily enough, I'll add). And all without alienating or marginalizing a particular group of consumers. Fancy that.
I think, maybe, if Marvel were to adopt this method of marketing, the consumers who enjoy prehensile slimy tentacles writhing threateningly and dripping viscuous fluids over the bodies of three of your superheroines, looking uncommonly helpess in their chains and vulnerably unzipped bodysuits, can get it. The consumers who enjoy those same three superheroines doing, well, capable superhero things, can get it. If a consumer- well, I've explained this bit already. And I think we can easily believe that Marvel, having the opportunity to make an extra buck off consumers buying multiple products, won't pass it up by being altruistic about it: "No no, we'll give you your story and your OOC porn in the same issue, so you only have to buy one if you want 'em both!"
Sex sells. I get that. So sell sex (tentacle porn, doe-eyed helpless female soldiers, whatever)--to the people who want it. Plus, I think with that strategy in place, all this desperate posturing might'nt spill over so heavily into your more saliently canon media, which we can be sure is going to make another group of consumers (and potential consumers!) happy as well. Will there be complaints that Marvel's profiting yet again on catering to the "lowest common denominator"? *shrugs* Maybe, but I wouldn't consider it as justified considering that now you could actually say, "Well, it's supposed to do that," without being ironic. And again, as a doujin consumer, it would be very hypocritical of me to begrudge anyone else their completely canon-independent porn ^^ Of course, I guess this gives rise to a new problem--based on previous bodies of work, we can probably assume most of the Official Marvel Porn Comics are going to be produced with one group of like-minded consumers in mind. Strangely enough, I for one will not be on Marvel's back about this--I wouldn't trust them to give me what I wanted. Anyway, baby steps, and all that.
Anyway, I do have a bit of AU!Apollo/Midnighter art I've been meaning to get back to since puting it on the backburner for finals. (And hey, Wildstorm actually gave us what amounted to doujinshi once in the Midnighter series--don't tell me Marvel couldn't make it work XP)
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Fixed, because I mixed up sides. >.
Smart man. When you see tentacles coming at you, hide behind the buxom women--I'd damn well do it. (This guy goes a good deal more indepth about the nature of the cover art.)
Info on the other characters, btw (from left to right, starting with the woman getting her breasts drooled on--she's also a rape survivor, incidentally. Mm-mmmmm classy.)
http://www.marveldirectory.com/individu
http://www.marveldirectory.com/individu
http://www.marveldirectory.com/individu
See that's just it! If this were a hentai cover there'd be no problem! I may not like the genre of helpless women in hentai but that floats some peoples' boats and that's fine. THIS, so far as I can make out, would be like the equivalent of stringing up (just for the sake of argument, it's not a statement on the individual characters) Rogue, Jean, and Storm threatened by tentacles on the cover of a regular ol' line of X-Men comics. Which is, I think, what most people take offense to. This isn't a porn comic, and this sort of image really has no place in it, even if you factor in the notorious prevalence of cheesecake.
By the way, o student of law, what's the current word on the legal definition of rape? That still an all-penetration, all-the-time deal?
ALSO what's this about L.A. and this weekend?
To put things further in context, one of the characters on that cover (Felicia, the one cringing away from the tentacle dripping ooze on her breasts) was recently revealed to have been raped in college. It was a pretty big dramatic turning-point for the character... So to depict her like this so soon after the reveal is... Well, insensitive. To say that least. I think there's a stronger word than just "insensitive," but I can't quite find it.
Just as well that it's all sound and fury from the 'feminists,' because I don't think I'd want to read the kind of comics they seem to think should exist.
I considered that it mightn't stop the stream of complants, but I think they'd be much less justified that way, and I probably wouldn't support them myself, what with my own fannish proclivities and whathaveyou (and many of theirs too, I'm sure). This? I'm not really even seeing the part where it merely "could possibly be interpreted as demeaning to women," which is something I base not solely on the image, but on the image AND the manner in which it was used as a marketing decision. Hell, I walk by racks and racks of racy hentai DVD covers depicting humiliated, sexually threatened women without kicking up a fuss, because it makes sense for them to be there. The minute those images make their way onto covers for GitS or Trigun or something? Oh yeah, I'm gonna raise a stink.
Possibly I should just stop using the word 'feminist' to refer to those particular people and just call them 'crackheads' or something. It never ceases to cause an argument, despite the fact that I'm hardly talking about all women everywhere, just the really loud, really crazy ones with the weird expectations.
I don't know. I guess I just don't have the 'subjugation' hotbutton. I look at that cover and think "Well, that's dumb looking" and I move on. Maybe I'm just self-centered and don't care. Possibly, I should just ignore all of these debates, and stick with reading all the comics I have that are filled with strong women who don't take shit and aren't treated like objects to be demeaned.
(As an aside, I should probably point out that GitS covers, for anything BUT the movies/SAC, are 100% cheesecake. I've been buying the Dark Horse release of Human-Error Processor, and every cover has the Major posing as a sex object. She isn't even *in* most of the issues. I don't care, but they're probably about as representative of the actual content as that linked cover is.)
I mentioned GitS because even knowing that, I always felt that she was portrayed as, while sexual, fully in control and a strong, assertive force (as she herself is)--what I believe would be the equivalent damage of this Marvel mistake of marketing would be the Motoko images on the covers of the mainstream product, shown being stripped of her dignity, her strength, of everything I admired about her, as a selling point of interest Of covers intended to pique the interest of consumers with promises of, "Look! Your hero is going to be held down against her will, with tears of humiliation and defeat in her eyes, and drooled on by tentacles!" THAT'S where I'm going with all this (which I realize was longer than it needed to be, but it takes me a while to get to where I mean to go ^_^:;)
This comment...really mystifies me. I just don't understand how using a term that refers to a group to describe the minority of extreme members of that group isn't offensive. *Scratches head* It makes it sound like you think that feminists are of a hive mind and all have the same beliefs, instead of individuals who may have differing ways to get to the same ends: gender equality. Which is still a pretty good goal, in my opinion.
...egalitarian ones?
I'm not saying that all femenists are saying this stuff. I'm sure not. But it's usually the ones who are the first to complain and who keep on complaning long after everyone else has moved on to other things.
HOW DID YOU FIND POTC3 HUNNY??? XD I'm still flailing from the epic awesome. (And am somewhat perplexed by Beckett's increased hotness--still not attractive, but... hot. WHUT.) And so help me, I may start shipping a canon couple O_O
I'm glad you enjoyed it! For me...it was nice to be out and actually see people outside my cave, but, the truth is, IkindawishIhadn'tspentmoneyonthatmoviean
I guess I was bothered by how crack inspired everything seemed to be, among other things.
Oh come back hunny I didn't mean it. Methinks the crack (which, a few days later and in retrospect, I can see things in this movie being) but my thing is: if it's got the shittiest plot in the world and characters I can still find likable and care about, it's still a great movie to me ^_^ That and I was happy to have closure. Sweeeet sweet closure.
I'll write you something ine xchange. :3
(Well, after my Apollo & Midnighter bubble bathtime fun... XD)
Already worlds better.