Earlier this month, Harvey Jerkwater discussed how She-Hulk's cheesecake covers cause him public embarrassment. The obvious solution? The next time you buy a copy of She-Hulk where Greg Horn has chosen to portray her rubbing a banana in her cleavage on the cover despite the fact it has nothing to do with the content of the actual story, dig through the quarterbox and find a copy of Team Youngblood #14.
Slap down this cover promising Riptide nudity within and no one's going to look at your She-Hulk. Hell, the guy checking out in front of you with a couple copies of Cherry Poptart and some tentacle porn DVDs is likely to look at you funny, but not because of the She-Hulk.
This issue dealt with the introspective journey of Riptide as she debated the pros and cons of posing nude in Pussycat magazine and the effect it would have on her career. Along the way, she hears the opinions of her teammates, which range from muted support to perverted curiosity to confusion to outright disapproval.
It should be noted in writing that two sentence synopsis, I gave the book more depth than writer Eldon Asp did in 21 pages. Now, onto that disapproval.
Sentinel brings up a good point. Riptide is a role model to little girls everywhere. Magazines like Playboy, Maxim, and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue get a bad reputation for giving women a skewed sense of reality when it comes to body image. In fact, though, it should be noted that women's magazines like Glamour and Cosmo are as--if not more--accountable.
Women who see the startlingly beautiful images strive for a similar level of perfection, a level unattainable without professional airbrush touchups. Add to these already dangerous waters the potential of girls aged 10-14 seeing someone they look up to like Riptide putting her superpowered, athletic, toned physique on display and you have a recipe for body dysmorphic disorder of pandemic proportions.
Especially if the girls strive to make their bodies look like this:
Apparently, Riptide is 6'9" and 5'10" of it is legs. Also, a little known fact about her powers is that they cause her reflection in mirrors to be slightly different that in reality.
Have Chap Yaep or John Stinsman ever even seen a naked woman? If you take art classes, they bring in naked women for you to draw so you know their hips aren't in their armpits, right? Yaep did layouts and Stinsman did pencils, so who shoulders the majority of the blame here?
It doesn't really matter, because there is plenty of blame to go around. Whoever is to blame can't plead ignorance of the anatomy of a female torso as I first suspected, because apparently, he can't draw female heads either.
Okay, boobs, hips, belly, and even shoulders (She has one boob and a shoulder that juts forward from her throat at a 90 degree angle!) I can understand, because more often than not, women cover them up when they go out in public. But heads? Did these two grow up in Kabul where all the women wore burqas, leaving them to make a best guess at what a woman's head looks like?
"Hmm, do you think a woman's skull is bigger than her shoulder or smaller? Probably about the same. Are their eyes in the front or do they kind of wrap around the side because they're so wide? Do they have hair like me or is it... oh, wait, if that was drawn in 1994, that hair's actually not that bad...
Oddly enough, when Riptide actually poses nude, just like in Playboy or Cosmo, she gets touched up. In this case, the artists obviously threw a centerfold on a light table and traced her as the art suddenly stops sucking for the majority of one brief splash page (though Stinsman tries to hide his porn swiping by cleverly fucking up her eyes as only he can).
Hmm, throwing a centerfold on a light table and tracing it? Sounds like we're back to discussing Greg Horn's She-Hulk covers.
Which of the following statements is not quoted from the Bloodlines letter page of Youngblood #3?
A) [Rob Liefeld's] precise detail is a lot like Jack Kirby's early work.
B) [The characters in Youngblood] are not simply retreads of your characters from Marvel. They all have their own unique personalities.
C) Youngblood is one of the best creations I've ever seen! You've definitely got the Spider-Mans and Batmans of the future in Youngblood
D) I honestly believe [Rob Liefeld is] this generation's Jack Kirby...
E) How about a Diehard and Shadowhawk team-up?
F) I am confident that all of the Youngblood characters will be given sufficient depth in upcoming issues...
G) Marvel has held a cloud over the comics industry for years and Image has brought sunshine back to collecting. I'm glad to see the smiles wiped off their generic characters' faces!
H) In Youngblood #2, I missed Diehard. Will he be back? I hope so, because he's my favorite character. (Note: Yes, Diehard appeared in a half-issue-long story in #1, was absent from #2, and is Mike Hanyok's favorite character.)
I) My favorite characters so far are: Combat, Riptide, Diehard, and Bedrock (cool names!). Overall, [issue #2] was a nine on a ten point scale.
J) I think this is the best [artwork] I've ever seen!
K) Your scripting in Youngblood #2 is ten times better than your buddy Hank Kanalz! (Note: Talk about damning with faint praise... Kanalz had written Siren and The Flash at the point this was published. He added Ultraforce to his resume a year later.)
L) First you thought of two Youngblood teams. Then, here come the Berzerkers and Prophet! You're too much, Rob! Only the second issue and already three seperate teams have appeared.(Note: How prophetic... now if only he'd stop creating and debuting new teams and characters and do something with the ones he already has.)
M) Visually, this is by far your best work. My only complaint is I think everything seems to be crammed or rushed. (Note: How prophetic... again.)
N) You don't draw pupils.
The answer is N. That is a quote from Bloodline in issue #4.
They say opportunity knocks but once. When you have the chance to experience something you'll tell your grandchildren about, you can't just shrug and assume it'll come along again.
One week from today marks the thirteenth anniversary of the kickoff of The EXtreme Studios Tour '93 at Jim Hanley's Universe in New York City. At the time, I was a senior at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona and couldn't justify the time nor expense. Sadly, as a result, every time someone has asked "Have you ever met Chapel in person?" during the past thirteen years, I've broken down in tears and torn my shirt.
Taking shots at Rob Liefeld is the comic blogger's equivalant to when TV reporters cover the "breaking news" that a lot of people go shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. It's not news, everyone else is doing it, you're pretty much a hack when you resort to it, but if you don't do it, readers/viewers wonder what's wrong with you.
I'd hoped I could put off Liefeld mockery for a while, but as mentioned in previous posts, until about two weeks ago, I hadn't organized my new comics in more than a year and a half and found several things I either have no recollection of picking up in the first place or that I can't believe I've held on to for this long. In that latter category falls Youngblood: Bloodsport #1.
First, I bought this at the 2004 San Diego Con while in line for a sketch from Rob Liefeld because there Rob was doing "free" sketches for anyone who bought at least ten dollars worth of Youngblood books. Semantics aside, his complimentary sketches were very nice, so I waited in line and bought a copy of Bloodsport and one of Genesis (which credits Kurt Busiek as a co-writer despite Busiek's insistance his name be removed from the book) both of which were a year old and neither of which had yet published a second issue.
I didn't even read the book until a week or two later when I was too lazy to get off the couch and find a decent novel or a magazine. It was bad--not that anyone should be too surprised by that review--and I'm not sure how it wound up back in a short box of "to be filed" comics instead of the trash. Anyway, a few weeks ago, I found it again and leafed through it. I remembered the overall plot, but had forgotten about Rob Liefeld's bitterness toward Marvel that oozes from the book. I explained it to Robby and Chris and when I realized they'd never seen the book, I wagered most decent comic fans hadn't unless they'd picked it up for the sole purpose of meeting a sawbuck quotato get a free Rob Liefeld sketch at a convention.
For those who don't know or don't remember, Youngblood members are superstars in their world. This book opens with Seahawk and Battlestone relaxing in a hot tub on the balcony of a penthouse apartment, snorting coke while surrounded by dozens of top-heavy bikini girls. Battlestone also informs us they are also getting their "cocks sucked by two up-and-coming super-teens." Seahawk, however, is bored.
Yes, that subtle reference I've highlighted is exactly what you'd expect. In fact, just a few frames later, Liefeld makes sure anyone who didn't catch the written words doesn't miss out.
Yes, Rob, we get it. Marvel's heroes suck your heroes' dicks. Very clever.
The next scene involves Shaft fighting the reanimated corpses of Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders who have stolen a strand of Supreme's pubic hair from the museum. It's enough to make even thirteen year old boys everywhere roll their eyes, and, in comparison, the secretary from Fell talking about her husband fucking the dog seems discreet and refined. Once Shaft defeats the bad guys and recovers the... sigh... pubic hair, he heads off to meet with Badrock before they go to a top secret meeting for former Youngblood members.
The meeting is held in a secret underground fortress beneath a porn shop, but not just any porn shop...
... a porn shop run by Stan Lee and frequented by Ben Grimm! And what's the password to get in? "Great power requires great responsibility and all that shit, dude."
A short elevator ride later and they are reunited with Wolverine, Deadpool, Cable, Jubilee, Stryfe, shorter Cable, Domino, Firestorm, Domino without a spot on her eye, dark haired Cannonball, Sabretooth, Wolverine/Oberon, Bishop, Boom Boom, Psylocke, and the Thing (sans neck).
Actually, to reduce confusion between the Youngblooders and the characters from whom they were ripped off inspired, convenient name labels are attached. Among the things that stuck out to me:
- The girl I thought looked like Psylocke is named Psilence.
- How much do you think the black guy in the wheelchair paid to keep his name out of this?
- There's a Die Hard 2.0?
- Are Seoul and Doc Rocket thrusting their bare ass cheeks toward one another on purpose?
- Seriously, Rubble? I mean, how does Jack Kirby's ghost not go poltergeist on Liefeld's house after that?
Seahawk refuses to take part and gets his head blown off, prompting Battlestone to call the government representative who announced the deathmatch a "faggot." It's not often you find a homophobe who's just hours removed from getting blow jobs from two guys, but that's the rich character depth you've come to expect from Youngblood.
The book finishes with a two-page ad for Bloodsport #2 and another ad pointing out that whichever cover you purchased, there are four others, because apparently someone confused the date of publication and thought it was coming out in 1993 instead of 2003. Interestingly, two of the alternate covers are made to look like they are Marvel Ultimate books.