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I was going to talk about my day off and how wonderful seeing SPAMALOT was, thanks to Mitchell for making it so special for all of us. Instead, though, I’m going to have to address a problem. Sigh.
The second GUILTY PLEASURES comic book hit the stands, and there’s something missing on the nude ratman. Genitalia. They are smooth as Barbie dolls, which is definitely not how I describe them in the books. When I first saw art from Daebel brothers, the ratmen had the full equipment. The pictures that crossed our desks here for this issue showed smooth. Admittedly, I have some trouble visualizing the pencil sketches, but I knew the ratmen weren’t packing. I didn’t flag it, because my understanding is that we were up against a deadline. The choice was to fight for full frontal nudity or get the issue out. Also, if we do full frontal then we are a mature comic, which means odd things about distribution and who will shelve it. I didn’t know that for a fact, but suspected it. If we’d had the time in the schedule I would have suggested the movie and television fix of a well placed knee or shadow. But I made the decision that it was better to get the issue out on time and stay on schedule then to fight it. Yes, I have carte blanche I could have thrown a fit, and said no, full frontal, or nothing. They’d have done it, eventually. But you wouldn’t have the comic yet. A lot of shops won’t carry something with that level of explicitness. Check out the comic codes, guys. Think of the comic books as a movie. If this was a movie would you expect to see full frontal male nudity? If you did get it, then the rating for the movie would be a NC-17 or even X, if they still do X as a real rating. The real problem with this comic having the smooth parts, was that Anita commits on how small the genetalia is of the ratman, and she kicks him in the balls, which he doesn’t have. It was a very unfortunate time to not have time to address this problem. Honestly, though I’d seen the words separately, and the art. I had not seen them together, and I’m having some trouble putting them together in my head. So it wasn’t until I opened the comic and saw just how unfortunately awkward the lack of balls to bust was, that I realized, crap. But, would we rather have delayed the comic? Would we rather have delayed not only this comic, but all the rest of them, while we tried for a solution? I decided to make the deadline. I’m an artist, but I’m also a professional, and that means you make your deadlines if at all possible.
We have new artwork today, and we are discussing with the artist, with Marvel, and the Dabels what we can do about this particular problem. We are discussing various solutions, and we will be discussing them in more detail. My goal is that we will have something other than the whole smooth Barbie Doll thing, which I hate as much, or more than any fan. Come on guys, this is my baby, you know I wanted it the way I wrote it, but I’m also realistic enough to know that we aren’t getting full frontal in the main edition of a mainstream comic book. It ain’t happening. But we will come up with a solution other than neutering our male wereanimals. No more of that, okay. I just didn’t realize how much it would bother us all until I saw the finished product. Other than that this problem though I’m very pleased with the comic. I think it looks gorgeous, we’re just missing some bits. We’ll work on it not happening again, but it will be work to get it fixed. And while I’m trying to get this fixed, I’m also editing THE HARLEQUIN. Sigh, again.