Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Is that a hallucinogenic tuber growing out of your chest or are you just happy to see me?

Nothing's going on in my life and Valentine's arrived again to remind me how soul crushingly alone I am, so I'll just bring up some more comics trivia and info for the heck of it. And since it's Valentine's Day I decided to go with a theme: weird sex! Interestingly, most of the entries come from comics written by Alan Moore. Coincidence? Probably not. So let's get freaky.

Plant One on Her

The majority of weird sex stuff I can think of comes from Alan Moore's run from Swamp Thing. The series broke a lot of ground because it was the first mainstream series in a long time not to follow the dreaded comics code, and allowed the creators to not having to worrying about censor themselves. Featuring mature themes and go strange places and allowed for experimentation as well as powerful and unrestrained storytelling.

While the first freaky sexual event is pretty nasty, as it features Swamp Thing's human friend Abby Cable (maiden name: Abby Arcane) has found out her husband Matt (who's been a bit of a loser as of late) has a great new job at Black River Recorporations and a new house. But Abby feels really uncomfortable with for some intangible reason and seems to glimpse something maddening before the world returns to normal and she's forgotten what made her ill at ease. But after Abby and Matt have sex, the feelings been stronger. She soon realizes something's wrong when she sees a book about a serial killer, who shares the looks and name of one of Matt's co-workers. And she was supposed to have died long ago. Eventually Abby realizes something is wrong with Matt but it turns out even worse than she thought: the flesh is Matt, but the soul is that of her evil dead Uncle Anton Arcane. Nasty. You are sick, Anton! She's your damned niece.

On the much sweeter (but still weird) side of intimacy is when Abby and Swampy, who have been in an unspoken relationship for a while, admit their love for each other. But Swamp Thing is just a plant with a human mind and despite his power, he feels he cannot be intimate with her physically. So after some thought he walks into the water and plucks a tuber from his chest, washes it off, and gives it to her to eat. She decides she isn't disgusted by this and eats it, asking if this is a metaphorical thing. "No... Not entirely" he says as everything goes strange... Soon Abby starts seeing strange visions and discovers that it also her to absorb a portion of Swampy's experience and begins to experience the world's beauty the way a plant elemental does. The rest of the issue is a strange sort of free-style poem in which Abby sees the cycle of live and experiences a temporary zen-like experience where she sees how all life is connected. Beautiful... but your still eating chest-tuber.

Towards the end of Alan Moore's run, Swamp Thing's essence (he's no longer simply confined to a body as the series continues since he can manifest himself in any plant life) is ejected from the Earth and he find's himself traveling the universe in an attempt to find a way back. At one point he finds himself manifesting in a techno-plant spaceship-like lifeform floating through space looking for a mate. Swamp Thing manifests freaks out and gets the hell out of there. The spaceship (who's morals are not ours) sees beauty in his being and turns back time in order to catch him when he first manifests, then takes a piece of his essence in order to harbour young. So Swamp Thing is essentially rape by a lonely plant-ship and let go. This issue is narrated by the ship who tells her young and hopes that he realizes that he created such beauty. Crazy.


It's still cheating if there's no touching

Meanwhile, Grant Morrison is a writer known for being crazy and writing all sorts of crazy scenarios (like his series The Filth, in which the world is threatened by the pornomancer Tex Porneau and his giant sperm). His run on the X-Men was considered by those with taste to be the best since it's heyday in the 70's when it first got really good. And he also did what no writer has tried before: breaking up Cyclops and Jean Grey for reals.

Basically it begins when Cyclops, fresh from his trip from the grave. It seems since his death (and being possessed by Apocalypse) has caused a rift in their relationship that neither wish to address. So psychic bitch and former villainess Emma Frost offers to act as a sex therapist for Cyclops. But soon it becomes obvious that their relationship is simply series of psychic sex scenarios in which Emma and Cyclops make brain love and exchange pillow talk... even when Cyclops is in the middle of a mission. But soon Jean finds out, barges in on their psychic sex scene and things go downhill from their. The worst part: Emma has sex with Cyke while wearing the outfit Jean wore when she was the Dark Phoenix, an evil entity that at a fucking sun. Creepy.

Do you believe in magic?

In Alan Moore's crazy series Promethea (about the adventures of a story made flesh), young Sophie (who is this generation's Promethea) gets some info from a groadie old sorcerer/pervert in exchange for the promise of sex. Well, a deal's a deal but the issue when the deal is sealed becomes a metaphor for how magic works and Promethea/Sophie finds the experience educational and allows her to become stronger as a person. That's all well and good, but try and explain that that having sex with a disheveled 60 year-old is an important step in changing the world for the better.

Size Matters

One Avengers issue that caused a hubbub because it contain a hint at somewhat interesting sexual habits of Yellowjacket and the Wasp, a super-hero couple with shrinking powers. We see the Wasp seemingly alone in bed giggling when a sweaty Yellowjacket comes out frome under the blankets drenched in sweat saying: "OK sweetie, your turn." I never actually read the issue if that famous/infamous scene was toned down or what have you but it caused quite a stir when preview pages first showed up.

Three or more in a bed

In the highly unusual series Shade, the Changing Man, the title character's relationship with his girlfriend Katie was odd. Not just because Shade shared her with another woman (an oddball named Lenny), but because of the very nature of Shade. Ya see, Shade was an alien espionage agent from the planet Meta who gets chucked into our world. Because of his dementia-related reality controlling powers (coming from his Madness Vest), he ends up lodged in the body of a serial killer just as he's executed. So, after she falls in love with Shade, Katie's technically sleeping with a man who's living in the body of her parents' killer. Also Shade later becomes a woman. And a lamp. And a jerk. It's on odd series.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this or were disgusted by it. See you later.


Comic quote of the week:
(In reference to a gala)
Emma Frost: --my family's extremely generous support for generations, and the very year it becomes public knowlegde that I'm a mutant, I am for the first time left off the guest list. Tell me, dear Walter, would you like to spend the rest of your life obsessed with the works of Leroy Neiman? I mean, sexually?