Servicing The Fans

In comics fandom there is a concept that is often referred to as “fan service.”
It’s a term that is rather broad and vague, but in general it refers to instances in which some element is added to a story solely for the purposes of pleasing a certain segment of the readership. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with trying to do something to keep the people who are paying your bills happy, many people find it objectionable when the fan service is tacked on or gratuitous or detracts from the actual story.
Given that comic fandom is largely composed of males, a lot of fan service comes in the form of gratuitous depictions of women in skintight and skimpy outfits, or in suggestive poses, with said women usually having physiques that are so ridiculously out of touch with how real women – even Playboy models – actually look that they border on parody.
Fan service in the art doesn’t really bother me that much, and more often than not I’m more amused than aroused by it. I’m more likely to object to fan service in the writing, particularly if said service involves having a character do or say something that is outside the range of his or her normal behavior and serves no purpose other than to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Even so, it’s fan service art that I want to talk about here, and the reason I want to talk about it is this image from the first page of a recent issue of Countdown to Final Crisis:



Clearly there’s no narrative reason that we need to be treated to an upskirt shot of Mary Marvel immediately upon opening the comic. It’s utterly gratuitous and obviously is nothing other than pure fan service.
That, however, is not my complaint. I honestly have no problem with cheesecake for cheesecake’s sake. I might find it silly and juvenile in many instances, but I’m certainly not offended by it.
No, my problem with this bit of fan service is simply that it’s not very good. If you’re going to throw in some cheesecake, do so with an artist who’s actually good at drawing cheesecake.
This would have been a perfect opportunity to let an artist like Ed Benes shine, especially since it’s a shot that’s so clearly in line with Benes' particular predilections when it comes to presenting the female form.
Benes likes to work from a very specific perspective, which was always apparent when he was the artist on Birds of Prey, in which fans were regularly serviced by scenes similar to this one:



Of course, for the full Benes’ effect, the “camera” would be tilted up slightly, and Dinah’s thighs would likely be framing our view of Babs.
I’m not complaining, of course, and I do actually like Benes’ work, but pointing out this particular foible gave me an excuse to produce my own gratuitous shot of Black Canary’s ass.
(And for the record, as an artist, Ed Benes is vastly superior to me. Also, my dialogue for the scene is a very poor imitation of the kind of crisp, well-characterized exchanges that went on between Dinah and Babs when Gail Simone was writing the book. I also never knew that Benes was from Brazil before seeing his Wikipedia entry. It explains so much. And fan service is not limited to comics. It pops up all over the place.)

Keyword Kraziness: Hello Kitty Edition

A recent seeker ended up here on the following search-string:

hello kitty she-devil pics

Whenver I see the phrase "She-Devil," my mind always goes first to Red Sonja (She-Devil With a Sword), so towards that end, I give you this:


Of course, maybe you were looking for something more like this:


And finally, to cover all bases, here is my Hello Kitty version of Shanna the She-Devil:


I have to say that a Hello Kitty version of Shanna is a bad idea, as her presence would inevitably lead to a competitive rift between Shanna's husband Ka-Zar and Zabu, his faithful saber-toothed tiger companion.

I'm Going To Yemen

There was an episode of Friends years ago in which Chandler is trying to keep his ex, Janice, out of his life, and, rather than simply owning up to this, tells her that he will be unavailable for a long time, as his job is requiring that he travel to Yemen for an extended stay.
Things fall apart, though, when she insists on taking him to the airport and seeing him off. This was pre-9/11, so she’s able to accompany him all the way to the gate, steadfastly refusing to leave until his flight actually takes to the air. He tries to get the girl at the counter to “pretend” to give him a boarding pass and let him on the plane until Janice leaves, but it’s no good, and he ends up buying a ticket to Yemen, and, as Janice stands there watching, he says, in his Chanderly, semi-panicked way, “I’m going to Yemen,” and gets on the plane.
I’ve been saying, “I’m going to Yemen” to myself for the past few days, as, when it comes to the job offer I’ve actually received – but don’t especially want – I’ve been kind of feeling like Chandler waiting for Janice to leave so that he can bring the charade to an end when it comes to my current job situation.
I’ve been stalling the signing of the papers for the job I don’t want as long as I can in order to give the company that I do want to work for the opportunity to finally call me and make me an actual offer. But, just as Janice wouldn’t leave, they haven’t called, and so it looks like I’m going in to sign the papers on Monday morning and then starting work on Wednesday.
So that’s how I feel about the whole thing: like I’m going to Yemen.
I know that I should complain about having a job lined up when so many of my fellow ex-AOLers don’t, but it’s just that the other job, the one that I want, is so much better. Even if it paid less – which I don’t think it would – it would still be better. More interesting, actual benefits, etc.
*Sigh*
It’s just as well that I will be starting work, one way or another, as today was my last actual payday. Up next is my severance.
The good thing about the job I don’t want, though, is that the first 3-4 weeks are just training, not actual work. That way, if I finally do get the offer on the job I want, I’ll only be bailing on the training, which will make me feel marginally better about accepting a job and then saying “Screw this” when/if the better offer comes.
Of course, that’s assuming that I can bail without repercussions, as it is a contract job. I’ll be reading the paperwork very carefully, and if I find that I’m actually locked in, I’ll just turn it down on the spot and hope that the other job does come through soon (though I will have enough money to survive for a few months).
After hitting the comic shop today, Scott and I went to see The Golden Compass.
I went into it kind of ambivalent, knowing pretty much nothing about the source material, which is probably for the best as the low expectations left room for me to be pleasantly surprised.
Was it a great movie? No, but viewed as a standard CGI-driven fantasy piece, it was pretty decent. I was pleased that the girl at the center of it all was presented as being a likeable, fairly level-headed –if a bit headstrong – character who was actually clever and had none of the denseness that is so characteristic of a certain bespectacled wizard and his friends.
Most of the CGI was decent, though it sort of lacked the scope and scale of a Narnia or LOTR.
One thing that I found interesting was the sort of “connections” between some of the actors, as many of them had been in other movies together, such as Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, and Christopher Lee and Sir Ian McKellen (Who did his usual excellent job as he provided the voice of a bad-ass, armor-clad fighting polar bear. FYI – armored polar bear death matches = Teh Awesome.).
After the movie Scott looked up an actress who looked familiar but whom he could not place. Said actress was Eva Green, who had been in Casino Royale with Craig, so there was another connection.
Another thing the movie had going for it: Sam Elliott. Naturally he played pretty much the only thing he can play: an old cowboy. Honestly, what’s the point of having Sam Elliott in a movie if he’s not playing an old cowboy? It’d be like, I don’t know, not using the Internet for porn or something.
(For the record, as a non-cowboy, he was okay in Hulk, but he was far too restrained to play the part of General “Thunderbolt” Ross.)
Apparently the books were written by a staunch atheist, and were intended as something of an “anti-Narnia” set of stories. There have been a lot of complaints that the religious (or anti-religious) elements have been removed, but I can’t really speak to that, as I haven’t read the books.
Even without the anti-religious elements, though, there’s plenty for rabid fundies to get their panties in a wad about, such as magic, witches, and the “daemons” who serve as the companions to the people who live in that world.
But whatever.
Overall it was an okay, but not phenomenal, way to kill a couple of hours on a cold, dreary afternoon.
(And, once again, armored polar bear death matches = Teh Awesome, especially when they involve Sir Ian McKellen talking smack.)

My Little Pony

Most Verizon Wireless commercials annoy me (as do commercials in general), but this one cracks me up:

The View From Alpha Centauri

This morning I went in for my eye exam. It wasn’t too thorough, as I’m not getting no contacts or glasses, but am instead opting to do the whole Gentle Molding thing to improve my vision and eliminate the need for contacts or glasses.
After doing a quick, standard check, I had my eyes scanned for the corneal topography dealie that will be used to make the lenses that will be used to reshape my eyes.
It was my understanding that the process cost about $3,000, so I had that much set aside in my flexible spending account. Turns out that, thanks to how bad my eyes are, it’s going to cost over $5,200. I signed up for some sort of no-interest medical credit card thing to cover the rest, which, after I’m actually working – wherever that may be – I’ll probably just pay off immediately.
So the next step is to go in whenever my lenses arrive, and the begin the process of wearing them while I sleep so that they can reshape my eyes.
Given what it ended up costing, it probably would have been less hassle to do the whole Lasik thing, but Gentle Molding has been around a lot longer, and it doesn’t actually remove anything from your eyes.
And this way I don’t have to bother anyone to get a ride to and from the Lasik place or mess around with the cream to prevent crustiness and etc.
After the eye appointment I headed to Target to pick up a shovel, as we actually did get a fair amount of snow yesterday, so I needed to clear off my sidewalk and walkway. While I was at it, I cleared off my neighbors’ sidewalk and walkway as well.
I have to go in to the recruiter’s office on Monday to sign the paperwork for the job that I don’t want. I’m hoping that I’ll hear from the job I do want before that, but so far that hasn’t happened.
Scott couldn’t make it to the comic shop yesterday, so we were supposed to go today, but something else came up. He actually has the day off tomorrow, so we’re going to hit the comic shop and also take in a movie (The Golden Compass) while we’re at it.
Technically, yesterday’s Made of Fail post was also a Red Wing memory, and I’d said that I wouldn’t be revisiting those here, but it was kind of unavoidable, as that is probably the best (worst?) example of me being dense – or in that case, superhumanly obtuse – when it comes to women and picking up on any signals they may be giving out.
The whole thing actually reminds me of a cartoon I once saw in Playboy or Penthouse in which two guys are sitting at a bar, and one of the men has a woman who has parked herself on his shoulders, wrapping her legs around his head, and burying his face in her crotch, and the other man is saying, “I think she likes you.”
Now that I think I could probably pick up on, but it’s still not a 100% certainty.
In fairness to me and my obtuseness when it comes to that sort of thing in general – and the Kayla incident in particular – is that in order to pick up on signals, I would first have to believe that it’s conceivable that woman would actually be giving me signals. That’s a difficult obstacle to overcome, especially in the situation with Kayla, given that, as a stripper, the odds were that she didn’t really even view me as a person so much as an ATM with a pulse. When you’re dealing with someone whose job it is to be nice to you and to pretend to have some interest in you sexually, the one thing that’s going to keep you out of trouble is realizing that she doesn’t really like you, she’s just doing her job.
It’s natural to forget that and think, “Maybe I’m the exception,” but I always did my best to avoid falling into that trap, despite the fact that my friends often insisted that, in Kayla’s case, I was that exception.
So even though I was trying to hook up with her, I didn’t really believe that this was possible, so, when you also factor in my level of drunkenness at the time, you get me being totally oblivious to the fact that she was giving me signals that a dead man should have been able to pick up on.
And honestly, and, again, in fairness to me, who knows what her actual intentions were? Maybe she was looking to do a little side business, and at some point there would have come the unpleasant moment in which I was presented with a bill.
So I can’t lament my obliviousness too much, because I don’t really know for certain what would have happened.
Anyway, the thing is that it’s not like I have Asperger’s or something and am totally oblivious to non-verbal cues and subtle (or not-so subtle) verbal hints. I can pick up on them quite clearly – when they’re being directed at someone else.
If/when they’re directed at me, I think I’m just too distracted by my own overactive brain to notice them, or am unwilling to believe that they actually are signals, per my earlier mention of the obstacle I have to overcome.
When I see a woman flirting with someone else, though, all of the cues stand out bright as day.
I remember becoming infuriated once when I saw someone I liked talking to a guy, as she was constantly touching her hair and standing on her tiptoes and drawing attention to her mouth and just generally broadcasting signals that have probably reached Alpha Centauri by now and are being studied by aliens who, not knowing anything about our culture, are still able to say, “Glbnor glilifax,” the English translation of which would be “She’s totally into that guy.”
In the case of that particular person, I was constantly on the lookout for any sort of signals directed towards me, so even with my normal handicap when it comes to that sort of thing, it’s unlikely that I would have ever missed seeing them. So seeing her put on the full display for some other guy was not fun to watch.
(Alpha Centaurians have no doubt also watched my interactions with her and concluded, “Glddink glpxzym,” or “She’s so not into that dork.”)

Made Of Fail Part Two: Sometimes I'm A Little Dense

Another Reprieve

So today I was supposed to go to the recruiter's office to sign the paperwork for the job that I don't want.
However, I never got final confirmation of that - or the address for the office - and given that it's snowing today, Northern VA and the D.C. Metro areas are plunged into a state of panic, so I didn't want to get on the road unless I absolutely had to, so I called the recruiter to ask where things stand.
I got his voicemail, but a few minutes later he called back to let me know that they still haven't worked out what the shifts will be for the available positions, so the signing won't be until next week.
So hopefully that gives the job I do want more time to finally get approved and for them to make me an actual offer.

That Explains That

So once I started watching Superbad I noticed that it was from a Sony studio, which would explain why it's on Blu Ray.
Even so, with my HD DVD player upsampling it, the regular DVD still looked really good, and because it's anamorphic widescreen, I was able to watch it without letterboxing.

The Garbage Can Of Mystery

Yesterday afternoon my potential boss at the job I want called to let me know that the position has received four of the five approvals that it needs, and that the proposal is now sitting on the desk of an Executive VP for him to sign off on it, at which point I will finally receive an offer.
Later, the recruiter for the job I don’t want called to say that he was trying to get me scheduled to sign the paperwork in their VA office.
(Originally I was supposed to go to their MD office this morning.)
He said that doing so might delay the signing until Wednesday, so I just told him that Wednesday would work better anyway, thereby giving the EVP at the job I want another day to get around to approving the position.
Hopefully I get a call today.
I went out into the world briefly today to pick up the Superbad DVD at Target. The special “Target Edition” that I got came with stickers and a little book with scenes from the movie.
And that’s pretty much been all of the excitement of late.
It’s been extremely wintry here, with really brutal winds yesterday and today.
(Said winds briefly deposited someone’s garbage can in my yard yesterday. Not sure if the owner came around to claim it or if the wind just carried it somewhere else.)

Holiday Spirit

I never decorate for Christmas (or any holiday, for that matter), but my mother has stated on more than one occasion that, now that I have a house, I should at least put up a Christmas tree.
I think this is as close as I'm likely to get:

Oh I Wish...

If you look over to the right and scroll down past the archives you'll see a link to my Amazon Wish List.
Much of it consists of things that no one would ever buy for me, but some items are affordable.
Just in case you feel inclined to give a gift to the humble blogger who gives you the gift of joy so often...
Oh, and just because Danielle Panabaker, Scarlett Johansson, RLC, Carla Gugino, and a host of other lovely ladies aren't on the list, that doesn't mean I won't accept them as gifts, should you be in the position to provide them (Universe, I'm looking at you), or actually be them.

Random Question Of The Day

Given that they often sell for the same price, which is the better value, a package of regular Oreos, or a package of Double Stuff Oreos?
(Show your work)

Made Of Fail

It occurs to me that in some of my earlier posts I may have given the impression that I’m under some undue pressure from friends and family to get out into the world and try to hit on everything that moves in an effort land myself a woman.
There have been people I’ve known who have badgered me about it – one even went so far as to start creating a profile for me on match.com without telling me about it – but for the most part what I’ve gotten has been support and, usually, gentle encouragement to move forward whenever there is a prospect in my sights, which really isn’t very often.
And anyway, it’s not that I’m being pushed towards something I don’t actually want that leads me to resist, it’s just that I’m not terribly inclined to attempt to do something when I know I’m probably not going to succeed.
I mean, when I start to draw a picture, for example, I do so with a reasonable belief that I’m going to succeed in producing something at least halfway decent.
With asking out women, I don’t have that belief.
To put something that is a rather inescapable fact in terms of an Internet-speak expression I’ve been seeing a lot lately, when it comes to women, I’m made of fail.
(This is true of many things, but women are the most glaring example.)
I suppose the question of why I’m made of fail arises, and I suppose that there are a lot of reasons, but this illustration of a conversation I once had on a smoke break – when I still smoked – with a co-worker (the one who was setting up the match.com profile) provides one of the main reasons.



On a different topic, given how much time I spend just watching TV or sitting in the office, why is it so hard for people to manage to call me when I’m not sitting on the toilet or hauling my socks out to the dryer?
While I was doing the latter today someone called me on my cell phone and on my land line. It would have been so hard to call in the hours when I wasn’t doing that?
I have no idea who it was, as leaving a voicemail is apparently even more of a hassle than, say, leaving a comment on my blog, and the caller ID wasn’t able to identify the number.
Oh well.

(Not) On Thin Ice

So Kathleen and I went to the skating party.
Neither of us actually skated – Kathleen doesn’t know how, and I haven’t skated in probably close to 20 years.
When I was a kid there was a local community recreation building – known most commonly simply as “The Building” – which in the non-winter months was used for things like basketball and roller skating, and in the winter was frozen over and used for ice skating and hockey.
And yes, I did play hockey. I was a decent goalie, as my head would naturally draw any slapshots straight toward it.
Of course, it’s worth mentioning that my brother Stuart was one of the few people who could actually manage a decent slapshot, and, if he was on the opposing team, he generally aimed them for my head anyway, so my cranial magnetism was kind of irrelevant.
For the record, even a soft puck can hurt if it hits you hard enough.
Lacking natural grace, I was never a terribly skillful skater, but I could at least manage to remain upright most of the time.
I remember one night of skating in which we were playing “It” or, if you prefer, “Tag,” which is considerably more challenging on ice skates, and all of the other kids decided to gang up on me to insure that I was always “it.” Little did I know that it was the pale harbinger of torments to come.
Anyway, tonight’s outing did not involve breahtlessly chasing after my cruel and vicious peers in an effort to no longer be it, but it was kind of marred by the fact that it was cold and rainy and that it was held at an outdoor rink.
We talked to David, of course, and a few other people, but for much of it we were standing sort of off to the side near the hot cocoa and cookies. Eventually we moved over to where other people were standing after Kathleen said that we looked like we were anti-social. I pointed out that we are anti-social, but we still moved over anyway.
We hung out long enough for the raffle drawing. Kathleen actually won one of the prizes.
Even though it was his party, David didn’t seem to know what the prizes actually were. When Kathleen told him it was a gift certificate he asked how much it was for and said, “That’s so cheap!” when she told him.
He asked if I was going to write about that here. I told him that I pretty much had to.
In introducing me to a few people he talked up my talent and Heroic Portraits, saying that I could probably make a living off of that alone. When I pointed out that I’ve never had any actual customers, he said that it’s because I don’t market it. Kathleen agreed.
When we were leaving, he asked if I was serious about wanting to develop Heroic Portraits.
Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, sure, it’d be cool, I guess, but the one problem I foresee is dealing with unsatisfied customers, in particular people who would give me the vaguest description of what I want, then complain when I failed to bring their vision to life.
It would be kind of difficult to keep from responding to any complaints with an angry “Draw your own damn portrait then!”
Kathleen suggested some strategies for dealing with that sort of thing.
The biggest problem with marketing the site, though, is that it sucks. I don’t really want people to go there because I know they won’t be impressed, and I just don’t seem to have the wherewithal to make it any better.
Anyway, the point is that it’s a question I’ve asked myself and I’m just not sure what the answer is.
But that was my big adventure out in the world.

Blogger Issue?

In multiple browsers and on multiple computers I'm finding that if I click on a picture I've posted rather than simply having the larger version open in a browser window I'm being presented with the option of opening it with my default image viewer or downloading the picture.
Anyone else finding that to be the case?
If so, it's not the result of anything I've done - I've just been posting the the same way I always have, so it might be some kind of issue with Blogger.

The Perfect To Retarded Ratio

Having eggs, but lacking bacon, I opted to make pancakes for breakfast this morning.
While I was doing so, my mother called, but I continued with my pancake-making, as it really only required one arm.
Initially I’d established a pretty good perfect pancake to retarded pancake ratio (4 to 1, which is all the more impressive considering I wasn’t entirely focused on the task), but as I was pouring another dollop of batter onto the griddle I opened a pocket of unblended pancake mix, which through the ratio off.
My mother asked how many I was making. I said that, depending on how big you make them, the amount of batter I had makes 6 to 8.
She asked, “You don’t eat all of them at once, do you?”
I said, “Sometimes.” (Read: every time)
Yesterday was fairly uneventful. I woke up at around 8:30, which was surprising, considering that on Friday evening around 6 PM I’d found myself sitting on the couch struggling to stay awake, and by 9 I was ready to call it a night, but managed to hold on until 10:30, at which point I decided there was no earthly reason to continue fighting to stay awake.
Which means that, having waken up at 8:30 on Saturday, I’d slept for 10 hours.
Not sure why I was so tired. Maybe it was a crash that followed the adrenaline surge that preceded calling the hot recruiter and getting shot down.
(There was a huge surge of adrenaline when I realized that I was dialing her number and said to myself, “Wait, I’m not ready yet!” but it was too late to turn back at that point, especially since she answered her phone on the first ring.)
But whatever. Apart from the little Man vs. Wild cartoon I did, I spent most of the day not doing too much besides working on another picture off and on. I actually did a lot of work on the picture, but it’s a pretty complex and involved picture that looked deceptively simple when I first started on it.
On Friday afternoon I picked up my cell phone and noticed that I had a voicemail message, which was puzzling, as I should have heard the phone ring.
Further investigation showed that my phone was, for some reason, unable to play ringtones, or any other audio file for that matter. I tried playing an mp3, but, while it went through the motions of playing it, no sound was issuing forth.
I took the battery out to reset it, which resolved the problem.
Of course, even if the sound had been working, I realized, I wouldn’t have heard it ring, as there was no corresponding indication of a missed call, which means that the incoming call had just gone straight to voicemail anyway.
In any case, the person calling was a recruiter from the company that I actually want to work for. My prospective boss had asked her to call me to find out when I need to make a decision about the offer for the job that I don’t want.
I didn’t tell her that I’d already accepted the job (with the intention of saying “thanks, but no thanks” as soon as I get an offer for the job I do want), but I don’t go in to do the paperwork on it until Tuesday morning, so I gave her that as the deadline.
Hopefully that will speed things up and they’ll get approval to go ahead and hire me before that.
Yesterday the 5 free HD DVDs that I got as a rebate on my HD DVD player (they’re now offering 7 HD DVDs, per an ad I saw online) arrived in the mail.
I don’t remember what movie I did select, but I know that I didn’t select The Frighteners, but that’s what I got. Oh well, it was free, the other 4 were right, and there wasn’t anything among the choices available that I really wanted anyway.
In addition to that movie, I got Darkman, because it’s just some really cheesy, over the top Sam Raimi fun, the John Carpenter version of The Thing, because it’s a cool movie, Aeon Flux, because it wasn’t as horrible as a lot of people made it out to be and it actually had some good scenes, and Swordfish, because Halle Berry’s naked breasts in 1080p.
I was surprised (and annoyed) to see that Superbad is coming out on Blu Ray rather than HD DVD, considering that most of Appatow’s other movies went the HD DVD route.
So I guess I won’t be seeing faux jailbait running around in their underwear in glorious HD…at least not until I’m fully ensconced in the world of the gainfully employed and buy a new Media Center PC that has a Blu Ray drive.

A Little Sunday Morning Schadenfreude

For anyone who doesn't know the meaning, here is the Wikipedia entry on schadenfreude.