Boy oh boy, you’d think I’d planned the timing of my look at women and comics to coincide with the solicitations, which, unbidden, contain such things as these:

Just another day at the office. Business as usual. Moving on. I should note that I actually like Adam Hughes’ covers for CATWOMAN — these are sexy but not demeaning, and we all know that Catwoman is not above using her attractiveness to get what she wants.

The winner for the week however comes from Marvel and it’s a beaut:

Great. There’s apparently some bound MALE team member tied up behind Black Cat, but why bother to show him in hentai bondage. Although I’d like to think this image of an octopus caressing a bound woman’s nipple was an homage to the great Hokusai [link NSFW], somehow I think that was not the intent. The repugnance against this cover has been widespread among both men and women, but pornographer Elin Winkler puts it best:

Now, as we all know, I publish pornographic comics. Not just tease comics or pinup comics or sexy comics- hardcore pornography. Poles & holes, money shots, manga-style spurting penii, cartoon boobies bouncing, etc. I am not ashamed of the adult comics my company publishes. This is because I try to be a responsible editor and I believe there should be adult comics out there with consensual sex, women enjoying themselves and not being treated as mere objects, couples in love who can’t keep their hands off each other, and the radical idea that sex, in all its forms, should be fun and pleasant and positive. This means it’s often difficult to find artists who understand these concepts, and we often have to reject stuff with very nice art that contains things like rape, snuff, extreme violence, and the like.

I looked at this cover for Heroes For Hire and realized that 1) it looks like it belongs on the cover of a porn comic, like Milk and 2) it’s a cover I wouldn’t even run on Milk, because the women are all obviously in an abused position. That was my initial reaction.

My second reaction was something along the lines of “holy shit, is that Misty Knight?!”

Holy shit indeed. Because you see, those bound and degraded women, one of them with some kind of white liquid dripping on her boobs, are the HEROES of HEROES FRO HIRE. That’s right. They are the protagonists, the instigators. The heroes. And I too weep for Misty Knight. That’s her to the left. Can you believe it? She’s wearing clothes. And standing up. Straight. And not tied up. And she’s got a gun. And she obviously knows how to USE it. And if you cross her, she will.

When the new HEROES FOR HIRE starring Misty Knight and Colleen Wing and Black Cat and a few others started in 2006, she looked like this (right.) Although she’s gotten a little less tough, and Cheryl Lynn has had a field day with her hairstyle, at least she’s wearing clothes and standing upright, etc.

In fact, when I was a teenaged girl reading comics, I wouldn’t have minded being Misty Knight. She was smart and tough and in control and had exciting adventures. AND she got to date dreamy Danny Rand, aka Iron Fist! What was not to like!

Now? Well, unless you’re the “S” in a “D&S” you probably don’t want to be Misty Knight. No offense to the S’s out there.

Now, here is the SHOCKING TWIST ENDING!!! R U READY??? That salivating, salacious cover? It was drawn by an artist named Sana Takeda. Who is Japanese.

And a woman.

Yep, that cover was drawn by a woman.

Are you confused? Is she a gender traitor? Is hentai what girls really like?

I don’t know what went into that cover. I know the editor is Mark Paniccia, the father of a one year old daughter that he loves more than anything. I know Mark well enough to hazard the guess that he wasn’t trying to “oppress” women, “oppress” Misty Knight, or follow a secret agenda. He was probably just trying to sell more books. I imagine Sana Takeda wanted to sell more books. The really really sad thing is that inside the Biosphere, up on the mountain, probably nobody gave this a second thought. Nobody thought that “Misty Knight and the Black Cat and Colleen Wing shouldn’t be shown this way because it demeans them as characters.”

And you know what’s even sadder? That no one at Marvel or DC will ever say a word about any of this. The Mary Jane statue controversy had been going on for well over a week, and been on TV shows, with nary a peep out of an official spokesman at either company. Will anyone ask Joe Quesada or Paul Levitz about any of this? Will anyone remember?

And that, ladies and germs, is why we can’t shut up.

Sorry we had to break off in the middle of the posting this morning, but we had to dash off to the American Museum of Natural History where a Spider-Man Week event was taking place, as star Tobey Maguire had to fight off a horde of radioactive spiders!

No not really, but he did appear with Dr. Norm Platnick. The dynamic duo rapped about spiders, their webs, their venom and their taxonomic status — they are ARACHNIDS not INSECTS! — to an eager audience of tots, many clad in Spidey threads. Seriously, our inner nerd was geeking out at the idea of recreating one of the greatest moments in comics history, while surrounded by cages full of GIANT BIRD-EATING SPIDERS.

Some more pics in the jump, but after hearing the room full of kids chanting “Go Spidey!” one must ask…WHY AREN’T THERE MORE SPIDER-MAN COMICS FOR KIDS? Really!

(more…)

AND…Marv Wolfman’s Wild Kingdom!

Delayed posting today as we’re off trying to gather food for our beloved Inky — we’re just terrified to feed her any wet food these days. We were feeding her ‘human tuna’ for a while until someone reminded us that you can’t eat too much tuna because of the mercury levels. Inky does not need mercury poisoning on top of her other behavioral issues, believe me.

Inky is not happy eating kibble, but as you know, we are long time supporters of the Kibbles’n'Bits, so that’s just the way it is.

BTW, That Darn Cat food is NOT repeat NOT, part of the recall, but it at least gives this post a semblance of topicality.

Because the world needs more videos of otters floating around holding hands.

[Via Cute Overload]

A new race of albino millipedes has been discovered living in the Grand Canyon.

Two albino millipedes have come out of their cavernous hiding places to represent an entirely new genus of these leggy organisms.

Scientists spotted the millipedes in caves on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. One species was found in a cave on the South Rim and the other in two caves on the North Rim.

“We knew the millipedes likely represented two distinct species because the two populations were separated by the Grand Canyon,” said biologist J. Judson Wynne, a cave expert at Northern Arizona University who also works for the U.S. Geological Survey. “The fact these two species belong to an entirely new genus was a great surprise to us.”

No word yet on whether these are “flesh eating albino centipedes” +2 against elves, or “acid spitting albino centipedes” +1 at night.

PS: if you like cryptozoology, support Loren Coleman.

Regular readers know we have always been manatee-friendly here at The Beat. These peaceful, lovable behemoths of the seas may lack cutes, but they make up for it in sheer can-do spirit as earth’s most unlikely sea mammals. Although thought of as an ocean-going beast, manatees actually favor drifting tranquilly through the brackish estuaries along the Florida coast, often resulting in that merriest of cries, “Honey, there’s a manatee in the sewage outlet!”

It comes as no surprise, then, that Conan O’Brien has leapt on the manatee bandwagon, with a recurring gag now turning into a web phenomenon:

On the Dec. 4 show, the manatee appeared in a skit about college mascots as the “FSU Webcam Manatee.” As it ended, O’Brien ad libbed a reference to “HornyManatee.com” - and thus a website was born.

The next evening, O’Brien informed his audience that after the previous night’s show, he was contacted by NBC Standards and told the network would have to buy the rights to the then-fictional site. NBC purchased rights to the domain for $159 for 10 years.

The quickly formed site includes “Manatee on Manatee” action, as well as pictures of a “Manateen” and a “Voyeur Manatee.” It’s all a harmless spoof of Internet pornography, and O’Brien claims it has received over three million hits.

He’s encouraged fans to submit their Horny Manatee creations to conanhornymanatee.com - and has been flooded with responses of graphic novels, paintings and photos of people in manatee costumes.

We would dearly love to see these sex manatee graphic novels, but in the meantime, here is the website, doubtless already a haven for furries who like water sports.

For those of you who require actual cuteness in your animal totems, here are baby pandas. Take that, Warren Ellis.

[Panda link via MK Reed]

Employees at Paris Disneyland have made dozens of furries’ dreams come true by staging a sordid mouse-on-mouse sex orgy:

The footage, which is certain to be banned from Disney’s official merchandise, shows Goofy grabbing Minnie Mouse from behind.

She pulls herself away, but is then cornered for more fake sex with a giant snowman.

In another scene, Mickey Mouse, the children’s favourite, gets in on the act with the snowman.

The footage–which can be found widely on the internet under the title “Mouse Orgy”–is so despicable and shocking that you can click on the image for a larger picture so you can see how shocking and despicable it is. We know that this material will be damaging to the sensitive natures of our audience, but we feel that the public good is best served by allowing our readers to judge for themselves just how shocking and sordid these photos are in the privacy of their own homes.

[Link via Colleen]

Wow, is this a crazy world or what? A terrorist plane crasher turns out to be a NEW YORK YANKEE! Tragic. All this talk of plane crashes made everyone recall the late, great Thurman Munson.

Man, we were torn up when Thurman died. We even wrote a song about it that contained the line, “And everyone cried/the day you died.” No one rocked the handlebar the way Thurman did, or indeed the way anyone who did not live in the ’70s could.

There was no talk about Roberto Clemente, who died in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve in 1972, on his way to Nicaraugua in a charter plane full of supplies for earthquake victims. He was the only the second Hispanic American ever to be elected into baseball’s Hall of Fame. He was cool.

And now, your cryptozoological moment: While we were fact checking last night we came across this story which keeps alive hope that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker survives deep in the jungles of the Choctawhatchee River:

“On 41 occasions different team members have seen the bird. We heard that double knock, it’s a sound the ivory-billed makes that no other bird makes, but we didn’t get a clear video of the bird,” Hill said.

“I think people should be skeptical. I think they should demand clear photographic evidence. I might start to get skeptical myself thinking, ‘I’ve seen this bird,’ but how could I have seen a bird that it is impossible to photograph,” he said.

We believe.

While the Maine Mystery Beast seems to have been debunked, we are here to tell you, Maine is a hotbed of Crytozoological lore. There’s a Crypto exhibit going on at Bates College in Lewiston, and we’ve already heard credible reports of sightings of The Beast of Togus (a strange pig-dog seen running down the middle of the highway.) And we’re not even talking the VMAs.

But strange creatures once thought only dreamed of can be seen in the broad light of day. Yesterday we made a special trip to Delano Seafood on Rt. 1 in Waldoboro, ME to see an incredibly rare blue lobster, a mutant that occurs perhaps once out of every 2 million lobsters. They are savage, noble creatures, according to all reports.

When we heard there was a blue lobster on display, we thought it was going to be, maybe blue tinged, or tinted (live lobsters have a bit of a forest green look to them after all.) But no, this lobster is somewhere between cerulean and ultramarine blue. An older lady runs this seafood stand, and apparently she frowns on people who come in to gawk at the blue lobster without buying something, so if you stop by to see it, pick up some frozen scallops or some haddock or something.

We asked her plans for the rare specimen. “I’m going to feed it and keep it,” she said. And does it have a name? “No, I just call it my baby.”

After all this hanging around the seafood store we decided to purchase some normal specimens and conduct a scientific experiment. Our efforts confirmed that, yes, as reported, lobsters do turn bright red when steamed in a common kitchen pan.

Say, does anyone out there know how to buy an obelisk?

We’re officially on vacation now, but will be posting a few tidbits just because we’re nice.

We should also mention that since we’re in Maine, we’ve been discussing the ongoing Mystery Beast Phenomenon, and we’ve heard some interesting discussion. For instance, the corpse was said to have been picked clean in three days…but judging by the way a dead porcupine sits by the side of the road here for months on end, that just doesn’t ring true. Rest assured, we’re on the case.

It was a dog:

The body of the dead animal found in Turner, Maine, according to DNA tests conducted on behalf of and paid for by the Lewiston newspaper, the Sun Journal, belonged to a member of the genus Canis, not a Tasmanian devil, not a rodent, not a Chupacabras, not a hyena, not a werewolf, not an Eastern Bigfoot, and/or not from any wild species speculations that were heard over the last ten days. Nevertheless, it is important to understand, the real Mystery Beast is still out there!

Have we mentioned we’re going to be in Maine for a week?

As you may have heard, a terrifying mystery beast was recently found slain in a deserted copse off a lonely road up in rustic Maine. Not far from Stephen King’s house in fact! We like the way practical Mainers handle finding a terrifying mystery beast: they were smart enough to take pictures of the body while it was still relatively intact, but perhaps intimidated by the powerful stench of evil and danger surrounding its corpse, they left it where it lay after having bit hit by a car, so by the time authorities found the body it had been PICKED CLEAN — by VULTURES! Sweet!

Famed Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman paid a visit to the remains of the corpse and recounts how locals had differing theories over where the hellspawn had come from:

One person offered that the animal may have mutated after roaming near a toxic waste dump. At least one person suggested the creature may be extraterrestrial in origin. Others insist that there is an unknown breed of animal roaming the Maine woods from the southern part of the state to the northern woods.

Coleman’s analysis was that despite some anomalies it was probably a Chow or Akita gone wild, a mundane explanation that much of the world is now accepting.

But not all of them. The mystery beast is likely to live on in the imagination experts say:

“Having scientific evidence is not going to kill this story. It’s like an unslayable monster that will keep coming back,” said Elizabeth Eames, chair of the anthropology department at Bates College in Lewiston. “Humans like to categorize things. They like to fit them into neat, little boxes. Those things that don’t fit become sacred. They become sacred and profane.”

Sacred and profane. Despite the probable terrestrial origins of the beast — as one of our pals put it “It was probably named Toby.” — we prefer to believe that not everything can be known. And having lived in the Maine woods for a while ourselves, we know there are lots of things out there that remain wild and mysterious down by that old deserted graveyard.