Tony Stark showing off his huge shiny helmet. Snigger.
This one is for thehappysorceress
Anyone want a cheap commission?
£15 beefcake pin-up commission (plus postage), your choice of subject as long as it’s beefcake (unless you ask really nicely). First person to shout tonight gets it.
Commissions
By the way, although pretty busy I am open for commissions at the moment, but only black and white ones for the time being. Usual deal with prices.
Commissions: £25 A4 black & white inked, £40 A3 black & white inked. No specific limit to how many characters I will draw within reason, any subject as long as it’s legal. Existing art (including comics pages from The Dead Queen Detectives and The Queen Of Diamonds) £15 A4 black & white, £25 A3 black & white, pieces prices on request. Almost everything in my DeviantArt Gallery that isn’t mentioned as having been done as a commission is available (apart from a few exceptions).
All plus postage and packing (£4 UK, £7 rest of the world unless you order *loads* in which case it’ll be how ever much it is to post).
Flame on!
Yes, alright, wrong hero but pthbt to you if you want to be that picky. Anyways…
I wasn’t planing on posting about the whole situation with Alan Scott, but what the hey, let’s talk about it as if I’m someone important and/or in the know (I’m not, and I don’t know any more than anyone else but this is the interwub and if it’s not for pretending you know more than you do then what is it for?).
Ok, let’s start by saying the most important thing here is that all the speculation, all the consternation, all the gnashing of teeth and the wailing and pulling of hair, all the talk generally is being done based on a couple of comments from Robinson, some spectacularly clunky PR crap from DC and a couple of pages from a whole (on-going comic). How Scott’s sexuality is going to be handled isn’t really something that we can judge on such little info. With regards to anything in Earth 2 one would have though people might have learnt from the hoo-ha surrounding the Batman/Wonder Woman/Superman stuff from #1 (myself included I might add). Making sweeping judgements at this point is a little silly really.
I’m not really going to worry about how it’s going to be handled anyway. I know a lot of people have a problem with the way that Robinson has handled some stuff in the past, but everything I’ve read by him I’ve enjoyed and he is one of the few writers who seems to include queer characters as a matter of course rather than putting them in because he thinks he has to. So I am not going to worry about what he’s going to do or what he’s done before since Robinson is someone who I’ve found to be enjoyable and until he proves otherwise I shan’t bitch about him not writing the way I want him to (and besides, no-one ever writes exactly how I want to so why worry about it)?
The thing that I will talk about though is the whole situation with Obsidian being ‘replaced’. I do think the way that some people are reacting to Robinson talking about making Scott gay to instead of Obsidian misses one of the main points he’s making. Scott is now too young to have an adult son, and because of that Obsidian, as he was in the ‘old’ DCU, is pretty much wiped from existence. Because of that we lose one of the few gay male characters in comics (and in fact two of the only gay male characters if you also include Damon as well), so ‘replacing’ him makes sense, even if it’s not really a replacement.
The thing is, Alan Scott doesn’t really ‘replace’ Obsidian. He’s not the same character, he doesn’t serve the same purpose and gay Alan Scott does not mean that you can never have gay Obsidian either. I am horribly disappointed that we’re probably not going to have Obsidian in the DCnU (and by extension his relationship with Damon), but I’m not going to assume that he’s gone forever. The Earth 2 Alan Scott doesn’t mean there isn’t an Earth 1 version with a son who (somehow) got powers and is Obsidian. Just the fact the we haven’t seen him doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist.
And, on another point, Alan Scott being gay doesn’t mean he can’t be a parent. I am the son of a gay man (as are my brothers and sister) and I have a son (by adoption) so am very aware of the fact that sexuality doesn’t stop you being a parent. In fact, having Alan Scott as a gay man, the premier hero on his Earth, the leader of the premier superhero team on his Earth, be a parent would be an incredibly interesting story element. Whether he’s a biological parent or an adoptive parent wouldn’t matter, the pure fact that a comic company would have a high profile character being a parent too would be awesome.
Point being, Scott being gay is not a replacement for Obsidian, doesn’t mean that Obsidian can never exist and doesn’t mean that Robinson has done some awful bait and switch. What it means to gay characters in the DCnU has yet to be seen.
And besides despite seeing his boyfriend in #2 I’m still holding out for Wildcat to be reintroduced as a gay man too and they can get together and it’ll be awesome and way hot. *ahem*
But…
I’m not all pragmatic and stoic about all this though. The fact that Scott is gay now doesn’t bother me, I am a bit miffed about us getting a gay character but losing another but not assuming that means we’ll never see Obsidian again. What I am annoyed about that, and what i do think has been handled badly, is the whole publicity aspect of it and the way that DC have handled it.
DC have made this into a big song and dance about how marvellous they’re being, how inclusive and how awesome it is to have a gay character. They’ve made the whole thing into a circus that makes having a gay character sound like it’s a groundbreaking, unbelievable thing to do. It’s patently not (not least because this is the company with a high profile lesbian character with a solo title after all as well as a whole load of other queer characters), but the way it’s been handled has ended up with DC looking like… well, like patronising arses at the very least. Robinson’ comments about Obsidian wouldn’t be causing so much comment if DC hadn’t built the whole thing up into something that it’s not. If they had just let the story develop organically then they would probably have come out of it significantly better than they had.
So, yeah, Scott being gay is not a bad thing, but the way DC have handled the whole thing has been borderline offensive. I really want to see better Queer representation in comics but I don’t want to feel like it’s being done purely for marketing or because they’re being ever so generous and putting in some gays to keep people happy. Basically, I want queer characters the way that Gail Simone introduced them in Secret Six, not queer characters introduced for the marketing rather than for the story (for the record, I suspect Robinson would rather the former than the latter too).
And that’s what I think.
I pass this photo studio every day on the way to work and every day this ‘before and after’ makes me snigger. I’m not sure which is worse, the before or after. The before is… bizarre, and the after just looks like she’s let rip big time. Honestly, not the best advertisement ever…
Individually they used to rule one of the mightiest empires on Earth. Now they’re dead and share a house in Saint Grover’s Avenue, Hove. Together they are The Dead Queen Detectives.
The Dead Queen Detectives Omnibus collects The Dead Queen Detectives #1, The Dead Queen Detectives #2: International Queens, The Corporate Skull Detectives, new pages, original sketches, ephemera and a look at the stars of The Dead Queen Detectives #3: The Legion Of Substitute Disputed Dead Queen Detectives. In total the Omnibus is 52 pages for £5.
To order your copy e-mail bevismusson@yahoo.co.uk. UK postage is £1, £3.50 rest of the world.
Absolutely loony, but lightly seasoned with Musson’s historical smarts and some very deft asides about sex/gender/power/politics, The Dead Queen Detectives is exactly the sort of thing I love. The writing is sharp and clever, the humor is daffy and kind-hearted, the cartooning is gorgeous, crisp and adorable. I don’t care who you are, it will make you happy. - Jen Van Meter: Hopless Savages
Bevis Musson’s cartooning is exquisite; clear, elegant and full if character. The Dead Queen Detectives is a laugh-out-loud delight; a must-read for anyone who enjoys being charmed and tickled by a comic - and honestly, who doesn’t? - so you, yes you, buy this comic, you’ll love it. - Lee Grice: Small Press Big Mouth
Bolin by ~BevisMusson
It was only a matter of time before I drew some Bolin beefcake even if I don’t watch the show, so here he is.
GRETA SALOME & JONSI - “NEVER FORGET” - ICELAND
- SPOTLIGHT!
- esus, it’s Bevis Musson. He won’t thank me for that comparison.
- t’s an Edward Gorey cover made into song!
- “This is Eurovision perfection.”
- More black suits, more fantasy stylings. Come on, break the cycle!
- “Does anyone else think this might be a Bond theme?”
- Bond has to stop the credit crunch. In Mordor. I got nothing, basically.
*Scowl* I’m not entirely sure how to take that. I really like the song though.
