George Harrison To Release Pornographic Comic Book Featuring Icons From Young Girls' Literature

Frankly, I thought he'd retired or something.

Oh, wait, it's comic book giant Alan Moore, doing his own slash fan-fic.

The book will feature explicit sexual depictions featuring Dorothy from Oz, Wendy from Peter Pan, and Alice from Wonderland. CONTENT WARNING: Contains a sexual drawing on the first page.

He also makes some of the usual points about the unhealthy attitudes of Britain and America towards sex, and how we'd have less pedophilia and sex crimes if we were more open about sexuality, and that kind of cliche.

I'm not sure he's entirely wrong, but I do know it's standard leftist-sexual-politics cant, and I'm not sure I want hard-core porn openly displayed as it is in Europe.

And I'm pretty sure this defense of depicting the underage characters having sex with adults is disingenuous, or at least just plain stupid:

The thing about the underage characters… It all gets a bit silly when you're talking about characters that are made up. Alice In Wonderland is like 150, well past the age of consent. And we have a culture over here—and I'm sure in America as well—where we go in for an awful lot of pedophilic titillation, in magazines like Barely Legal, where we're told that these women are over 18, but just look young. But then we were told that about Traci Lords, weren't we? And anyway, it doesn't really matter that much, does it? The intent is still the same. Look at Britney Spears and her sexy schoolgirl imitation. What is that actually saying, and how many apparently normal men is it saying it to? We are sexualizing our children at an increasingly young age. Exposure to The Spice Girls seems to have doomed us to a Western world where every 10-year-old wants a belly-button ring and a "Porn Star" T-shirt. And we just think it's cute! "Ah, look at them! They're acting like little whores!"

He's an odd guy. He seems to be indicting that stuff while simultaneously using it as a defense for his own forays into jailbait erotica.

Similar to his strange indictment of the film V for Vendetta (for which he refused to accept payments to which he was/is entitled), because that film depicted terrorism as justified in vindicating American liberal values, whereas he intended his comic only to justify terrorism in forwarding true anarchism, or something or other. (And also, to be fair, because he began to question his own glorification of political violence as the series wore on. And wear on it did.)

Eh. Odd cat.

Anyway, thought some might be interested. I think he's overrated myself, but he does actually rate. Just not as highly as many think.

Nuance.

He's kind of getting to be a one-trick pony. Watchmen was just putting in a bunch of Charleton Comics characters into an ugly, nonheroic, "realistic" world (they were later changed to close analogues when DC decided they wanted to keep the characters in the normal superhero world), League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was just putting Victorian pulp heroes into a JLA style super-team, and now Lost Girls is just putting characters from fairy tales and girls' lit into, well, Deep Throat.

Some cool ideas, especially the League one, but all kind of similar, basically.

Time to move on, maybe?

Or else I see in his future a combination gritty pulp/superhero epic/hardcore porn book featuring all the characters from Syd and Marty Krofft's Saturday morning shows, with H.R. Puffnstuff doing Marshall, Will, and Holly, and Grumpy and the Sleestacks, while the Sigmund the Sea-Monster (and Johnny and Scott, too) watch.

Moore Cant... It never really ceases to amuse me that the left always imagines the way to combat the Iraq War or whatever is through nudity and pornography. Are these really the best tools for the job?

Of course we don't want anybody to be disadvantaged or bankrupted by this book. At the same time, what are our alternatives? If you're living in a politically repressive time where you have this seemingly fundamentalist-directed agenda percolating down not only through America but through all of those countries who are fortunate enough be in the shadow of America, you've really got no option other than to make your statement as you see fit, or shut up. We are prepared, if there's trouble, to stand in our corner and fight. I have heard of comic shops being raided for things like posters of Wonder Woman. The officer involved thought it looked pretty pornographic to him. There isn't any way you can defend yourself against this kind of irrationality. The only thing you can do is publish and be prepared for the consequences.

I have heard that people who have heard that comic book shops are being raided for Wonder Woman posters are, in point of fact, goofs.

I really don't know how all this started. But it does seem that leftists are fixated on the idea that nude photos, pornography, and Madonna's idiotic posturings are somehow wildly effective tonics to end militarism and political repression.

Trust me, if porn led to progressive political views, I'd be just about the leftiest lefty on the blogosphere today. I'd have Atrios calling me a "radical." At least when he took a pause from his sixteen bazillion open threads.

posted by Ace at 03:18 PM

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