I personally find that position extremely offensive, and I’ve said so, but I wouldn’t censure Typo for either holding or expressing that position.

I’m simply asking him to call a spade a spade.

Typo is not suggesting that Marvel be censored, but he is advocating that they be censured. Calling for a boycott is not censorship. It is censuring. It is calling on people to hold a publisher accountable for what they have already published, not preventing them from publishing in the first place. If Marvel has made the decision that this is the kind of product they want to have associated with their name, readers are well within their rights to decide to no longer buy their product, and to suggest to others to do likewise. Marvel can publish whatever they want, but refusing to buy it is not censorship.

But, wait: you also wrote “I find rape as a selling point for a story to be offensive”.

So is it just this one attempt or ALL attempts to use rape as a selling point as a story that offends you? Is it all asparagus or just a single tip?

Y’know, Typo, other than repeatedly contradicting yourself (first you say you’re tellng people not to buy the issue, then you say you’re not calling for a ban of anything, then you reverse youself AGAIN and admit you were telling people not to buy that issue), you really haven’t clarified the alleged “points” I seem to have missed.

I read your essay as a call for a boycott of Marvel (okay, I’ll accept, against evidence to the contrary, that it was for that one asparagus tip, I mean, issue) because it was, in your belief, universally offensive (“There is simply no way that the cover is not offensive,” you wrote. “None.”). The majority of the words you wrote were in support of that theme. Frankly, I don’t really care why you found it universally offensive, any more than I care why, say, Pat Robertson or Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh finds things “universally offensive”.

Don’t even try to tell me you weren’t calling for a boycott. It was an OVERT call for a boycott. “Speak with your wallet, folks,” you wrote. “Say no to this comic.”

And don’t try to backpedal again and say that you weren’t saying “NO ONE ANYWHERE IS INTERESTED IN THIS!” The majority of your essay consisted in explaining how “[t]here is simply no way that the cover is not offensive. None.”

Again: I read your essay as a call for a boycott of Marvel because the cover was, in your belief, universally offensive.

And also again: there’s nothing wrong with that, Typo. You’re certainly allowed to believe that there is such a thing as “universal immutable morality.” I really don’t understand why you’re arguing that you didn’t say that.

I always admit when I’m wrong. That’s called honesty. Tell me where I’m wrong, please, and I’ll go away.

Actually, you’re dead wrong. I was rather specifically saying DON’T BUY THIS ONE ISSUE.

Then again, of all my points you seem to have missed, that’s a minor one.

I had a whole big response typed out, but then I realized that you clearly didn’t read the last two. So why waste my energy on a third?

Bye.

Typo wrote a 500 word essay, the theme of which was not “This is pretty offensive to me”, but “Offended? TELL MARVEL.” (emphasis mine). It was a overt call for a boycott of Marvel. He unambiguously writes “Speak with your wallet.” No amount of backpedaling on Typo’s part is going to change his original theme.

No intelligent person would think that this “call to arms” was to boycott just this particular issue: if you were offended by the cover, you sinply wouldn’t purchase it, or if you had a subscription, you’d cancel it. I don’t like licorice: I don’t eat it. I don’t like the artwork in a comic book, I don’t buy it. End of story.

Someone else wants to, I don’t really care. Some people prefer Curt Swan to Chris Ware, not an issue to me. And I’m certainly not so incredibly vain to subject them to a 500 word essay on my opinion on art (unless I was specifically asked to respond, as the “comments” section here implies).

It would be an insult to Typo’s readers’ intelligence to expect them to believe that Typo was simply expressing his dislike of something and nothing more. Say he wrote a 500 word essay expressing his disgust with asparagus and ended it by saying “It’s time to say ‘enough’” by demanding that people who buy asparagus stop buying it.

At the very least, you’d write the guy off as a nutter, wouldn’t you?

To me, this blog entry reads like a 500 word mini-version of Seduction Of The Innocent. Nothing more, nothing less.

And, c’mon, no intelligent person wouldn’t know why there’s more submissive female covers than submissive male ones: Because submissive male covers DON’T SELL to the current comic book audience! Duh! If Typo really was worried about a “double standard”, he’d have called for equality (a option I offered to him, but he rejected outright), not a boycott.

As it is, I see “double standards” being applied by Typo: “I want adult themes in comics, but just the adult themes I want to see. I don’t mind sex in comics, as long as it’s the sex I want to see. Violent themes are okay, as long as they’re themes I approve of. Otherwise it BOYCOTTIN’ TIME!”

The really sad thing, for me, is that I really enjoyed this blog, ’cause I thought Typo was having fun with his sarcastic commentaries on what’s in the old comics. Now I can never be sure if he’s really not just being self-righteous (I trait I personally find extremely offensive).

One can have more than one concern about an issue. Take this cover, for example. The cover’s inappropriateness (because Marvel itself classifies the book as being appropriate for age 9) can exist simultaneously with another form of the cover’s inappropriateness (removing the self-classification, and we still have a cover that unnecessarily sexualizes the damsels in distress in a particularly vulgar manner), and a third form of the cover’s inappropriateness (further removing #2, and we still have a cover that presents three supposedly strong women as meek and helpless in the face of an attack in such a way as would never be considered if the three characters were men). That’s three, and I haven’t even gotten to the shittiness of the art, specifically the missing nipples and the oddly chosen impossible afro.

As for “FINALLY being honest” and your “looking out for honesty”, don’t be so quick to pat yourself on the back. Typo hasn’t changed his argument from the beginning of this. I know you can scroll up yourself (though considering that you haven’t done it before now, maybe you can’t), but I’ll toss in a quote from Typo’s first post.

I’m not saying all comics have to be kid-friendly. I’m not even saying all super-hero comics do. I’m not saying we all need to bend over backwards so as to not offend someone. However, there’s such a thing as bending over backwards to offend people. There is simply no way that the cover is not offensive. None.

It’s time to say “enough”. Not just on blogs and forums. In the comic store. I ask any of you who would normally buy this comic to not buy this issue. Show Marvel that no, sex doesn’t always sell and yes, there is such a thing as bad publicity.

Marvel has a right to Free Speech, but so do we. Speak with your wallet, folks. Say no to this comic.

And then there’s this bit from his reply #23:

Actually, “liberal” trpe would be that this is artistic self-expression and should be defended.

Which I actually agree with.

I don’t like it. Not saying it should be banned, just saying I find rape as a plot point in a book aimed at pre-teens and up to be… tacky. I also find it hypocritical that they’d never tell the same story with male characters.