Hey kids! Comics!

(Page from Justice League #38, written by Scott Snyder, drawn by Jorge Jimenez and colored by Alejandro Sanchez)

Hey kids! DC Comics, Frankenstein and parts of Black Canary have a reminder for you:

From DC Comics' Futures End #0 

Congratulations, Justiniano

Above is the cover of Reign In Hell #6 of Justiniano. The artist is to be commended for his ability to pack the phallic imagery in, with a veritable cornucopia of traditional phallic symbols—sword, spear, staff, spikes, horns.

But it takes a special talent to go the extra mile and just cold draw a golden monster penis atop the tip of a staff, and then carefully position the same staff so that it is emanating from the crotch of both of the characters on the cover, so they both have symbolic erect penises, depending on whose crotch you focus on.
Bonus points for positioning Blaze's hand at the base of Satanus' golden monster penis!

Damn Christopher Bird.

I was totally going to do almost that exact same post. Mine would have used those three little words in the post title though, since I can't do the fancy lettering image magic stuff. But still.

Well, instead of posting that post then, I'll just post a link to Bird's post, and add, "Ha ha, superhero comics are dumb and gross aren't they?"

Props to Bendis and company for having a character torn in half vertically instead of horizontally though. I guess if you have to have a superhero character torn in two in your comic, bisecting a character in a less traditional manner is something, right?

Hey Kids! Comics!

(From DC's Green Lantern #49, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Jerry Ordway)

Another weird thing about that Hulk Vol. 2 trade?

It's rated "A," which Marvel indicates is material, "Appropriate for ages 9 and up."






I think their ratings system is sort of silly in general, but I was sort of surprised to see that "A" on the back of the back cover, instead of a "T+" ("Appropriate for most readers 13 and up, parents are advised that they may want to read before or with younger children") or "Parental Advisory" ("15+ years old similar to T+ but featuring more mature themes and/or more graphic imagery. Recommended for teen and adult readers").

I can't imagine Loeb and Cho were thinking about nine-year-old readers when doing that locker room scene at the top of this post, for example. (And man, what the fuck is up with Spider-Woman's gesture in that last panel? Is she stifling a laugh, or eating an invisible banana, or...?)

Hey Kids! Com--Aw, nevermind, that joke's not even funny any more, is it?

So this is probably the goriest image I saw this week's new super-books (at least the ones I read).

I know I often complain about how incredibly gory Marvel and DC books can be these days, but I don't necessarily think this panel from Green Lantern #37 is that bad. At least in context.

Sure, it's hard to imagine every parent who found their kid reading a book like this being pleased about it, but not any harder than it is to imagine a kid reading a book like this in the first place (I could be completely wrong about this, since I know so few actual children, but it seems to be that kids regard John Stewart as Green Lantern, whereas only us old people know/like/care about Hal Jordan...those four or five episodes of The Batman notwithstanding).

This is part of the "Rage of the Red Lanterns" story arc, and the Red Lanterns are men, women and weird aliens who wear special magic rings which take over their bodies, forcing them to vomit up all of their own blood, and then replaces it with new blood that the ring itself creates and pumps. The Red Lanterns projectile vomit this magic hate blood, which burns like napalm.

This issue, about the blood-vomiting Red Lanterns, takes place on their home planet, a world covered in oceans of blood. So a panel of a Red Lantern getting blasted open by an energy beam? Not all that out of place. Complaining about it seems a little like complaining about all the stabbings in a slasher flick (Although I suppose a historic argument could be made that perhaps Green Lantern shouldn't have reached a point where it can even be compared to a slasher flick, but I'm not going to make it).

But I do have a bone to pick with this image, which was drawn by Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert and our Julio Ferreira, and colored by Nei Ruffino.

As I stated before, the Red Lanterns' rings completely purge their wielders/hosts of their own blood, and replace it with this viscous, red, napalm-y stuff they puke out (See this issue's charming cover, for an example).

So this poor purple lady getting killed in this image, the only blood she should have in her body would be the red stuff, not whatever color purple space lady blood is. (Is that fuchsia? Hot pink? Puce?)

And yet, in this very gory panel, in which we see a veritable geyser of gore gushing from her wound, her blood is very clearly this pinkish-purplish colored stuff, not the same red stuff that is spewing from her mouth.

Did DC decide to color her blood purplish because the panel looked just way too over the top violent with red blood, as everyone knows alien blood isn't as gross as human blood? Does the yellow light of Sinestro's power ring shining on her blood make it look a lighter, brighter color? Or did Sinestro's ring beam, rather than simply exploding through her like a missile, liquefy her purple body as it passed through and HOLY SHIT WHY AM I EVEN THINKING ABOUT THIS STUFF?!

Hey Kids! Comics!

(From DC Comics’ Final Crisis #6, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by J.G. Jones. Re-posted here on EDILW, just so I can have all my scans of Marvel Family gore, violence and crotch shots all collected in one place)

Well, at least they're not smoking...

(Image from Ultimatum #2 by Jeph Loeb, David Finch and Danny Miki; I found it at Dirk Deppey's Journalista and cut and pasted it from there because, you know, who buys and reads Jeph Loeb comics these days?)

Hey Kids! Comics!

(Panel from Final Crisis #5, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by J.G. Jones and Alex Sinclair)

Hey Kids! Comics!

(This page of boobs, blood and a beheaded dog is from Final Crisis #3, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by J.G. Jones and Alex Sinclair)

Hey Kids! Comics!

Hey Kids! Comics!

(Panel from Justice League of America #6 by Ed Benes and Sandra Hope)

Hey Kids! Comics!

(Panel from 52 #43, illustrated by Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund)