13 Inappropriate Moments That Prove Comics Are Made By Total Perverts
2. The Butts Of The Joke
Spanking isn't the only butt-related trend that can be seen throughout comic books; there is a fairly fierce vein of bottom-focused gags that runs richly from the early days right through to more recent publications. It seems that no matter how grown-up comic books try to be - exploring key moral and cultural issues, or bravely bringing in homosexual characters, or changing the race of characters to reflect the racial diversity of the market of readers - there's still some involved in the industry who are obviously just little boys tittering at naughty words and pictures. Flicking through any comic from the 1950s or '60s was probably like flicking through the musings of a teenage boy, obsessed with genital-jokes and butt-gags, and firing off blatant innuendos as if his life depended on it. And boy, did some of the writers and artists like their butt-gags? Seriously, once or twice could be forgiven as a coincidence, but there are literally numerous panels where an object has been cannily placed to look like it's inserted in the most uncomfortable of places. Sometimes it's a little more subtle, even if it's patently obvious what the writer was getting at... But sometimes, the imagery is so blatant you have to wonder how it got past the editors, or indeed whether the conspiracy goes right to the top,because frankly, there's just no subtletly to it sometimes... You have to wonder whether the artist behind that particularly colourful image had anything to do with this tirade from Iron Man... Not even Santa is safe... And it's not just inanimate objects that have been driven at great force towards other people's bottoms. For some reason, in early comics, Robin had a penchant for hurling himself towards the crotches of villains: devastatingly effective no doubt, but the effect made him look like a hungry pervert, and it didn't help when one of the artists took the potential for sensitive collisions to the extreme, and committed this image to the canon... Out of context, how the hell are you supposed to explain that? Poor Robin gets enough accusations concerning his sexuality (not that it matters of course) without further doubt cast on his favourite leisure time activities...
