War Games

[darkseidpwns]

The Joker didn't do anything to Roman, you're confused with the movie Under the Red Hood. And Deathstroke didn't "verbally owned him".
You're free to think what you want, but for me Black Mask is one of Batman's best rogues.


There's literally ONE panel that can be considered sexual, and even in that one the "pose" is somewhat resonable for human anatomy.

LOL,Joker owned him worse than the movie in War Crimes.

[ArnoldoAAD]

let just take a moment to remember just how terrible this thing was shall we

...

ok moment is gone lets forget about it now

[mex4173]

No, but I could bet the panels would have been very different if Steph was a male. The artist doesn't need to be a pervert that gets off by drawing torture porn, nobody said that.

And it wasn't just one panel.

And by the way, I liked Black Mask as a villain before this arc. They were trying too hard to make him this torture master monster and for me it was overkill. He had a lot of potential prior to that.

Oh wow, I had forgotten about that. I was always a little confused when people brought up sexualization, since I only remembered the stuff in Robin 130.

Also explains why each time it was discussed I liked it a little more -- because I had blocked stuff out...

[ArnoldoAAD]

Also explains why each time it was discussed I liked it a little more -- because I had blocked stuff out...

dont worry thats perfectly normal

[Xenith]

LOL,Joker owned him worse than the movie in War Crimes.

This scene is probably one of the only good things that actually came out of War Games/War Crimes....an absolute classic Joker quote.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...ckmaskpwnd.jpg

To be fair to Black Mask...despite the massive amount of blood that appeared to be oozing out of him in this scene, he got right back up at the start of the next book he knocks the gun out of Jokers hand before he can pull the trigger to put another shot in his brain, and then gets up grabbing the Joker by the lapels like he is going to wallop him. Impressive given the massive blood loss...wait a minute. Not only is there now not a hole in Black Mask but even his dam Batsuit is completely in tact. What the blazes....
Now that I think about...this is actually the second fight between Joker and Black Mask. In the first fight Joker shoots Black Mask in the chest with his handgun...Roman goes down, but is right back up with a torn suit revealing he had body armor under it.
And yet knowing this the Joker shoots him in the chest from the same range, with a handgun on their second encounter...only this time Roman is not wearing armor....until he apparently is....but that still doesn't explain the untouched suit. Aaaaargh. I forgot just how big of a black hole of suck War Crimes was.

Ah well....Joker does get the last shot in firing an acid dart into Black Mask's forehead...which would have killed him had Batman not been standing right there with the antidote.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/829/bmitburns.jpg

[WhitOro]

And it wasn't just one panel.

Ok, the fourth page is the one I was talking about being sexualised. I considered the pose "resonable" because that's a pose a normal human body can have when falling, still, is inconsequential, they should have draw it another way, and I agree, is bad.

The first two, ok, I can see that too, the problem is that the artist suck, so I can't see attractivness in that depiction, everything is moody, ugly, with dark colors, there's an involuntary sense of If that's to be considered rape porn then, sorry, It doesn't work.
I admit, the pose is a little ambigous, but in the copy I have, her behind is covered by a "To be continued" tagline, so is even less of cheesecake.

Now, onto this panels:
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/4196/bm15a.jpg

I can understand the panel with her entire body. Alone it can be considered sexualization, with her body shown in all those datails.
But I look at the context.
There's a girl crying and bleeding, tortured, alone in the dark. The shadows enfatize her bones, she looks skinny, sick, in great pain, terrorized.
What she's doing (taking her hands of a cauff), is something we can all imagine causes a ton of pain.

And maybe I'm naive and too optimistic, but I repeat, I can't think of somebody drawing and writing this character for sick pleasure, I like think the better of people instead of seying bleakness everywhere I watch. If that would the case, they wouldn't work in comics, they would have a website were they can post as much rape pornography as they want.

And no, I don't think this panels would have been different If a male hero was tortured. He still would have been chained to the ceiling and strugled to free his hands, pressing his body to the ground, flexing his legs, trying to liberate himself.

LOL,Joker owned him worse than the movie in War Crimes.

Ah, yeah, War Crimes. I tend to erase from my memeory that story.

[shark]

Ok, the fourth page is the one I was talking about being sexualised. I considered the pose "resonable" because that's a pose a normal human body can have when falling, still, is inconsequential, they should have draw it another way, and I agree, is bad.

The first two, ok, I can see that too, the problem is that the artist suck, so I can't see attractivness in that depiction, everything is moody, ugly, with dark colors, there's an involuntary sense of If that's to be considered rape porn then, sorry, It doesn't work.
I admit, the pose is a little ambigous, but in the copy I have, her behind is covered by a "To be continued" tagline, so is even less of cheesecake.

I never said this was rape porn. I said the torture scene is highly sexualized and that I doubted the panels would have been the same had that been a man. It doesn't matter if the art sucks, it doesn't change the content.

Now, onto this panels:
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/4196/bm15a.jpg

I can understand the panel with her entire body. Alone it can be considered sexualization, with her body shown in all those datails.
But I look at the context.
There's a girl crying and bleeding, tortured, alone in the dark. The shadows enfatize her bones, she looks skinny, sick, in great pain, terrorized.
What she's doing (taking her hands of a cauff), is something we can all imagine causes a ton of pain.

I look at the content too. I look at at least 4 pages of a torture scene where the art puts a lot of emphasis on her breasts and her ass. Being in great pain and vulnerable doesn't make it any less sexualized.

And maybe I'm naive and too optimistic, but I repeat, I can't think of somebody drawing and writing this character for sick pleasure, I like think the better of people instead of seying bleakness everywhere I watch. If that would the case, they wouldn't work in comics, they would have a website were they can post as much rape pornography as they want.

Once again, I'm not saying the artist or the writer did it because it turns them on. But they wouldn't have done the same poses or put the same focus on her body if that was Tim or Dick.

And no, I don't think this panels would have been different If a male hero was tortured. He still would have been chained to the ceiling and strugled to free his hands, pressing his body to the ground, flexing his legs, trying to liberate himself.

Do you think that, had that been Tim Drake, we would have panels focusing on his ass and crotch? I doubt it.

[ArnoldoAAD]

lets just all agree that this the thing was awfully offensive to women, black ppl and human beings in general and leave it like that

[kaleb2470]

I'm agreeing that it was awful but in the artists defense, he never really drew any visible physical damage on steph other than a bunch of little cuts. I would imagine Black Mask could do much worse than that.

[Shimarenda]

The first two, ok, I can see that too, the problem is that the artist suck, so I can't see attractivness in that depiction, everything is moody, ugly, with dark colors, there's an involuntary sense of If that's to be considered rape porn then, sorry, It doesn't work.
I admit, the pose is a little ambigous, but in the copy I have, her behind is covered by a "To be continued" tagline, so is even less of cheesecake.

"Sexualized" does not mean the same thing as "sexy."

[paulski]

Having just looked at these panels again (which were supposedly 'highly sexualised') and having my memory refreshed... sorry, I just don't see it. At least to the extent that some of you guys do.

You've got a young girl in a skin tight costume hanging in chains... what do you expect it to look like? In my opinion, an artist would have to go out of their way to make it look anything but.

Just an opinion. No flaming required.

[theloupgaroukid]

You've got a young girl in a skin tight costume hanging in chains... what do you expect it to look like? In my opinion, an artist would have to go out of their way to make it look anything but.

Just an opinion. No flaming required.

Agreed that the artists' were restrained in what they showed but I think the point is that the writers and editors involved should've avoided the situation entirely. A prurient situation with illustrations cannot help but be illustrated pruriently.

Of course, I could just be biased by my absolute hatred of this story and the indulgence of the Black Mask and his torture porn in general.

[Nick Soapdish]

Having just looked at these panels again (which were supposedly 'highly sexualised') and having my memory refreshed... sorry, I just don't see it. At least to the extent that some of you guys do.

You've got a young girl in a skin tight costume hanging in chains... what do you expect it to look like? In my opinion, an artist would have to go out of their way to make it look anything but.

Just an opinion. No flaming required.

Steph's costume isn't usually drawn as skin-tight and didn't have as much emphasis on the boobs or butt although the latter is often obscured by the cape. Maybe she had a growth spurt in the chest or it shrank in the wash while she was Robin.

And there are a lot of ways to draw somebody being tortured that doesn't emphasize their physique. Heck, they could've just kept more of her cape around. Yeah, it could've been worse, but it would've been easy to make it better, too.


To me, it's a fairly minor complaint about the story, especially when compared to the terrible characterization of both Bruce and Steph.

[Earth2Invincible]

Only time that I hated the way the Batman books were going. Didn't drop the title because of this but darn this was bad. Atleast I liked some of the issues in the Return of Ra's al Ghul crossover.

[paulski]

Steph's costume isn't usually drawn as skin-tight and didn't have as much emphasis on the boobs or butt although the latter is often obscured by the cape. Maybe she had a growth spurt in the chest or it shrank in the wash while she was Robin.

And there are a lot of ways to draw somebody being tortured that doesn't emphasize their physique. Heck, they could've just kept more of her cape around. Yeah, it could've been worse, but it would've been easy to make it better, too.

You make some good points, Nick. Personally I put a lot of it down to some of the artists not quite being up to the task. A couple of those panels posted are downright ugly to look at, regardless of the content.