Flashing for a Purpose!

click for full size Devil's Panties!

Sometimes it's entirely appropriate to show off a little.

Like if you're a firefly trying to get laid. Flash 'em, baby.



click for full size Striptease!

Now over on Striptease, Chris has got his gang into a sort of goth-y nightclub looking for a friend who's been caged up and his girl can't persuade them to let him free. He's sending out big signals that this is supposed to be something of a fun and not entirely plausible storyline. And it is fun. Except it's sort of worrying that Alli and Rae got trapped inside a voyeur room and decided the only way to get out would be to "put on a show" and finally make the comic finally live up to its name.

OK, so not what I would think. I'd think they'd want to keep me around if I started stripping instead of opening the door. Instead I'd probably choose to be A) really annoying or B) really boring. But that's not the point. This is Sillyville, Gothland.

Unfortunately, the girls decide to discuss personal matters while, um, just sitting there in their panties. Now it's no longer fun or silly, it's a little boring (and I'm guessing THAT'S why the door finally opened! ha!) and feels cheap for Rae to be flirting with Alli and expecting a kiss? Come on, they just went over the whole who's sweet on who moments ago. And they're talking about modeling, which often takes nude people and doesn't make it sexualized. And they're mostly nude, and it's at first not really sexualized, because of the silly aspect of the world of Striptease, but when Rae decides that Alli is actually flirting with her enough to try something physical, all of a sudden it's creepy. They're being watched by unknown people, extremely sexualized, and it's tremendously creepy of Rae to be equating nudity and friendliness with "Oh yeah, totally kiss me now!".

Just because Alli's flashing doesn't mean she wants to get laid.

It's funny how just a few strips can turn what came off as gratuitous, fun nudity into creepy, exploitative nudity.

Chris hasn't updated Striptease in a while, and I hope it's not because he's written himself into a creepy, creepy corner. What's going on here? It's all fun and games until lesbians attack? I'm not really happy with the recent Alli/Rae part in this. I was promised stupid shiny outfits and bad, loud music! It was going to be fun! I want more of the fun, I suppose. And less creepiness.

And probably naked men. Too bad the only really attractive male cast member (Tommy) is out of the picture right now. When he comes back, he better be naked, Chris!

New editor for Modern Tales

You didn't read it here first, but Shaenon Garrity (she of Narbonic, as well as Smithson and L’il Mell and Sergio) is the new editor of Modern Tales, probably the biggest edited collection of webcomics around. It started off as a subscription based site, but is now mostly free and readers can benefit from having someone round up and show off the best webcomics. That someone is now Shaenon, who has pretty much awesome taste and knows a thing or two about comics, period.

So what does this mean? Of the Modern Tales family of sites, each with an editor and vision of which type of comics to bring together, half are now edited by a woman.
So, yeah, well, that's a nice little thing, but the best thing is that when I first read this, my first thought was "Oh, duh! Perfect!". Only then did I think "What happened to Eric?". Eric Burns would probably have been a great editor as well, but life happens, it seems. Actually, I think I like the choice of Shaenon better. Eric knows his webcomics and knows what he likes, but he's already been picking through them and showing off what he likes. As a reader, I'm much more interested to see what Shaenon will bring in.

I also bet you that very few reposts of the press release or comments on the change will deal with Shaenon's gender. While I realize that often being "colorblind" or "genderblind" can set back dealing with issues of racism or sexism, in some cases it's good that people will only care about the person and sex won't even enter into it.