Max Pneumatic and the Fanservice

November 16th, 2010 | by Dave Reynolds
Posted In: News

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As she’s the focus of the current scene in the comic here, I thought it might be interesting to talk about our resident green haired cyborg. Maxine Luisa Marquez has been around for a while.(A couple of years older than Charon. She‘s actually not the oldest character though. Someday I‘ll have to try and introduce you all to Marica.) To explain Max, I have to talk about the 1990’s in comic books. Back then, there was this trend in comics that to be honest, for those of us who were collecting comics then, it kind of embarrasses us to this day still: The Bad Girl Trend. Now I honestly believe that no one goes out of their way to make a bad story. As much as people may dislike certain stories, I don’t believe for a moment that the creators thought “Let’s see how bad I can make this.” unless they’re trying for some artful insight into irony. Without going into a crap load of details and making what should be a simple story, long-winded and complex… (Which as of this version of this text, I‘ve cut over a thousand words already… Damn, D.Rod‘s right that I‘m long winded….) Let’s leave it at that there was a reason the 1990s was called the “Dark Ages”. Eventually this caught up to the industry, and instead of trying to write honest to goodness decent stories… Many resorted to fanservice.

Fanservice has been around for centuries in some way shape or form, going back to Tiziano Vecellio’s ‘poesie’ series and probably before. Some people call it “art” and some people refer to it as ‘masturbatory fantasies”. The problem is all too often, the portrayal of an attractive woman can be quickly slandered by some to fall into that latter category, no matter how she’s dressed or displayed. The determination of what consists as fanservice is somewhat frustrating. And in the world of web, it doesn’t help matters much that the internet is not exactly known for it’s level headed methods of debate. The common argument people make against it is “Why don’t you look at real boobs?” I’m sorry, but in today’s age of photoshopping and digital airbrushing, prosthetic-like make-up,  not to mention body modification, and recent advancements in the uncanny valley with CGI in films like Avatar… What would you define as “real boobs”? At least cartoons are honest in their portrayal. You know it’s just a drawing. It’s not lying to you, trying to pretend that it’s photo cover spread is what that actress really looks like, because our public perception of beauty has gotten to a level where it’s now impossible for a human to attain it. (And people wonder why we have a messed up society.)

Call me a jackass, but I wanna have her dubbed with Sarah Palin's voice, just to screw with people, donchaknow.

You see, the grand problem is there is an indeterminate line between what is considered acceptable and what is considered exploitative. Final Fantasy’s Rikku’s outfit is very revealing really, but I’ve seen many people who don’t even think anything about it, much less when people cosplay as her… Which is a touch disturbing, since she’s supposed to be Becka’s age. Yet the video game character Bayonetta is considered the epitome of fanservice even though she’s wearing a full body suit, is half a century old, and has the appearance of being roughly Charon‘s age. Now the counter argument to this, I’m told would be how the characters act, that Bayonetta is so much more sexually aggressive, as opposed to Rikku’s pure innocence… Seriously, this was the defense given to me. They obviously do not realize how creepy that sounds. But alright, fine… Whatever. Some people say “it’s all in context of the story. If that’s how the character is supposed to act, then nudity and sexuality is okay.” Which brings us back to the creepy Rikku/Bayonetta conundrum. Essentially the problem is that what one person finds harmless, another person might find in questionable taste, and yet another person might find utterly offensive. And for us cartoonists, it’s hair-pullingly annoying.

Why do people draw fanservice? Well, I’m sure there are people who would love to psychoanalyze the reasons to infinity and beyond, but I’m just going be blunt and explain it as best I can. Women are fun to draw. There’s nothing latently sexual about it… They’re just more fun to draw. That’s really it. Now I don’t deny there are some people who are probably subletting their fantasies a bit too much through the pencils… But for a lot of artists, it’s really just that simple. Girls are more fun to draw. (Hey I like drawing robots too, but it doesn’t mean I wanna go make out with Asimo.)

One might ask, in Shadowgirls’ case, why have fanservice at all? It doesn’t advance the story and only serves as an unnecessary distraction. Have you read our comic? It’s about a MILF and her teenage daughter, who turns into creatures to fight fish monsters and dream spiders, a “rich bitch-fish” with a heart of gold, cyborgs (note plural, one’s a crossdresser), mothers back from the dead who shoves glowing rocks into their eye sockets. EoD members who look suspiciously like Cobra Vipers, fish gods possessing teenage girls, and Lindsey trying to take out a Nosferatu vampire with a folding chair, ECW style… Yeah, I guess I can see why Charon in her themed panties would be pushing boundaries.

Now, Max Pneumatic was created in the wake of that Bad Girl/Fanservice Craze in 1990’s comics. At the time, the idea was meant to be a bit more subverted than what the concept turned into. A couple of actual books got made of her, none of them are worth mentioning the events of them. I realized I had written it so vaguely, that nothing in the book was really revealed. She was pretty much an action comic, dedicated to occasional short stories where she beat up a rogue robot, a giant fly monster, and my personal favorite, a villainess named “Terri Byte” who was essentially a genetically modified counter-industrial rock opera dominatrix, who philosophized about the significance of music on a socially evolving underage society, and her plans to fall the RIAA. (This was in the days before Facebook, MP3s, YouTube and even Napster. I think I may had been a bit ahead of my time.)

Yes, I knew the giant arm was silly then, and it's silly now. Bite me.

Max’s stories were never all that fleshed out though. She was supposed to be a parody of the bad girl craze that had been plaguing comics at this time, but honestly, I kinda started to over think some of the ideas and it started to take a life of it’s own, and become the very kind of book I was supposed to be mocking. (Not to mention, I’m not exactly a great writer. So even if I had seen more of it through, would it have really been all that well-written?) Especially after the Bad Girl Craze subsided, I had tried to rework the comic into something more substantial, then a silly parody book. I would actually go back and forth between this book and what was to become Shadowgirls. As time went on, I found myself less and less interested in doing a mindless action comic, and more interested in telling actual drama, with gravitas. For a while there, it really could have gone either way… But then our girl, Becka got created, and Max got placed on the back burner, for what would have been indefinitely. She probably would have been forgotten, except that D.Rod’s concepts for the Night Shift required the need for a high tech female character. It was originally going to be Annaline, but it didn’t quite work out as we thought it was going to. I thought about it and I was like “Hey, I got an idea…” And thus Max was introduced into the Mythmaker Universe, as the wildcard member of the Night Shift. Though a lot less fanservicey than I remember drawing her in the past. (Also a lot better drawn too, but as I hadn’t drawn her in over six years, I would hope I developed more as an artist…

Look, do I draw fanservice? Yeah, I do and I don’t apologize for it. But there is a time and place for it. I actually have gone over previous pages and subdued a lot of the more fanservicey things that stuck out to me that as too gratuitous. (That’s part of that whole ‘development as an artist’ deal. None of the Charon stuff though… That’s all intact.) The only thing I do apologize about is that I really should do more fanservice for the female readers. I do feel bad about it, but it’s hard to get it squeezed in there, when the book’s main cast members are mostly females. There’s been some difficulty working in Sawyer offering to massage Paul’s tight and sore muscles with some coconut oil the appropriate material for it. But I promise you, the first opportunity to draw a shirtless, oiled up man-meat for you, it will be done for you girls.

(And it won’t be Wilson.)