General Marvel Legends

Ahhh the old “is this eroticism, or is this salacious” debate. Yeah, I feel this one. Of course, I think something can be erotic *and* salacious, but let’s leave that aside for now.
Eroticism, I am very much into, or at least my own brand of same. Salaciousness, not so much. But who’s to say which is which? As a horror movie guy, I’d say the sexy stuff in The Hunger is erotic, the sexy stuff in the Friday the 13th movies is salacious. I’d say the Hellraiser series (the good ones anyway) is erotic, AND some folks would say they are salacious. But when it comes to movies, I am definitely NOT into salacious stuff, which makes the horror genre tough, because I LOVE erotic horror and the line is razor thin.

Now in literature, that’s where I go all-in on erotica and also don’t mind salaciousness. I read the Hot Blood anthology series like six times, all the books through. But for me, the “theatre of the mind” feels less icky, even if my imagination goes far harder than any visual image ever could.

I will say that when it comes to comic books, I don’t tend to find much eroticism there, and plenty of salaciousness. Like I didn’t find 90s “pin-up” comic art to be erotic in the least. I purposefully read a lot of salacious comics in the 90s (I was a teenager, and they were mostly titles like “Vamperotica” 🫠 and I would DEFINITELY have watched vampire porn if I had access to it at the time 🤷‍♂️), but the only actually erotic comics I can think of from that era [that I read] were the Innovation adaptations of Anne Rice stuff, ohh and some indie stuff like Dhampyr which probably no one read but me.

Ultimately I think the “problem” is patriarchal dominance of culture and the “male gaze” that comes with it. I freely admit that it’s hard (though not impossible, especially if it’s a queer-oriented perspective) or me to find something erotic if it is “seen” through the eyes of a male character or prioritizing a male perspective. Which may sound odd (it does to me!) given that I am a heterosexual male who is seemingly mostly internal with my genderqueerness, but it’s true. And comics, especially the “sexy” comics I grew up on, definitely always felt aggressively “male gaze”, and that did always make me feel uncomfortable, even at an age where I had a hard time controlling impulses to engage with “sexy” stuff.
This is a great point. I don't want to belabor this too much more, but I agree that most sexual content in comics is smut. It's easy to self-select the good stuff, say Bruce unzipping Selena's catsuit on a rooftop, but most of it is unsophisticated and uninteresting. J. Scott Campbell falls under that category.
Like all Magik fans.
As someone who is unfortunately subscribed to the Magik subreddit, I can confirm.
 
Alright I threatened to do this and now I have to follow through..

As y'all know I got married a couple weeks ago. We had to put together a flatpack for the photographer to shoot (the rings, an invite, cologne, perfume, etc). A friend of ours suggested I include a personal item of sorts. Something that is kind of just there as a representation of me. Her husband had a matchbox car of the car he drove in theirs, for example. So I made the obvious choice... An Iron Man action figure. Turns out, our photographer has some vintage Marvel figures himself. He got really excited to play professionally shoot with it and here's a photo we got back as part of our preview:

H8K1tDw.png
 
Alright I threatened to do this and now I have to follow through..

As y'all know I got married a couple weeks ago. We had to put together a flatpack for the photographer to shoot (the rings, an invite, cologne, perfume, etc). A friend of ours suggested I include a personal item of sorts. Something that is kind of just there as a representation of me. Her husband had a matchbox car of the car he drove in theirs, for example. So I made the obvious choice... An Iron Man action figure. Turns out, our photographer has some vintage Marvel figures himself. He got really excited to play professionally shoot with it and here's a photo we got back as part of our preview:

H8K1tDw.png
This is a really lovely idea to include personal items as part of the photo pack, and this is also just an excellent photo.

Also, Congratulations!!
 
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