The Sexy Future of Comics

0 CommentsTuesday • March 8, 2011 • by Imei

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Note: The following post covers the subject matter of pornography. If that offends you, this is not the post for you. However, reconsider unsubscribing, as I cover a plethora of topics on this blog.

If someone had told me that my favorite childhood Sunday comics,”Peanuts” starring a beloved beagle and a motley gang of kids headed up by the round-headed Charlie Brown might lead to a path related to pornography, I would have snickered into my hand and called that person an idiot for even suggesting it. But after attending my very first comic convention, the Emerald City Comic Con at the Washington Convention Center March 4-6, 2011, I have seen the future of comics, and that future includes the idea that comics are the family-friendly vehicle that will usher porn into mainstream activity and acceptance. Comics, and the massive industry associated with them, may make porn more acceptable and accessible than the advent of iPad. And if you are in the business of marketing your brand, you will need to know what the future of comics means for you.

Wonder Woman by *Kerong on deviantART

While I choose not to publish examples of erotic art and pornography in the form of animation and comics here on this blog, I can safely say that much of the comics we’ll be seeing in the near future will be adult-oriented. When Apple announced the new features of the iPad2 (coming to stores on March 11), I started playing around with a couple of formulas:

iPad + front facing camera + rear facing camera + iMovie = mainstream porn [OK, Steve Jobs might not like that, but it's going to happen. We'll likely be seeing more "amateur" porn videos because of the iPad2 and the 3D Sony Handycam]

sexually charged writing + animated art = erotic comics

Comics vs. traditional porn —> eroticized comics as the new porn

Eroticized comics and the iPad 2 will likely do more to put consumer porn and everyday porn production in the hands of the consumers. But comics may do this faster simply because people can access them at a younger age. There were many children at the ComicCon I attended, as there were row open row of comics sporting the usual freakishly distorted animated bodies of men and women side by side with vendors selling plush sushi toys and Social Media pillows.

Comics will always have a prophetic and forth-telling aspect to them (which is a good reason why Sci-Fi has become synonymous with comic conventions). Their edgy content is the perfect medium for moving pornography into the center of mainstream entertainment and leisure activities, much like books like Sex at Dawn and actor Charlie Sheen are putting open relationship and polyamory into the vocabulary of the modern family.

While I might wistfully yearn for the innocence of Hello Kitty, we must make room for the dark, the wild, the morbid, the different, and yes, things that might make us feel uncomfortable or challenge the norms? Why? If you are attempting to brand your artful business using Social Media, video, and digital images, then you must be awake to the fact that pornography comprises over 65% of the digital content being consumed on our mobile devices and home computers, and that same percentage represents the content of the Internet from the day of its inception to the present. Translation: more than half of the entire Internet’s digital content is in the form of film and image, not text. Get it?

What parts of your own craft will intersect with the erotic as it grows and changes? What will you allow yourself to explore in similar ways that the iPad2 and comics will expose (no pun intended)? What do you see yourself consuming and learning from in your process of branding your own work?

Posted in: Art, iPad

Tagged with: comiccon, comics, erotic art, iPad, ipad2, pornography, sex, sex at dawn