The Week Of Living Dangerously

Remember, folks, the Birthday Week Fundraiser continues apace... show your appreciation for my continued matyrdom in the name of bad comics by popping a coin in the Paypal jar to the left. I can guarantee you any funds received will not be wasted in any miguided oil-for-food scheme. We're strictly food-for-nukes here at The Hurting.

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I was at the supermarket today, looking at the magazines on the rack when I came across something that ... I don't really know how to describe it. It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen in my life.

I guess this kind of counts as an unannounced Boob War Crossover - because what I saw qualifies, I think, as Boob War material if ever there was, albeit not in the comics medium.

I don't play video games or pay really any attention to video games at all, other than what I pick up here and there from my game playing friends. Nothing against them, really ,I just have better things to do with my time, I don't need timewasters. The day Blizzard wants to come out with Starcraft 2, then I'll be excited, but until them you can keep your deviant sex Playstation 28 to yourself, thank you very much.

Anyway, this magazine called Play had a cover feature for this game called Magna Carta. Never heard of the magazine or the game. But the cover caught my eye, and not necessarily in a good way:



This is not a good picture, but it is the best I could find online. (The Play magazine site is next to useless.) But in any event, this should give you the gist.

The artist - if not of this piece than the style sheets for the game - is apparently a man named Kim Hyung-tae. Looking at some of his other pieces you see the motif repeated:



I am reminded of Dirk Deppey's greatest ever contribution to world culture, the term "boob sock". These video game femme fatales take existing notions of "boob war" and "boob sock" and turn the dial to eleven. That woman is not wearing a boob sock - getting dressed apparently involves vacuum sealing. They do not occur as such in nature.



I just don't get it... maybe i'm not supposed to. All I know is that in the comic world, stuff like Lady Death and Tarot is sort-of kept off to the sides. I mean, it's there, it's kind of embarrassing, and Lord knows Greg Horn covers aren't exactly doing anyone any aesthetic favors. But video games aren't sold in dingy basements by sweaty men with beards to other sweaty men with beards... aren't the people who play these games embarrassed? Have they no shame?

I guess, when you get down to it, that shame is dead. And we must all now weep bitter tears of anguish.