The group seems to be going cold(er), so I thought I'd check in. Most of us have other demands for our time (like working 7 days a week, raising children and attempting to keep the spouse happy), so with the average attention span dropping to SMS/tweet length, plus nothing new coming through the pipeline (any news on Angry Viking?), and the tribute web page having been totally forgotten, as the domain
http://www.skunked.com is no longer resolving to a page and schedule to expire on: 2018-07-31T04:00:00Z, it appears the era has come to an end.
In response to Long Tom -> >On Saturday, 17 February 2018, 10:58:38 pm AEDT, bigverybadtom_at_aol.com [SkunkworksAMA] <SkunkworksAMA_at_yahoogroups.com> wrote: >I always considered the Skunk Sisters and Zig Zag (I am unfamiliar with the other characters) "fun characters" rather than highly-developed ones what are supposed to be taken seriously. Certainly Max Black Rabbit gave >me the impression that Zig Zag was meant for fun entertainment (despite her official background) and wasn't meant to be taken too seriously; artists could have her do pretty much want they wanted. Same story with the >Skunk Sisters; I cannot imagine Jim Hardiman thought that three sexpot sisters who often had incestuous sex with each other all the time were meant to be viewed as realistic people either.
>Agree - sort of removed the attraction when trying to be serious with something that probably should not be. It is hard to (want to) believe that the skunk sisters who largely acted as "cum dumpsters" (to re-use someone else's description) could, or should, be taken seriously.. It is probably en-par with women who have big fake tits, wear low cut dresses, then complain that men are "staring at their tits". People just aren't going to take you seriously. O_o
Ed Cooper with the smoking devil and devil woman certainly were not meant to be taken seriously, which massively added to the appeal. Big dose of 'wrong factor' with well drawn art and what's not to like? Thinking about Lis Boriss' Lizardbeth character, she was also 'unserious', recast and versatile, making her usable in any situation for what ever the artist was wanting to portray.
>I hate when artists create essentially non-serious characters and then take them uber-seriously. Happened most famously with Dave Sim and Cerebus. The comic was funny when he was a parody of Conan the >Barbarian, but when the author started to make Cerebus "high art" with supposed "deep meaning", he got pretentious, boring, and unfunny, and most of his readership quit in disgust, including me. Same with Omaha the >Cat Dancer when Reed Waller made his porn comic into a laughable morality play and Omaha into an unrealistic "feminist" hero. (You cannot be a feminist and play to base male pleasures; even Eric Schwartz was >aware of this.)
>It makes you wonder what changes in the artist's perception that makes them want to steer a character that way. Maybe just stop drawing the character and go on a new path? You are more likely to ruin what you had AND not attract new followers due to previous perceptions, than if you make a clean break and go in a different direction.
>If Jim Hardiman had lived decades longer and kept the Skunk Sisters as light entertainment characters, that would have been much more satisfactory for me than his trying to turn them into high art. As the old saying >goes, you cannot have high art without low art. Not every play has to be Shakespeare, either.
>You probably have a good point - if JMH had kept the skunk sisters 'just for fun' and maybe gone serious with Caterwaul? That way he could steer a new path with characters that people didn't have preconceptions about?
Oh well, we'll just have to enjoy what was. Maybe JMH was trying to keep By The Tail as light entertainment? Though as I was originally suggesting, keeping to a small character set that you do well and are liked and recognised will do far more for you than a large character set that you draw rarely. I know several artists on this group are guilty of that and can think of several other artists who keep claiming to be coming back to a character, but never get past the "single picture pinup" stage.
I've been reminded of a quote from a tour guide when I was in Angkor Wat in Cambodia, referring to the touching of the breasts of the Aspara dancing girls carved on the temples walls "Touch for luck - or just for fun!".
Scrapper, Black Dragon, slowly learning to take life less seriously - let's face it no one gets out of it alive...
Received on Sun Apr 22 2018 - 10:33:38 CDT