that "gay" Dredd story...

I finally got around to reading prog 1817 of 2000ad, the issue featuring the Judge Dredd one-and-done by Rob Williams (script) and Mike Dowling (art).

I wasn't purposely putting it off... it was among a handful of issues that Diamond skipped distribution of here in the states, so I eventually gave up on hard copies and read it digital-like (on my birthday tablet, thanks baby!).
The story is now 4 months old, so I think a synopsis is safe.

          ( S P O I L E R S )

     The story follows a young man named Taylor Cook, who is gay. He is busted in a raid on a fetish club, one where Dredd himself is the fetish. But that is skipping ahead... first, we are introduced to the club, and then to the protagonist.
     Taylor tells us a bit about himself and his story; mom has died, leaving dad even more distant. As Taylor discovers that his feelings for his best friend are more than platonic, his father finds them and beats the crap out of his would be lover. After weeks of avoidance from both his friend and his father, the catastrophe known as "Chaos Day" happens, and his father disappears.
     Regretting that his father never truly knew him, Taylor decides to hide his true self further in the closet. 5 months go by before he learns from the Judges and a surveillance video how his father died... at the hands of Judge Fear, the undead villain whose gaze causes one to die of fright. 
     Later, an online friend gets the young man to try the nightclub. Soon, he is attending in Judge garb. And then, the bust. The crime? Impersonating a Judge ("jimping") is a serious offence. Taylor has the chance to bolt unseen through a back entrance, but decides to turn himself in and not hide any longer, vowing to leave the closet behind in the "cubes" (prison) when he gets out.

Seems like a lot for a 6 page story, huh?
What I like about it:

• It's amazing that this idea hasn't been picked up on before, the idea of the fascistic, leather-clad #1 authority figure being used in gay role-playing scenes. It makes perfect sense, every single aspect is already in use by someone or another in gay culture. Bondage, leather, domination, submission, the cop from the Village People... and much more, all rolled into one fantasy. For gay Dredd fans, it makes a giggly fun club scene. 

• The poetic justice of his father, the homophobe's, death at the hands of Judge Fear. To imagine what his deadly fear might have been...

• The cat-call in the club. Perfect. Any more would have reduced it to camp, but the one added a bit of humor to the serious tone of the story.

• The handling of the issue at hand. There is no judgement by anyone, even the Judges, excepted Taylor's dad. He is the only person with a problem with homosexuals here. 

• The Dredd-as-foil story. This is what Judge Dredd, as a comic strip, does best. Stories about the people of this future city, where Dredd only shows up as a representative of the system... and then he really could be any Judge- it's just him because his name is on the book. The story is about Mega-City One. 

• Rob Williams. I've been reading a lot of his stuff lately, and really enjoying it. His series "Low Life", featuring Wally Squad (undercover) Judge "Dirty" Frank is top notch. 

Go ahead, pick up a copy, support positive gay characters in comics. I think you just might like it...

Prog 1817 from 2000ad online store 

Mermen

Here's a couple of mermen, or a couple who are mermen.

The background splash trails off down the leg turning into green and blue Tahitian tribal. Ken has a lot of Tahitian (some done by me) so I was happy to have the background transform into color tribal with no black lines, something I shy away from normally.

Tim's Sleeve

A complex sleeve.

This large chest piece/sleeve starts out as a man-like dragon on the pec, engulfed in flames.

 The dragon's tail wraps down the arm, becoming more tribal in style as it goes.

 It passes behind an iron cross on the elbow, and the Burning Man effigy on the biceps.

The tail finally wraps around several f-14 fighter jets at the wrist.

 
Yowza!

portfolio/website updates 2013

It's about that time again... time to update the ol' website and portfolio. It doesn't seem as weighty these days, when tumbler and facebook are so much more "of the moment" and easy to update and access as online portfolios.
Here we go, a color leg piece representing earth and fire, to balance a sleeve of air and water. The Faun is earth, the Salamander is fire. The sleeve had a D'Jinn as air, and a Merman as water.

Faun/Satyr/Pan tattoos are fun. 

Oso Malo

This here is a shirt/label design I did for a bear of a man who thought to create a label of clothing for the ursine man. He did not pursue it due to personal matters, but I recently attained his permission to post the artwork.
Would you buy a shirt with this logo? would you like to see more of this brand?

You're not perfect, but you are perfect for me; my untimely review of the video game MANHUNT

So I'm a retro gamer. 

Meaning, I bought a PS2 on sale, and get my games used. Cheap=retro. Also, I avoided video games for quite a while because I have a history of obsessive behavior concerning them. Something about endorphins. Whatever. So as a result, I missed out on all of the PlayStation generation of games. The ps1 was the big thing when I quit gaming. What am I getting at? I play ps2 games thinking they are pretty cool. I'm not quite warmed up yet to the glossy realism of ps3 stuff. Maybe by the time I get thru every ps2 game I want to play I will be, but until then I am here to give you reviews from a decade ago.

Manhunt, 3rd person stealth action, Playstation 2. Developed by Rockstar Games North, 2003. 

What attracted me to this game was the stealth aspect. I'd played Ghost Recon on the pc (one of the only games i played in this period) and really dug the stealth and sniper levels. A game entirely like this? FUN! Plus, I am a sucker for crime documentaries on serial killers and forensics shows like "the new detectives", "the first 48", et al. It felt like this was the game for me. And it was. It took me a while to get some of the controls down, but I chalk this up to just being rusty with a game controller (I believe it was only the 2nd dual stick game I'd played). 2 years later on the second playthrough I am getting vicious and gruesome executions pretty easily. 

The plot is simple: 

You are James Earl Cash, notorious killer, and you are executed by lethal injection in the opening cinematic. As game play begins, you find that your death was faked, and now you are at the mercy of a Mr. Starkweather, former big-shot Hollywood director, who now makes his living making snuff films, and you are his new star.  He talks you through several levels of Carcer City decay, beckoning you to kill the gang members he's populated them with. Through your earpiece, he catcalls you when you are slow, berates you when you mess up, and praises you on good kills. About halfway through the game, Starkweather figures he's done with you and has you disposed of, but Cash is just too tough to be bested by some hired mercenary security outfit. Now you are in control, and you are gunning for the Director. The games are over, and rather than gangs you are facing Carcer City PD, SWAT, and Cerebus- the aforementioned "Black Water" types. Oh, and the crazy guy in the pig's head mask who wields a chainsaw. 

Divide and conquer: 

Not being seen or heard, baiting your enemies into dividing, and rarely being able to quickly overpower groups with surprise and firepower are your main tools in gameplay. Hunters will fall behind their comrades to check out a noise by themselves, or simply pass unwittingly by your particular pool of shadow, giving you an opportunity to sneak up from behind and dispatch them. Initially this is done with simple objects like plastic bags and glass shards, but soon you are using crowbars and machetes. Later levels involve firearms, but these require you to run like hell for a new hiding spot because every enemy in earshot will close in on you once the trigger is pulled. Occasionally it is a good idea to surprise a crowd and deliver a round of headshots to all before they can fire back, but this is reserved for just a few circumstances. 

Layout:

The enemies all have their particular personalities which affect game play on each level, but the biggest factor in toughness to a level is the layout versus the type of available weapons. Levels like a slum or a junkyard, with a lot of enemies, open spaces, and plenty of shadows are fairly easy if you have a baseball bat and a crowbar that you can kill quietly with. A level, such as subway tunnels, with tight enclosures, unforgiving acoustics, rare hiding places, and relatively few enemies can be quite a bitch if the only available weaponry are firearms, so that each attempt to kill an enemy attracts every other enemy on the damn level. In fact, this dynamic is the only thing that really changes the difficulty of the levels. You never level up, and your enemies aren't in themselves any harder to kill (except a couple of "bosses"). Level layout and weaponry are the only real changes, and I like that about this game.

Gangs:

Among the gangs, my favorites are the "Skinz" and the "Smileys", purely for shallow reasons (see accompanying fan-art). I always apologized to the skin in the blue Fred Perry before offing him. I'd rather smother him in kisses. The Smileys are for the most part muscled thugs half dressed and covered in tattoos. What's not to like? The Smileys are an across the board fan-favorite, due to their wacky personalities. The entire gang wear some version of a smiley face mask. One has a purple mohawk and is covered in tattoos that all say "KILL". Another, "Fug", is dark skinned, has a red mohawk, and has "DRUG SLUT" spray painted across his chest and torso. Some wear kilts, and the leader, "Barry", who dresses as the wife he murdered and shouts out nagging quotes from her about what the neighbors might think, or how disastrously the dinner party is going. Of course most of your opponents will make racial slurs at some point, and some gay-baiting, assumedly because because convicts enjoy the butt-sex. The Cerebus guys even quip about having you on their "gaydar". Offensive? No. These are your enemies. They aren't the good guys. But then again, neither are you, and you don't get to deny these slurs... just take out the assholes who said them. Whether you are offended by them or not is your deal, I think it's pretty funny. If you are easily offended, I'd stay away from this game.

Cash:

Cash himself (though not much of a looker) is racially ambiguous. Cool. From the slurs the Skinz  and other gangs taunt him with, one might guess that he is bi-racial. I like that he is for the most part silent. The few times he speaks (on the 2 occasions you "babysit" another character), his voice seems out of place, and not what you imagined by this point in the game. I would have to say he should have remained silent and used only hand gestures... or that a voice actor who sounded naturally tough was used, rather than someone "butching it up". It brings you slightly out of the total immersion into the game, where sound is so critical to gameplay.

Controversy.

After reading up on it after the first play through, I discovered that it is actually the #1 banned video game worldwide. And it certainly gets it's share of infamy: it is once again in the headlines after the Sandy Hook Massacre as the #1 slot in the top ten offenders of violent video games influencing out society (a
list compiled by the NRA, no less). It's sequel gets the #2 spot. Can you say "deflection", NRA?

Conclusion:

I haven't played #2 yet, mostly because it gets a whole star less than it's predecessor in a 5 star rating system (Amazon), but I will eventually. After replaying manhunt just before writing this review, I played Midway's the Suffering, another convict-centric game (but that is best left to be talked about another time).
I love the atmosphere of Manhunt. I tried to play Splinter Cell directly after Manhunt and just hated it. It was anal and sterile. I don't know if I will ever go back to it, but Manhunt I will play again. It's on my "comfort games" list. Is that creepy?

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The following is the full piece of fan art I created for Manhunt, which I chopped up to use throughout this article. Enjoy!

"Don't hurt 'em, Cash!" by Dave Davenport, pen and ink, digital coloring. 2013.

thanks to http://www.projectmanhunt.com/

http://manhunt.wikia.com/

and http://www.rockstargames.com/manhunt/

Ink Bastards: STERB WERBS!

The following post is the inaugural entry on INK BASTARDS, a tattoo review blog focusing on Spike TV's Ink Masters. Daniel and I are big fans of the show, and were sad that there was no regular review blog. 

So now there is.

STERB WERBS!

Clone Knuckle?

Oh dear. Climb on in the Holodeck and jump to warp, tatt bros, because we're taking off to Deep Space 9! Daniel wrote that to bother Dave because this episode is all about Star WARS...not Star Trek.

     In this episode the tatt bros were tasked with all sorts of tie-in bullshit, all of which tied in to the biggest poop deck of a sci-fi series known to man, Star Wars. When we turned on the TV to watch and saw the short on-screen description of the episode Daniel said that Sarah was going to get a clit hard-on about this being a dork challenge...and we both busted up laughing when she did, in fact, juice herself on screen the second she saw the Sterm Troopers walking up for the Flash Challenge.

Mah Fervrit Churnge!

     After being treated to a screen-filling codpiece, viewers got to watch the contestants stumble all over themselves to prove that they understand what the word "contrast" means. Odd how few of them had any idea. 

Tatu Baby's trooper paint job.

Clint paints an angry grey eyeball on his.

Listening to Sarah's geek heart breaking.

        Dave loved Tatu Baby's Vato Trooper artwork, but in the end it was 'Hawke Cub who took the "prize" and won the advantage in the Elimination Challenge of being able to assign the  human canvases guinea pigs to the remaining contestants.

Clint clucks around the coop.

Steve lols in ridicule.

     'Hawke Cub did some silly speech to try to make himself feel like a man, but in the end he just sounded silly and dumb and retarded and sad and ugly and so 10-minutes-ago, y'all. There was some phony editing drama with Sarah being all bummed about having to do a Storm Trooper (It's about contrast and those things are just white!) and then Jessie started saying how his client  idiot could only have R2-D2 or C-3P0, but not both. Dave didn't get the problem here but Daniel just shrugged and continued to mack on his ice cream. Dave also predicted two things: 1) that Tatu Baby would win this challenge because of the edit she received and 2) that at around this point in the show she would emerge as a contestant to beat. He was right on both accounts.

Tatu Baby endures jealous barbs back at the loft.

     SO! Tatu Baby won her first Elimination Challenge. Congrats Mrs. Baby. Her "little green guy" tattoo (We don't think she ever used the name Yoda, much to Daniel's delight) was the clear winner this episode, and for good reason we thought, although Jaime's Chewbacca tattoo was another one Dave might have put up for the win. It gave the judges the contrast they demanded, made her client fool happy and was indeed quite nice. Dave noted that it was very painterly and beautiful.

"Won this challenge, you have."

"Won this challenge, you have."

"For real?"

"For real."

"Sweet."

Sanity... fleeing... midichlorians... dying!

     And it's a "OH THANK FUCKING GOD" goodbye to this season's Al Fliction, Kay Kutta. This muckraker should never have been on this show to begin with, then should have been eliminated long before now, and eventually proved himself to be the guy they kept on because he was such a jackass.

Kay gets sassy with the judges.

     His tattoo was terrible. A flat, round mess that Daniel thought looked like a moon pie. The judges put it best when they said that it looked like his Sith Guard (per Dave, of course) was made out of lunch meat. We feel like that's a good summation of his entire career, really: BOLOGNA!

Mayo or mustard on that?

      Yay! Kaye is gone. He actually said, after his elimination, "I'm damn near a born loser but I keep winning." This was either a really cruel  edit or, more likely the case, the way he deals with life. "I just keep winning" he boasts as he's being tossed. We say good riddance. It will be fun to see in seasons going forward who is going to play this role.

A long overdue shot of Kay packing his things and leaving!

     What we didn't get was the way the judges were falling all over themselves as they dismissed him to make sure that he knew they thought he was really great and talented and wonderful and on and on and on. Either they were intimidated by him for some reason or he's someone who is actually kind-of bi-polar and they chose to only show his, um, downswing moments. THE FUCK OUT OF HERE with all that ass kissing bullshit...THROW THE HACK OFF.

Seriously, tho, we'll miss this mug.

     Auntie Navarro was her usual self except on this episode she delivered some really dorky dialogue like, "Will you use the force to create a cool tatt or will you join the dark side and become eliminated?" or some stupid shit like that. Ugh. Auntie Navarro still doesn't seem quite comfortable on camera two seasons in, although at least she's received some decent tattoo work to cover up all of that awful work she was sporting throughout the first season.

     So, here were the tattoos with a brief "yea", "nay" or "GAY!":

Yea. Sarah's tattoo: Gerl expected the win with this. It's a perfect tattoo. It was worth the snub though just to see her snap.

Yea. Jaime's tattoo: Beautiful black and grey piece. Sarah and Tatu Baby's color pieces only beat it because of their  deeper complexity.

Yea. Jesse's tattoo: There's a lot to like about this, but one wonders why no one thought they could do both robots. It would have been nice to see him do a new school take on them.

Nay. Clint's tattoo: Originally I gave this a Yea, but the more you look at it, the more there is to dislike. What is up with that background, hawk-cub?

Nay. Sebastian's tattoo: Who puts an asymmetrical design in the middle of the back?  Better layout and  background design and this would rock.

Nay. Mark's tattoo: Probably his best so far, but poorly composed and suffers from some really bad color choices.

GAY! Steve, Steve, Steve. We just would not have expected this  from you. But everyone has an off-day, n'est pas?

NEXT WEEK: Tatt Bro Tag-Team Mania!

Ink Master Season 2 Episode 7 "Star Wars Forever" originally aired Nov. 13th, 2012.