Geekwood: Catman

Very nice.  

DC Comics nicely does sometime get it right when they revamp a character.  Gail Simone was the person who made Catman the successful hunk he is now, thanks to Villains United and Secret Six.  Whether or not this hot slab of feral meat will still exist in the same hotness stream come the new DC Universe remains to be seen.

Catman, while looking most of the time like a more colorful Batman clone, always kept a Sawyer vibe going.  With his scruffy looks and his typically less-freshly showered appeal.  He used to just be a criminal whose shtick sorta copied Selina Kyle's, but now has turned into a character in his own right.

Gotta note the scars really add to his image.

Gail Simone had released a statement how Catman was supposed to be revealed to be bisexual.  It was sad that the story arc exploring that was cancelled (as always) but it is nice to have it declared as true.  Adding another macho role-model to bisexuality is always a plus, considering how I grew up with only effeminate men as my role models.

Thank you for drawing this!

Yep.  This guy has got them both by the balls.

Had he been in Dungeons and Dragons, Catman would qualify as being Lawful Evil or Chaotic Good, considering how the books reflect him as a villain with a moral code, or a hero who is willing to cross lines others do not.

Ultimately, here's hoping for more hunky men who love more than just the model-esque gals that dominate the comic book cast of thousands.

Dry Humping on covers.  Before and Now.

If the character inspires cosplayers like this, then they're doing something grrrrrreat!

Geekwood: The Enigma

While it is easy to find certain comic characters such as Wolverine or Batman hot, most sadly overlook other hotties such as Continuity Comic's Megalith on this entry's offering: The Enigma.  Born from the creative genius of Peter Milligan and given visual life by the artistic exemplar Duncan Fegredo, the Enigma is a character of mystery and sensuality unbound.

I still re-read this miniseries at least once a year.

At the risk of spoiling the story which was published back in 1993, the Enigma is a strange man with reality-altering powers whose far from ordinary past set the stage for the events that were to unfold in the miniseries.  A man named Michael Smith quickly learns that his own life is somehow entangled in the mystery of the masked and caped comic character that has somehow come to life.  Wearing a face mask, a ruffled shirt and a cape, the omnipotent yet emotionally detached man known as the Enigma is soon discovered to have been inspired by the remnants of Michael Smith's emotional releases in the ruins of what was once his parent's home.  Learning much of Michael Smith's happiness as a child was drawn from a long discontinued comic book called The Enigma, the Enigma then embraces that persona as his own, empowers total strangers to become his league of villains, all part of an elaborate plan to win against the Enigma's true enemy:  his own mother.

A masked hero who attacks his enemies by tearing out stars from their stomach.  You gotta love that imagery.

The Enigma is a story that explores the importance of self and identity.  Especially the need to be able to embrace ones sexuality in a world where labels and roles become reduced to merely fulfilling one's routine.  The Enigma forces Michael Smith to face with his own inner demons and struggle for self-acceptance, and later reveals that very said acceptance was the thing he needed to face his own demons.

I can never recapture how excited and shocked I felt to realize for the first time how this comic was touching on the "gay" issue.  Back then, the idea that a comic would discuss it seemed unheard of.

The comic was published by the Vertigo line of DC Comics, which for its time was touted as the pioneer creative ground for works that approached comics with a far more adult sensibility.  While European comics and Japanese manga have long treated comics are merely a medium and not a childish format, Vertigo comics was a good step in that direction.  Needless to say, it allowed The Enigma to explore themes and issues other comics would shy from.

There's an Enigma for everyone!

See, even footsies!

The Enigma was far from the typical likeable character.  He used people to further his ends without care, being blunt about what he needed and being direct about why he did things.  His lack of social graces made him far from the ideal one would expect.  His preferred form of dress seemed a tad too fashionably gay.  And while he had a magnificent smile and a hot body to boot, his emotional sensitivity was far from acceptable.

The artist really succeeded in giving him an iconic look.
Or as Ru Paul would say, "Enigma works it!"

However, the Enigma was one who did not shy away from truth.  The Enigma faced with the Truth head on, and challenged us to do the same.  The Enigma openly embraced the need for sensuality and perhaps in unexpected ways even catered to other's sexual fantasies without trying.   The Enigma challenges and inspires and demands one to be true.

This image.
I remember seeing this for the first time and so wishing I was Michael Smith.

For such qualities, the Enigma deserves to be my choice for this entry's Geekwood post.  And yes, while the idea of dating a guy who loves chewing down lizards sounds questionable, realize this is a man who will remind you that you never need to fear falling because he will be there to catch you.  This series hooked me so much that I spent over five years struggling to find all the issues (only to finally receive them as a gift from an ex who sadly has never gotten past hating me) and eventually inspiring me to write my own take on a sequel to the story.  (Much to my chagrin, the sequel was very received and is still online in a number of websites out there.)

Falling indeed.

And his saying it is not just metaphor.
It is real.

"Like a Strange Girl." 

Geekwood: Megalith

Few would probably recognize today's choice for Geekwood.  Many years back, while I may have been a huge fan of both Marvel and DC Comics, there was a less known comic line which captured my interest.  The line was interesting in the sense that its comics seemed to have little fear about showing much more gruesome scenes of injury and battle but at the same time show an incredible sense of  empathy towards emotion and sexuality.  It was a comic where both the men and the women were deliciously illustrated, and given characters and personalities which seemed cookie-cutter at first, but revealed greater depth as the issues progressed.

He's got muscles on his muscles!

The comic group was known as Continuity Comics, and the brand had a comic which told the story of a young man who was trained by an organization to compete in the olympics, only to become an unwilling athlete-for-hire.  After a failed attempt to try and rescue his parents who were held hostage by the group, the man whose name was Joe Majurac, became Megalith the Ultimate Man who continues to search for them while learning to embrace his new life as someone who isn't quite ordinary anymore.

Damn the artists knew how to make him hawt!

Created by Neal Adams and illustrated by Mark Texiera and Rudy Nebras, Megalith was a comic character whom I greatly admired for his immense strength, well defined (although somewhat exaggerated) physique, mental focus and emotional sensitivity.  While the likes of Superman and Majestic can get away with being detached from humanity to some degree, Megalith was pretty much like a young boy with a very impressive man's body.

And of all the muscles that the light touches, guess which one caught my eye the most?

Comic Attack.net covers his back story far better than I could ever hope to do so, which is why I hope you will all pardon me for simply directing you to this site to read up more on his past.  While the comic felt extremely dated (it was based during a time with the Russians were still... how do we put this... suspect.  And Reagan was still in power) I felt the comic told the story of Joe Majurac with a nice balance between action and emotion.  In some occasions, his lack of true experience in being a superhero was highlit in the narrative, with him struggling to comprehend why there were people attacking him.  He had a temper, and it was one which was sorely tested whenever his parents were threatened in any way.

A mama's boy at heart.  Awww...

But more than just muscles, he too had an interesting approach to being The Ultimate Man.  In one issue, Megalith was grievously injured and his unconscious body became the very stage for the story to unfold.  Inside his form, a naked projection of himself was suddenly the focus of the story as Majurac mentally conditioned himself to repair the damage his body was suffering from by creating numerous naked duplicates of himself to force the wounds closed.

The comic, however, was short lived and failed to gain enough momentum to last as long as the bigger titles that were out there in the market.  Still, Joe Majurac deserves some attention and I will congratulate in advance all of you readers out there who chance upon copies of his comic book that might still be out there: undiscovered treasures of delectable man meat in bargain bins that most would overlook. 

Sorry Joe, but Marvel and DC beat you bad.

Megalith, you remain an Ultimate Man in my eyes.
Here's to visualizing your many naked bodies helping me close my wounds each time I get hurt from now on.

A growing boy indeed.

Does Being Gay (or Female) Matter in a RPG?

One of my biggest hobbies is role playing games.  Now I don't mean those kind of role playing couples get into while in bed doing the doggy dance.  I mean the kind one plays with the use of interestingly shaped dice, interactive storytelling, pencils, paper sheets and character concepts.  I have been a gamer for many years and I noticed that while some games totally ignore the relevance of having a male or female character, other games love utilizing it as an in-game mechanic.

Gamer partners are easy to please.  Just buy them a nice new set of dice
for a present when you run out of ideas. 

It led me to wonder, is it good or bad when role playing games ignore gender and sex in a game?
Role playing games have always allowed me to explore character concepts which I probably would never have the chance to (or in some cases, never morally or logically be inclined to doing) in real life.  My first actual proper rpg character was a female Paladin named Shel Downwind (I use such disclaimers because my very first game was some elven ranger on a volcano) who had a ring of regeneration and eventually was pivotal in saving the Realms from the Avatar Wars in our gaming group.   Later on, I would find myself playing  an insane Malkavian vampire named Gabriel who believed that if one stared at a dying man's eyes at the moment he expired, one would glimpse the soul and know true beauty.  Crazy scary stuff eh?  More concepts  came and went and ultimately, I've played characters who were male, female, alien, transsexual, straight, gay, closeted, homophobic, religious, insane, militaristic, compassionate, devoted, crazed and more.  The point was, role playing games allowed me to explore a lot of these things in the safety of my own home without ever  actually illegally performing such things.

My friend Mara is wondering when I last shaved as I try to explain to her in brief the system for
White Wolf Gaming Studios' Scion.

The role playing game community, years back, seemed neck deep in straight guys alone.  For me, it wasn't until the rise of popularity of Anne Rice novels and the emergence of White Wolf's World of Darkness that gay gamers as well as gay characters started to become more visible.  And while most gaming books still retain the straight-male-geek demographic as their target market, some like White Wolf have attempted to sound more gender savvy (like in White Wolf books, the pronoun "she" is used instead of "he").   Later companies tried to reflect an awareness of such a shift in their books by adding disclaimers that the pronoun "he" was merely used for simplicity sake and not intended to mean only males were expected to play the game.

They should have made this scene last for half an hour.

Clearly there was an attempt to be much more gender sensitive in some ways.  I wondered however, if this sensitivity extended as well to the actual game itself?  Did being straight, gay, male or female matter in a rpg?

Decided to post this rather than the expected Dragon Age image.

White Wolf Gaming Studios, creators of games such as Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: the Requiem, and Exalted, approached sex and gender as something vital only depending on the setting of the game.  For example, in their Dark Ages using their old World of Darkness line, playing a woman meant having the flaw (Second Class Citizen) which was to reflect how during the period, women were seen to have less rights and freedoms than men.  In their Exalted line, on the other hand, there are merits to reflect being fertile or not since in that game, certain character types can bear interesting children if mixed and matched.  A recent book even used numerous movie and tv tropes as the basis for outlandish (and possibly offensive) merits available only to those who are playing a woman.

Crazy = Straight Jacket.

Dungeons and Dragons on the other hand once tried to reflect the differences between men and women by setting different "ranges" for how a man or a woman's Strength can start at.  There were also differences in their typical "starting ages" as well as "maximum old ages".   So yes, there was a time in Dungeons and Dragons when all female characters could never be stronger than male characters, even if both rolled 18 for Strength in their initial character creation.

DC Heroes (and for those who are familiar with the many variations, here I am choosing to view the MEGS version) doesn't care if the character you create is male or female.  And thankfully, this nicely is reflected in how the comics do have characters of immense strength or ability, regardless of gender.

Alex Ross, you rule.

Houses of the Blooded nicely reflects the importance of romance and drama in a character concept but like DC Heroes seems to have little care of whether or not a character is male or female.  The game nicely shows you how the creative flow of a game isn't supposed to be in the hands of the game master/storyteller alone.

This book is barely $5 for the PDF.   Trust me, it is worth every single penny.
I'm just happy a friend found a copy of the physical book in a booksale here in Manila.

It was in Weapon of the Gods that I felt a nice balance of setting reflective systems with the freedom to play women who are or can be stronger than men.  Weapon of the Gods allowed one to purchase Lores that expanded one's background or ongoing destiny in the game, and among them were the options to purchase Homosexuality, being a woman and the like.  Such purchases then opened the options to buy other setting enhancing things such as how homosexual men can use a special martial art to shift their chi to masculine or feminine, or how women can have a Lore that allows them to carry a child to term and yet remain fit and capable of active martial arts combat.  The game nicely reflected the fact that role playing games might cater to players who will predominantly want to play male roles, but still had enough system crunch to interest players who wanted to explore gay and/or feminine roles.  Sadly, EOS press, which publishes the game, seems to no longer be online.

A pity it is no longer in print.

I wonder though if there are games out there that nicely cater to players who want to truly explore games where being male, female, homosexual or heterosexual, matter.  The irony however is the more you try to make such things "matter" the greater the chance you end up looking like you're being predisposed or biased towards one or the other.

Me running FIGHT! where non-gamers are invited to roll three green dice in hopes of besting my roll.  The hearts on my chest were reminiscent of the Life Meter in Zelda games.  I'd lose a heart for each dice roll lower than theirs.  Ultimately, this was me trying to make people have fun even without computers.

But since role playing games are all about exploring character concepts and creating stories, I would love to see or hear about gaming systems where players are encouraged to try concepts that might be very distant from who they are or what they typically play.    It might help people see role playing games as more than just the lonely straight sexless geek guy's hobby, and make them realize a lot of us gamers actually get much more sex than you average straight non-gamers than you think!