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The Act Itself Is A Joke

Girly makes me uneasy.

Six comics in sexual harassment becomes a joke, in the form of an unwanted suitor who believes his penis is his only redeeming quality. The â€œjokeâ€? is reoccurring.

Girly makes me angry.

In the first part, the main plotline is both how Winter and Otra (â€œGirlyâ€?) come to be leader and sidekick, and then friends, and then lovers â€“ as well as the downfall of El Chupacabre. Chupacabre is described as a lover, pleasurer, eater, and penetrater of women.

The first time a woman walked onscreen and then down a dark alley, I was expecting rape. Rape is defined as â€œsexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female.â€? The woman was grabbed, and for all her scream of surprise or terror (most likely terror) turned into pleasure, as indicated by the hearts around the sound effect, it was rape.

Winter and Otra obviously donâ€™t see it as a problem â€“ they go after the elephants. The news doesnâ€™t see it as a problem; Women being found naked runs as the secondary story.

I could dismiss this all as a satire if at the conclusion of the story the lesson didnâ€™t fall so flat.

Winter says heâ€™s been doing the right thing, in the wrong way. She proclaims that he has been practicing sexuality haphazardly, leading to guilt and resentment. But what about the common feeling of violation? Of shame? Of disbelief? Of fear and self-blame?

And then there is the statement that Chupacabre never attacked anyone. He was irresistible, and so they just submitted. Does this excuse him? Consider real life attacks â€“ could a rapist claim that they just submitted? Could it be true? Would it make it any better?

Chupacabre was finally driven out of town by Winter and Otra. And I stopped reading.

The entire first part of this comic is a giant thumbs up to sexual harassment and rape. Joking about rape makes the act of rape a joke. Make a joke about murder, and youâ€™re not likely to be patted on the back in the bar for doing it. Make a joke about rape, harassment, etc., and you may just be a local hero.

Or a webcomic creator successful enough to have a book published.

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Disclaimer: I don’t read Girly. I haven’t the foggiest how well (or not) they handle the subject. However, I don’t think rape is off-limits to humour. Murder *definitely* isn’t (how many mother-in-law jokes end up with the mil dead*? Isn’t every Scream movie an extended version of ‘look how funny we are while killing teenagers’?) And how many jokes have you heard that end in a reference to going to prison and ‘meeting Bubba**’?

I don’t think you have to look very far at *all* to disprove (what appears to be) your point: raping people is (can be) funny, just like murder and harassment (and stealing and adultery and many other things that I would not do in real life).

Now, again, I haven’t read Girly. My point is not based on whether or not Girly is funny, or has a ‘good moral’. However, you simply can’t rule something out as being ‘out of bounds to comedy’ just because it’s a sensitive topic. If we did that, the only comic working today would be Sinbad.

Oh! By the way, *please* go watch the movie ‘The Aristocrats’ (not the Disney musical). As well as being very funny in it’s own right, it makes the point (over and over) that *anything* can be funny if done right. Specifically, watch Sarah Silverman’s bit. It has to do with this in particular. Her entire bit is based on the tension between what she’s saying and our knowledge that it isn’t true.

/Rant mode off…

* Obviously, mil jokes aren’t exactly the highest form of comedy (puns are). So look at Fargo instead.

** Ibid but s/Fargo/Pulp Fiction/. In fact, Pulp Fiction works for the first footnote, too.

There are no words.

I’ll save myself some time and just say “What David Bishop said”.

I think you have really missed something, here.

The joke in comics like this one is that El Chupacabre is NOT actually a rapist! The set-up of the gag is a parody of cliched depictions of rape in movies and comics, the twist is that Chupa is actually just this incredibly charming man that people really want to sleep with.

It’s a classic bait and switch gag, no different from this SGR guest strip where a cliched knife murder is actually just a brownie snack.

Chupa never forces himself on anyone. This is demonstrated when he Winter turns down his advances. He’s just a very attractive man (which in itself is a joke, considering how ridiculous looking he is.) In fact, as you read on you find out that this irresistable charm is almost a sort of border-line curse… something that he wishes he could turn off but can’t.

I must say it’s nice, in one way, to read a fleen writer who stands overtly on a moral principle. It’s weird and scary in other ways as objectivity is lost when doing so. It’s just plain startling period though, as you guys have seemed to be o.k. with plenty of taboo and even horribly murderous comics as long as they were good for a laugh or solid storyline. Who’s to say that the “violent taking” of a life can be funny because we’re used to it, but the “violent affecting” of a life is not?

Seems awfully contradictory to me… which is great if we’re using it while trying to find a moral compass, but not if we’re maintaining objectivity with regard to subject matter.

Either way it makes for interesting reading.

In a supposed-to-be-fan-written storyline of Checkerboard Nightmare, just to be dramatic, Chex ended up contracting textiloma, or fatal cancer of the checkerboard. Ha ha! I thought it was funny.

Then, in my family, cancer turned not so funny to me a couple months after that. Because nothing is funny when it affects you personally. The big push-button words CANCER, AIDS and even RAPE have been used in subversive stuff like South Park for exactly that reason — most of the joke comes from “man, I shouldn’t be laughing at this.” But no, I don’t expect that an AIDS patient will find an AIDS joke funny, just like I don’t find cancer to have that humorous edge anymore.

But I can’t deny that someone who didn’t have the experience COULD find it funny. And I can’t deny them the enjoyment of that joke just because I don’t enjoy it. Like it’s only to mock all religions except for mine, because mine is sacred.

It’s really touchy, and it’s easy for me to sound like I’m being insensitive. If I drew a rape joke — which I’d never do — of course I’d be mortified if a victim read it, and of course I’d have to apologize. Ditto with cancer or any other thing. But there’s jokes about stabbings, shootings, prison rape, embezzlement, deaths by flying bowling ball… each of these things really, actually hurt people. But I don’t think we should, or really can, place them off-limits to humor.

I think you have the right to be offended and not want to read anymore, too. And even the right to write about it to complain. But I feel like context is missing here.

(Also, was it even a rape joke? I thought it was a bait and switch too. I don’t think Girly’s message can be construed as “rape isn’t a big deal.”)

Being of the fairer sex myself, I think that series of Josh’s comics made me laugh harder than most guys would. Girly is always great in my little world, but that little arc really hit a funny bone in me.

The switch & bait humour has already been covered.. but I think more than anything, it’s nice to see Josh bring smiles to a subject that is usually so depressing (and he didn’t use any of the regular crutch cliches like payback or tentcles).

The only character who might fall loosely into Webster’s defination is dear little Marshmellow Kitty .

It was definitely a bait and switch. We’re talking about a cartoonist who used his own webcomics blog to write one of the most vicious attacks on trivializing rape in comics that I have ever read.

I wonder if the reviewer has ever watched any anime.

It’s full of letcherous men who run around pinching asses and boobs, stealing underwear and getting beaten to a pulp by women for doing so.

Girly comes off as that kind of anime standard to me.

Ugh. NO SCOTT, NO. NO. JUST NO.
No no no no no no no no no.

No.

Also, thanks to the posters who get it.
Girly is meant to be such an upbeat and freespirited comic, the whole concept of people deriving grim, real-world tragedies like rape from it just baffle me. I’m seriously floored by this. Seriously.

I can’t believe I forgot to point out Goats and Megagamerz as examples of using horrendous, bloody and (though I can’t be bothered to find links to the anal probing alien comics in question) “sexually questionable” events as comedy fodder.

Just to reinforce Robert’s point.

I get Kate’s point on this one. For an exploration of a similar situation, a recent issue of Dan Slott’s She-Hulk (which is much, much better than it should be) found SH defending (yes, she’s a lawyer, and the idea of bringing the judicial system into a superhero book is subversively wonderful) the otherworldly StarFox on charges of rape.

He, too, doesn’t coerce … but his superpower is to be so incredibly attractive, that anybody he turns his attention to (male or female) falls deeply in love/lust. It’s one of those mid-70s ideas for a “far out” character that wasn’t thought out too well, because it leads to questions that are only now being asked, like: does the target of such a power have sufficient free will to consent? Married, single, purposely celibate, nobody can turn him down. Rape or not? What looked like a light-hearted lark in the 70s becomes much more nuanced when you dig a little below the surface.

I canâ€™t believe I forgot to point out Goats and Megagamerz as examples of using horrendous, bloody and (though I canâ€™t be bothered to find links to the anal probing alien comics in question) â€œsexually questionableâ€? events as comedy fodder.

Yeah, I hate it when people make blanket statements about what topics are okay for humorists and which ones are off-limits, I will often craft a joke specifically to try and make a taboo subject humorous.

Life can be pretty shitty sometimes, you can either cry about it or you can laugh it off. Humor seems to me to be the healthier option.

Chuy is my favorite character. Like it was said eariler, he’s supposed to be an incredibly irresitable character. When I read it, the women in the comic wanted to be with him.

Portraying a guy who is obsessed with his penis as an undesirable moron and then punishing him by shooting him into space is not giving “a giant thumbs-up to sexual harassment.” The strip in question is part of a series of strips where Otra punishes annoying people by shooting them into space. How you read that as an ENDORSEMENT of Steak’s behavior, I’m not sure.

“The woman was grabbed, and for all her scream of surprise or terror (most likely terror) turned into pleasure, as indicated by the hearts around the sound effect, it was rape.”
-Actually, the woman was not grabbed, you only assumed she was. The hearts were supposed to indicate that it started out as a scream of pleasure in the first place. What’s happening here is a miscommunication.

What’s happening here is someone is using a review of Girly to vent about an pre-existing pet peeve… and one that isn’t even in the comic, at that! Half of the people here are debating whether rape jokes are wrong, and the other half are busy trying to point out that there are no rape jokes in Girly.

I can sort of see the parallel you’re drawing, Gary, even though we’re talking about two comics operating in a completely different style and tone. And I know you’re inclined to defend the work of your fellow contributors. But I can’t help but notice that Girly is no longer in the “A Good Start” linkbar, even though it was there before, and even though these apparently offensive comics were right there in the archive the entire time that Fleen linked to the site. So excuse me if I have trouble believing you agree with this take on the comic. (Unless, of course, none of you had ever actually read Girly before back when you were linking to it.)

(Or unless, of course, I have TOTALLY LOST MY MIND and girly was never linked, in which case sorry.)

Josh, here’s what I’m going to do for you.

I’m going to say something in this comment that is so offensive, that it will TOTALLY derail all resentment in this thread from your work onto myself.

This is my gift to you.

*Ahem*

Anyone who thinks that Girly condones sexual assault needs a good cock-slap across the face.

That’s just how I feel about it.

No, thats fair. I can sort of see where you’re coming from there- that his ability could be construed as a form of rape, but that takes some sitting down and thinking about it, and I don’t think that’s necessarily the point. After all it is concluded that what he is doing is wrong, even though he seems to have slipped back to old patterns.

Sam,

I have not read Girly; my comments above were based solely on my reading of Kate’s posting and what I saw as a parallel situation.

The linkbar was constructed from the suggestions of contributors and then trimmed for space. And although I have become pretty identified with the site, I was not the sole contributor here before our recent up-staffing.

An interesting note: if nobody pops in here with a fresh comment before I finish posting, this will be the 22nd comment for this thread. Off the top of my head, this makes the most popular topics on Fleen a) T Campbell’s book is going to suck/no it’s not; b) Micropayments suck/no they don’t; and c) Girly is predicated on rape jokes/no it’s not. I wonder what the next big-traffic topic is going to be, but I’m feeling the desire to be a little less safe if that’s what it takes to involve readers so passionately.

Hmm. I don’t think it’s clear from the comics exactly how his “power” works. The scream-to-yum sound could be read as a rape. Is that what the author intended? No. Is it a valid reading of the text? Yes. That doesn’t make Josh an apologist for rape, but it’s a valid reading. We don’t get to control how other people read our work. That’s the danger of letting other people read it.

Whoops, and d) Clickwheel sucks/yeah, it kinda does.

Kate, you don’t understand a damn thing. You are an uptight, prejudiced bitch who should do us all the favor and go back to the kitchen where you belong.

Hm. With the exception on Claire, none of the commenters seem to be female. Unless BHAR is one, but I doubt it. And I am glad that nobody has came out and said that “when you have a penis all your comments about rape are irrelevent / you are a potential rapist”, because that’s pretty much the norm when it comes to most (internet) discussions involving rape.

As for the post/comic: I’m not a regular Girly reader but a friend did send me links to a few of the strips mentioned. My initial thought was that they were funny. “Dude obssessed over his penis being shot into space” is funny. But ever since reading this post and I can think of is “OH NO WHEN WILL SOMEONE GET RAPED” when I re-read those strips.

Fleen: you have the power to associate horrible images with specific webcomics. Use it wisely.

Holy crap, bhar! Take the attitude back to the 1920s, thanks.

Gary, people will always get more excited when you post about things you dislike then when you post about things you like. If this is the kind of involvement you want from your readers, it is very easy to obtain!

And note that while there has been a significant amount of response (some of which has included some very well written, very informative posts), there has not been all that much discussion – Kate put forward a point in her initial post which almost every comment disagreed with (aside from your own).

But it is certainly true that when one puts forward a very strong and aggressive point, a lot of people will respond. It is to Fleen’s credit that almost the entirety of responses, however much they disagreed with Kate, were civil and rational.

This is the FIRST TIME fleen has written about Girly in the 3 years since it started, and they write an inflamatory attack piece about it implicitally supporting RAPE?? I really don’t get it, did it not have enough snarky dialogue and pop culture references for you? Do you guys hate Josh Lesnick THAT MUCH?

I think Bhar was merely demonstrating that despite his best efforts, Kurtz’s attempt at being genuinely offensive fell well short of the mark. Kudos to all involved!

To me, part of Girly’s, and Josh Lesnick’s other comics, charm has always been the complete lack of accountability on the part of anyone who wasn’t one of the main characters.

What I think I find interesting about this article is that Kate continued to read up until the point where Chupacabra left town.

Yet Girly is hardly the most objectionable of popular comics. Consider Flem, Escape! Sexy Losers, Dominic Deegan, and the ever popular Something Positive’s first strip. Yet so far I haven’t seen anything on Fleen condemning these strips. I’m sure there are many people who find Something Positive’s coat-hanger-abortion opening incredibly offensive. Randy has even said most people who would be offended stop reading at that point because it’s clear from the start what kind of story is going on.

Personally I think it’s hilarious, for much the same reason I continue to read Girly–both provide a fantasy world where the impossible becomes possible. In the case of Something Positive, the characters are able to say and do things to vent their anger that are without legal repercussions.

In the case of Girly, Lesnick takes advantage of cartoon conventions to create a world where just about anything silly can happen. Elephants, knights, an incompetent superhero adored by the media–and as readers we are asked to take these things at face value as we are continuously bombarded by impossible cartoon situations. So where is the problem here?

I think it’s the addition of sexual material to a very silly cartoon world. The gestural nature of Lesnick’s drawings, the extreme double takes, the over-expressive squash and stretch cartoon physics give the impression of a cartoon innocence that in (specifically American) pop culture is normally disconnected from direct sexual activity.

Yet to believe in a cartoon world of this type means buying into the idea that one can be shot into the stratosphere on a rocket and show up several strips later in fine condition. It means accepting that elephants may show up at any moment. It means accepting, and reveling in the cartoon reality of violence without lasting repercussions and the appearance of the fantastic.

Saying that Girly condones rape or sexual harrassment is a refusal to accept the world of Girly at face value. It takes the situations in Girly out of context and places a real world value on them–when much of the humor and wonder for a strip like Girly is the way in which it contrasts with the dire consequences and scenarios of real life. El Chupacabra is a character who women not only have difficulty resisting, but who satisfies all women who sleep with him–he’s a fantasy character; he has no basis in reality (well until later strips when he is fleshed out significantly and his pheremones are revealed to have emotional consequences counter to his needs).

The strip with the woman in the alley is done in a style to make people think of violence, what the sequence as a whole depends on is our relief when it is discovered that El Chupacabra is just a buffoon with strong pheremones.

Steak’s sexual advances are largely lacking in consequence for other reasons, one is that he obviously has no comprehension that his attentions can even be unwanted, he appears not to even be able to process that information. Also, Steak’s advances have negative consequences–part of the joke is his inability to learn constantly resulting in the same consequence, much in the same way that Wile E. Coyote never learns to purchase a frozen chicken through Acme instead of gadgets.

Kate, you had the opportunity to stop reading at the first strip which offended you, which appears to be somewhere around strip #6. Instead you gave over however much time it took to read through the entire Chupacabra storyline and post on a public forum your growing outrage over the strip–a well liked strip at that. You rejected the reality of the strip–and that’s your prerogative.

I applaud your stance in favor of your convictions, but do not share your opinion, and am somewhat puzzled by it.

I can sympathize with both camps, here.

Personally, I didn’t read the earliest Girly comics until after I had read the current ones for some time, so, when I read the strips in question, I more or less knew what was going on in the story, and didn’t react as strongly as I might have otherwise. The comic itself also has a lot to recommend it; the pacing and character expressions add a lot to the humor, although some of the jokes aren’t always my cup of tea.

However, I can see where Kate is coming from. If a person is reading from the beginning, he or she won’t have the same context, and the first strip could very well suggest a rape, especially given the suspenseful images. Also, although people generally haven’t acknowledged it, there is some ambiguity about Chuy’s nature for 50 or so strips (it’s not completely clear until this strip), and many of the strips could be interpreted to suggest that either Chuy is irresistible or that he is raping women and the women actually end up enjoying it. That’s a long time to carry out a “bait and switch” joke, and readers who might think that the first comic was a rape would naturally get incensed when they saw the “rapist” running around, acting adorably, and gaining the appreciation of his “victims.”

Ubertube,

Man, you caught us. Kate and I hate Josh Lesnick so much that we plotted for 2 1/2 years after strip #6, pretending not to know each other.

When none would suspect, I helped start a blog, bided my time, brought Kate on board, and WAITED some more to lull Josh into a sense of complacency. THEN we struck! For great justice!

Hmm, well this has certainly made me think… I certainly think that modern attitudes to rape need challenge- a UK survery showed a remarkable amount of men thought women were “asking for it” when wearing revealing clothing.

Girly is a very funny strip- I really like it, and this won’t dissaude me. I guess I never read the strip like that. Another reading, might, I suggest rape, but I dunno, I really don’t think Girly is contributing to the problem. After all, the conclusion IS that his actions are wrong, even in the context that these people do come on to him

Gary: No amount of snarkiness can cover up the fact that you’re an asshole. You only wrote this article after it was asked why you never covered girly before. This was a direct attack on Josh and his work.

Er… Ubertube?

I disagree with the essay too, but… um….

You *do* realize Gary didn’t write it, right?

Ubertube: As baseless and wrongheaded I believe this review is, I don’t think it’s part of the international conspiracy to discredit and humiliate Josh Lesnick.

Also I’ve really got to wonder why Kate hasn’t replied to any of these comments. I can understand her point of view but seriously, Girly? I understand that Josh has a reputation from the old Wendy days but compared to a lot of comics, Girly’s one of the more harmless goofy cartoony comics I’ve seen on the internet. I can understand not liking the comic but throwing around accusations like these isn’t something to do lightly.

It’s always something! If it’s not one thing, it’s another! If it’s not that, it’s something else!

I actually read Girly starting from the beginning, rather than play catch up. It never once occured to me that Chuy was a rapist, and, if I recall correctly, has recently tried to make himself into something other than what he was in the beginning of this strip. It’s been a while since I went through the archive, but I remember the who Chupacabre situation as being more lidcrous than anything else. I know we all bring our own baggage that flavors our exposure to different works, but to read Chuy as being an unrepentant rapist, and then call Josh on condoning the act through depicting something that’s never been called such in the work itself seems a bit…off… to me.

While I’ve never been raped, rape IS one of those subjects that cuts a little close to home for me…

…but I think that Girly is pretty cool. I’ve actually been reading it post-reading this review. I don’t agree with it being labelled as a long rape joke, really. It’s not. It’s lighthearted satire. You expect stereotypical danger, and instead you get something entirely different. I don’t think it is suggestive of being about rape, or making fun of it. It is, however, a very absurdist comic, and that is probably why I think it works. It suggests something quite wrong but then veers off course into something truly odd before it gets offensive.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. And, yes, I am a girl

[...] William G. sends webcomics blog comment in re: the Girly contretemps, adds to quality of discussion. Mr G intended to add the comment to that posting, but since the discussion had scrolled a couple of pages long, he felt that it was a dead topic. However, other comments have arrived since he emailed us, and I think it’s an interesting POV, so it’s been added to that thread. [...]

As per this posting, William G. sent this comment along to the Fleen Contact Hotline. was recieved on 4 July 2006, and is reproduced here in full:

William G wrote:
I don’t know how the Josh Lesnick rape debate came to my attention, but it prompted me to write.

I also have had some trouble with Josh’s work in the past. It does seem rather “rapey” and “under-agey” doesn’t it? And I thought long and hard about it, and I realized that these vibes aren’t due to any sort of devience on his part.

As you Fleeners probably know, most North American “manga” tends to follow the conventions of a certain style of Japanese comic without actually understanding the history and culture that goes into it. Josh’s influences seem to be the “sex n’ explosions” type of adult material that Antarctic Press and fanclubs made available in the early 90s: Bondage Faeries, Hot Shots, stuff like that.

Thing is, with Lesnick working this style, he’s also including the cultural baggage that comes with it. An idea that women are second class citizens there soley for the pleasure of men, the idea of the younger the better, and rape is a form of foreplay (Which is common all over Asia) do show up in his character designs, and story elements.

So even if he’s not doing it intentionally, the style he’s working in adds these themes into the work. And some people pick up on it without having any sort of definitive examples to point out.

Okay, let me try to phrase this in a way even a dipshit like William G can understand:
Say you spent ten years of your life as an overweight fatass who ate nothing but corn chips and taffy, and recieved plenty of grief for it. Eventually, you realize there are many things wrong with this way of living, and spend about 5 grueling years working on ways to overcome it and live differently, until you become physically fit, putting the years of unhealthy living behind you.
Wouldn’t it piss you off if people continued calling you “fatty”?

Whenever you ignorant shmucks keep associating me with lame anime-style artists, I have every right to tell you to fuck off.

And I am saying this to you right now: Kate Ditzler’s article was contrived, outlandish bullshit, and any attempt to defend what she said is equally contrived. Don’t try to tell me otherwise; I do not buy it.

Philia: That’s the brute who raped my country, Thrace!
Pseudolus: He raped Thrace?
Philia: And then he came and did it again! And then again!
Pseudolus: He raped Thrace thrice?

I don’t like to pick apart a person’s work like this, but I would expect someone to do the same to me if I submitted an essay that was poorly thought out.

Kate’s first point is that rape is too emotional a subject to be used for comedy. Rape is, of course, a terrible crime, but nothing is off limits in humor, especially in an unregulated environment like the internet. Does that mean that you have to find it funny? No, but it doesn’t mean that no one else is allowed to, either.

The rest of the essay, rather than building on the main thesis using a variety of examples, instead continues to focus on Girly. The reasons given for this in the piece ring false with me because, as Dr. Stevew noted, the argument applies real-world perceptions to an environment as outlandish and downright ludicrous as Cute-Town. The joke isn’t that Chupacabre is a rapist and got away with it; it’s worth noting that he didn’t try to force himself on Winter when she refused his advances. Chuy’s real story is how he has to deal with being incredibly desirable to women yet unable to attain a lasting emotional relationship, and his first storylines in Girly were merely to provide background for his character by showing that he is not just attractive but literally irresistible.

Girly doesn’t endorse rape any more than South Park supports AIDS or anti-Semitism.

“RAPE!” :
It’s not just the last four letters in gRAPE anymore!

Well, I can just be satisfied with hating Girly for aesthetic reasons.

Congratulations, Snipergirl. You are 100% likely to fundamentally disagree with William G’s weird and ill-thought out opinions.

Click here to retake this test. Or click here to read the advice of someone far more, *ahem*, informed?

(Just so we’re clear, is Phat DJ W-G trying to imply that anything drawn in a vaguely anime style is by definition pro-rape and anti-feminist?)

Ah, buggerit, that second link was supposed to be this

Now my joke is ruineded . I cry a thousand tears.

Ah, buggerit, that second link was supposed to be this

Now my joke is ruineded . I cry a thousand tears.

I love the Girly art style, but I hate their comics. Frankly, I think its all in very poor taste, and each strip becomes more banal.

This is the most idiotically under-researched and ill-informed article I have ever read on the internet.

ON.
THE INTERNET.

Ohhhh I mean it.

The thing with El Chupacabre is that he just shows up, and the women sex HIM. It is MUTUAL, they don’t say or indicate no. They scream because they’re startle, and then they have sex. If they ever fought or said no, he’d be confused but he’d leave. In fact, if there’s any connotation of rape in the story, in the later arcs, the women practically rape him!

And that’s just if the story is taken seriously. It’s not. It’s a silly lighthearted satire that has as much perversity as a Loony Tunes cartoon.

I’d like to respond to SniperGirl’s comments, but I figure I’d best leave that to the William G she made up in her head, should he decide to come around. Silly fanfemme…

As for you Josh: I offered a probable reason for why people sometimes have trouble with your comics. It’s quite obvious that this perception of your work exists, and while you don’t like the perception being there.. well, you lashing out at me for offering it is simply not my problem.

What you should be doing is taking criticisms and trying to figure out how to keep future misinterpretations of your work from happening… Or, you can return to the protective womb of your fanbase telling you how great you are.

It’s really up to you.

But Will, it’s a totally BOGUS interpretation. Even if you are right, you’re saying that people are reading themes into Josh’s work that aren’t there, simply because they’ve seen those themes in OTHER work that they consider similar in style.

“This comic doesn’t have rape in it, but it kind of REMINDS me of comics that have rape in them, so I don’t like it,” is not a criticism that any author should be taking seriously. That kind of “baggage” belongs to the reader, not the artist or the comic style.

And anyone who draws a comic that discusses sex can expect to see that baggage expose itself through reader interpretations, because man, EVERYONE has some kind of baggage about sex.

Well I think Girly’s unfair to eggplants.

Josh had better try to keep me from being a complete idiot and thinking that!

… And what the F does that opening line, “Six comics in sexual harassment becomes a joke” mean, anyway?

Ah but there are no bogus interpretations. Whether it’s writing, painting, sculpting, or (insert medium here); you make your art public, you deal with how individuals read it. Interpretation is subjective. Subjectivity is derived from personal experience. One person’s bogus is another’s truth.

Disagree?
… ’twill be the grout.

“They scream because theyâ€™re startle, and then they have sex. If they ever fought or said no, heâ€™d be confused but heâ€™d leave.”

Oh, that’s okay; so if he grabs a woman and starts trying to have intercourse with her, and she fought back, he’d stop ? WHAT A GENTLEMAN.

Seriously, this comic is unusual. The woman is found lying in the street afterwards, naked, and everyone’s response is “wow, she must have had an awesome time !”

I get that it’s a joke. But it’s an odd joke. Does anyone here think it’s romantic to be followed through an alley by a stranger ? It may not be rape. But it doesn’t seem to be entirely consensual either.

Please try to see where Kate is coming from- if this were a scene in any other movie or comic, if this were DC, we’d be scratching our heads. I understand that the comic’s creator is anti-violence and anti-rape, but the message has to carry in the medium.

My two cents.

Hehe, fanfemme. Unoriginal AND sexist all in one!

I LIKE IT!

Alright, assuming this was supposed to be a review of Girly, it wasn’t a very thorough one. The reviewer only read one story arc, then wrote about it. How the hell is that a review?
This would be similar to if someone only read Something Positive’s Nerdrotica story arc, then wrote an enraged article about how SP exists soley to promote porn.

If this was indeed supposed to be a review of the comic as a whole, it might help to (GASP) actually read the entire comic. As a webcomic reviewer, you should be going through the entire archive of a comic before committing to an opinion of it and the idea of writing an article even crosses your mind. Yes, it’s time consuming and tiring, but without doing that how can the article be accurate? As we see here, for example, it can’t.
Assumptions and not getting the whole story make for inaccurate tripe like this.

For some reason I have a feeling that this article was an attack on Josh’s choice to use porn (Slipshine) as a means of income. Of course if someone uses an alternate means such as that to support themselves he MUST be a sex obsessed freak!
Although I do not have any solid evidence that Josh is not a nympho (except that from what I’ve heard he’s a really nice guy), I do feel that both his Adult and “Clean” work is in good taste, and I have yet to be offended by them (because I’m female so my chance of getting offended by sex and nudity is 100x more likely than a male, amIright?).

Of course, there’s a chance that you either don’t know about Slipshine or have no problem with it. In which case, this was just one poorly executed article in a sea of brilliance (which I have yet to read) and it will never happen again.

Baaaaaw! This comic presents what I consider to be rape in what I consider to be an insensitive manner! This comic doesn’t submit to my own unique and reactionary viewpoint on the world!

Why won’t everyone just agree with me all the time? Why is everyone else so wrong about everyting? Baaaaaw!

I think girly is awesome, i guess people just worry too much about whats acceptable anymore.

I think we shold all just take a review as a comment which effectively it is, and just accept that everybody has varying opinions.

Just don’t stop making girly Josh because its amazing.

…. I’m sorry, did you even -read- Girly? I’ve been reading it from the start and am still hooked. If maybe you’d looked a little further than your knee-jerk misunderstanding of El Chupacabre, you’d have seen that he develops and evolves as something complex, sensitive and -gasp!- FUNNY. Girly is clever, endearing, and off-the-wall. It’s cute and it’s rude and it’s great. It’s definitely -not- an apologia for rape? Any more than it’s an apologia for shooting people into space, huh. And just because everyone else is doing it, I’ll mention that I, also, am a GIRL and that I ENJOY Girly muchly. Girl. Enjoying. Not offended. Not creeped out. But then again, I’ve read the damn thing through.

I mean, really. Why even “review” (the word scarcely applies here) a comic if you’re going to emit something like the above? Beyond misreading the (small part of the comic you read) entirely, I’d say your greatest sin is almost one of omission. Not a single mention of the artwork – a tenet of Girly, in my opinion. Bold, boppy and savvy, reflecting inventiveness and borrowing elements from comics’ long tradition, the art is what makes me go back again and again.

Oh, and… MARSHMALLOW CAT. Come on. A review of Girly needs a mention of Marshmallow Cat!

I mean… This is just a ridiculous un-review. Got something against Mr. Lesnick personally or something? Tease you in grade three? Dated your sister? Because whatever this is, it ain’t a review of Girly – one of my favourite web (or any!) comics out there.

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