Johnny Walker posted:

The Phantom

Julet Esqu posted:

Tiff's dad finally gets a face! I guess the Evanses finally realized that it was getting beyond ridiculous! Congratulations, Tiff's dad!

So it's still too early to tell for sure, but it does kind of look like Tiff's idea of growing up is to make nice with her abuser. Disappointing, if true.

Kind of hoping the next panel is Tiff's dad saying, "But darling! We promised each other we'd save ourselves for marriage!" Or that the sonogram is from Tiff's dad's side-piece. (I know neither will be true, but I can dream.)

Bobulus posted:

Is it weird that I find this more vaguely unsettling than the strips where they talk about eating sentient being? The hedgehog is doing this weird matchmaking where she first prevents the mink from running off, then presents George to her as a viable dating opportunity, and then when the mink is creeped out and runs away, creates a situation where she'll have to be close to George from here on in. Not leaving a lot of room for choice here, you know?

Kennel posted:

Medenmath posted:

Vintage Valiant (Nov. 19, 1939)

Green Intern posted:

1. If this is going where I think it is, I am extremely hype for it.
2. Is Piscaro implied to be a a sexual predator, based on that third panel? That's a bit unfortunate to see in what otherwise is a pretty good strip.

Edit: If we just had Share Zone Phantom for the rest of time, that'd be ok.

Medenmath posted:

His posture there is fairly suggestive, but I took that panel to mean that Piscaro is a villainous sadist who expects to enjoy torturing Val to death for insulting him, not that he intended anything sexual about it.

How Wonderful! posted:

I have bad news for you about how homosexuality was generally portrayed in popular culture for basically forever.

A good example because it's sadly recent and almost identical to what's going on here is one of the antagonists of The Witcher 2 (2011), a sneaky advisor guy named Dethmold. Like many characters like him before, he's conniving and treacherous and sadistic but cowardly and ugly. The real kicker is that you find out late in the game that he's also gay with a thing for younger men-- a trait long assigned to villains of that mold to signify them as effete, perverse, predatory, and "less than" the manly men who show up to stop them.

Piscaro seems precisely the same. It isn't merely that he's a cruel torturer who's ok with doing harm to our hero-- he also aestheticizes both the body he's going to be torturing and the torture itself in a way that is definitely meant to be queer-coded. Note his body language in panels two and four-- it's very much like comedic depictions of gay masculinity in pop culture throughout the first half of the 20th century. I love Prince Valiant but for sure you're accurately picking up, I think, on something quite common and quite ugly.

PetraCore posted:

There's at least a little bit of villanous queercoding going on with Piscaro's foppishness, sadism, cowardice, and general presentation. Note how he's presented in contrast to Valiant being a 'real man' with perfumes, guards for protection, enjoying hurting people but only brave enough to do it when they're helpless, flowery language and dress.

From our modern point of view Val himself is extremely homoerotic and it's very easy to read him as a bisexual murder hobo, but that was hardly the intention at the time. THESE beautiful youthful warriors wrestling shirtless and complimenting each others beautiful bodies are GOOD and HETEROSEXUAL, while THIS gilded coward complimenting the body of his torture victim is STRANGELY QUEER, HOW SINISTER.

PetraCore posted:

There's at least a little bit of villanous queercoding going on with Piscaro's foppishness, sadism, cowardice, and general presentation. Note how he's presented in contrast to Valiant being a 'real man' with perfumes, guards for protection, enjoying hurting people but only brave enough to do it when they're helpless, flowery language and dress.

From our modern point of view Val himself is extremely homoerotic and it's very easy to read him as a bisexual murder hobo, but that was hardly the intention at the time. THESE beautiful youthful warriors wrestling shirtless and complimenting each others beautiful bodies are GOOD and HETEROSEXUAL, while THIS gilded coward complimenting the body of his torture victim is STRANGELY QUEER, HOW SINISTER.

How Wonderful! posted:

I have bad news for you about how homosexuality was generally portrayed in popular culture for basically forever.

A good example because it's sadly recent and almost identical to what's going on here is one of the antagonists of The Witcher 2 (2011), a sneaky advisor guy named Dethmold. Like many characters like him before, he's conniving and treacherous and sadistic but cowardly and ugly. The real kicker is that you find out late in the game that he's also gay with a thing for younger men-- a trait long assigned to villains of that mold to signify them as effete, perverse, predatory, and "less than" the manly men who show up to stop them.

Piscaro seems precisely the same. It isn't merely that he's a cruel torturer who's ok with doing harm to our hero-- he also aestheticizes both the body he's going to be torturing and the torture itself in a way that is definitely meant to be queer-coded. Note his body language in panels two and four-- it's very much like comedic depictions of gay masculinity in pop culture throughout the first half of the 20th century. I love Prince Valiant but for sure you're accurately picking up, I think, on something quite common and quite ugly.

My Lovely Horse posted:

All those times Valiant and his manly knight friends held their gay celebrations.

Powered Descent posted:

Devil ate some of the roofied lion-heart too, right? I wonder what vision his bad trip is bringing. (Perhaps he's seeing himself as one of the dogs in Pooch Cafe.)

How Wonderful! posted:

I have bad news for you about how homosexuality was generally portrayed in popular culture for basically forever.

A good example because it's sadly recent and almost identical to what's going on here is one of the antagonists of The Witcher 2 (2011), a sneaky advisor guy named Dethmold. Like many characters like him before, he's conniving and treacherous and sadistic but cowardly and ugly. The real kicker is that you find out late in the game that he's also gay with a thing for younger men-- a trait long assigned to villains of that mold to signify them as effete, perverse, predatory, and "less than" the manly men who show up to stop them.

Piscaro seems precisely the same. It isn't merely that he's a cruel torturer who's ok with doing harm to our hero-- he also aestheticizes both the body he's going to be torturing and the torture itself in a way that is definitely meant to be queer-coded. Note his body language in panels two and four-- it's very much like comedic depictions of gay masculinity in pop culture throughout the first half of the 20th century. I love Prince Valiant but for sure you're accurately picking up, I think, on something quite common and quite ugly.

curtadams posted:

The "missing Nancy" reference might be to the fact that Nancy, once one of the most widely syndicated comics, was getting a little hard to find by then. Syndication of Nancy tailed off quite a bit after Bushmiller died in 1982, and the general opinion was that the successor artists hadn't successfully copied Bushmiller's techniques. I vaguely remember something about "what happened to Nancy?" *before* the Gilchrist era, but I can't remember any specifics.

F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:

Oh...I thought that was a younger Lucy.

Alhazred posted:

Green Intern posted:

Edit: I sometimes forget that Prince Valiant is a product of its time. This might be the first time this exact situation for the strip has come up in the thread?
And I don't think you're entirely off-base about the antisemitic coding also, given Piscaro's general features.

PainterofCrap posted:

Agreed, the inferences to physique are designed to inform the reader that Piscaro is the deepest form of evil: deviant.

Aside from this shading of Picaro's personality, nothing more need be done. By the mid-1930s, the comics page was chiefly aimed at children (although the best narratives are artfully dual - something for kids as well as adults, a skill Looney Tunes and the Fleischer brothers perfected); this was an object lesson.

PetraCore posted:

I gotta say, I know that's not what Foster meant, but in my heart Val is as bisexual as the day is long.

Alhazred posted:

Zelda

sweeperbravo posted:

i love this so much

PainterofCrap posted:

I do, too.

Is that a breast cancer survivor in the first panel?

F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:

Oh...I thought that was a younger Lucy.

Cowslips Warren posted:

I have to admit, Rae is Doe started out cute but now it's literally like every other quirky webcomic out there.

Along the lines of Prince Val, I was watching an old (like 2015?) Transformers show with my nephew recently, and there's a Decepticon medic, Knock Out, who is extremely flashy and is pretty much a dandy, freaking the gently caress out if someone scratches his paint, etc. Very feminine in the traditional sense of fashion? I only mention this because my nephew remarked some kids at school thought he was gay, and the creators of the show said so. So we scoured Youtube and found the interview where, instead of stating so, the creators said there was a glitch in the Bot-making machine that day, so that's why Knock Out is the way he is. Like, drat, that is exactly what NOT to say.

Nikaer Drekin posted:

No, Lucy was first introduced as a baby and then eventually aged up to match the rest of the cast - the same thing happened with Schroeder and Linus, if I remember correctly. Going by the Peanuts wiki, Lucy's first strip is a little less than four months away from this one.

E: Just finally catching up with this thread after being way behind, and wow, this Funky Winkerbean storyline is infuriating. I don't know what kind of contract Les signed, but I have a feeling he's going to be banned from set real quick if he can't stop pissing and moaning about every little thing. Why is he even letting this movie get made? He clearly isn't happy about it in the slightest!

readingatwork posted:

Nope! That's Violet. She's still around in the newer strips, albeit largely forgotten and unused except as background filler.

She looks like this in more recent media:

How Wonderful! posted:

Yeah this is one of the strange paradoxes of early 20th century homophobia. The male body was definitely something that was front and center in a way that comes off as quite erotically charged to the modern eye, but "queerness" was always shunted away towards bodies that were malformed, stunted, or marred in various ways. It was like there was this expectation of a healthy way of appreciating and gazing at men and a bad way and the grammar of which was which often looks murky and ambiguous from 2020.

F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:

Thanks. I guess I'm not as up on my Peanuts lore as I thought. I always figured that Lucy and Charlie Brown were the same age.

PetraCore posted:

From our modern point of view Val himself is extremely homoerotic and it's very easy to read him as a bisexual murder hobo, but that was hardly the intention at the time.

bad posts ahead!!! posted:

rae the doe feels designed by committee