Erotic Mad Science Invades Wholesome American Comic
Or it did back around 2000 anyway. Chris’s Invincible Superblog has a post pointing out that the Archie spin-off comic book to Archie’s Weird Mysteries in which Archie Andrews dates a sexbot named Lisi.
Lisi was created by a local mad scientist to have the best features of both Betty and Veronica, I believe as some sort of very-necessary research into teenage sexuality. She thus interestingly represents an attempt at sort of erotic chimera, like Jireen who was created out of Jill Keeney and Maureen Creel. Although as far as I know, neither Betty nor Veronica had to be dissolved in the process of making Lisi. (Darn!)
Squick or squee, I guess. Though perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that something like this was going on somewhere in the Archie fictional universe. I mean, Don DeCarlo did a lot of its art for a long time, and we know that DeCarlo definitely had a thing for sci-fi cheesecake and I’d wager he’d have ventured into erotic mad science given free rein…
Glad I’m alive now, rather than back then.
Aesthetics of the Fly III
In the end, Seth Brundle decides he just can’t hack being a human-fly hybrid (one which is becoming more fly than human as time goes on). And there have been complications, in the form of his girlfriend Veronica getting pregnant (with what it’s not clear).
So Brundle comes up with what is clearly very much a mad science idea, which is that he is going to use his transporter to fuse himself, Veronica, and baby into a single hybrid, one which he hopes will be more human than fly.
It’s quite an audacious idea, I must say, and perhaps it’s one source of my idea of fusing Maureen Creel and Jill Keeney into a single woman named Jireen. Unfortunately for science, Veronica is no more keen on the idea of being fused with Brundle than Aloysius was with Jireen, when Jireen proposed exactly that.
It’s a close call for Veronica, though. She almost gets fused. And I must say she makes a fetching mad science almost-victim.
Not a movie that really ends well for any of its protagonists. But it’s a true classic all the same.
An angel, silly…
Jireen’s little mission of erotic mercy at the State Home for Wayward girls brought to mind this image of the Brazilian model Gabriella posted in a free gallery at Hegre-Art.com. It seemed like a good way to start what in the U.S. at least is a holiday weekend.
There’s a video sequence of this model in the shower, also done by Hegre, but available by subscription only. (I’ve seen it, and it is pretty amazing.) My hat tip for reminding me of this specific image is Violet Blue, whose caveat about Hegre-Art I generally agree with, FWIW.
But shouldn’t there be an image of two girls? Well, in the script, one is invisible, right?
La Marseillaise
Jireen goes after Rob with seduction technology that works: movies. And she picks a particularly powerful one.
I can say that I’ve actually had the experience of being in a college movie auditorium where everyone got up and sang the “Marseillaise” at the appropriate point in Casablanca, and about that experience this I can say. If you haven’t been lucky enough to have it, go out and have it. You won’t be sorry. It’s a true testimony to the power of song.
I can’t embed it for some reason, but you can see the relevant clip on YouTube here.
So all together now:
Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L’étendard sanglant est levé
Entendez-vous dans nos campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras.
Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes!
Aux armes citoyens
Formez vos bataillons
Marchons, marchons
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons.
Conjoinment
At the end of Gnosis Dreamscapes, Aloysius attempts a Hail Mary play with the Apsinthion Protocol to try to save the lives of Jill and Maureen, both gravely wounded in their encounter with Madder’s thugs.
As so often in mad science, what happens isn’t exactly according to plan, and what results is a conjoinment of Jill and Maureen. More personal identity porn
Now with a little bit of effort you can find a fair amount of conjoinment material out there. This example is found at Gammatelier, which has a lot of this sort of thing, very fetchingly done too.
But of course this art, though perhaps appealing, isn’t quite what’s going on in Gnosis Dreamscapes. Jill and Maureen fuse completely to make a single individual, not just a sort of conjoined non-twin (or triplet, or what have you). Artistic representations of that more complete process are harder to find, probably because a single fused being looks rather a lot like just another human being.
But there is at least one fine example of a complete fusion. Back in the 1990s John Byrne , a prolific comic book artist who has worked on more superheroes than most people even know exist (website here) created a short-run series called Babe. Babe was created when five separate women were fused together through some weird process involving alien technology and arcane forces (can you hear the thaumatophiles panting?), creating a being geometrically stronger and tougher (and arguably, more comic-book outlandish) than any of the five women put together.
Eventually the situation got defused and we get to see Babe’s five component women:
Though in a later series Babe was re-created. The scene in which one of her component women vanishes to recreate Babe should have a familiar feel to readers of The Apsinthion Protocol.
I don’t think Carolyn actually melts away — panels in the previous number suggest she spontaneously dematerializes/is teleported away while showering, in a scene reminiscent of one that happens in Mars Needs Women. (If you remember that scene, or indeed anything else in Mars Needs Women, you have my sympathy.)
And as for Maureen and Jill? As the last intertitle says…to be continued.
