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Let me just start out with saying PW is a wonderful Idea. Swiftriver gets seen by more people than it would have without Project Wonderful. It’s also a great way for me to see what other comics are out there and advertising. But I’m seeing a trend lately in people putting up cleavage shots in order to entice people to their site.
Sex sells. We all know this. And with certain advertisers, I can understand this, if it was part of the strip to begin with. Take for example, Least I Could Do by Ryan Sohmer and Lar deSouza. Occasionally, their advertizing campaign will grace my skyscraper with some cleavage shots of Issa. And I expect that from them, because sex and comedy are what LICD is about.
But then I’ll get the occasional ad from varios MMO’s. And I don’t see anything about the game other than “here’s what your warrior woman isn’t wearing.” Or boob shots of some token female character in comics that wouldn’t be flashing them in the first place. It’d be like putting random crotch shots of my supporting characters for no particular reason.
I have no problem with boobage. I happen to have two myself. But really, don’t be going all New Orleans Mardi Gras on me unless it’s actually part of what you’re doing. At least throw me some beads or something.
In January, I’ll be taking part in a fundraiser event called the Comic Creators Alliance: Fighting Together to End Human Trafficking. Last year 87 comic creators united to create one desktop wallpaper image featuring all their different characters, and together raised $10,000 for the purpose of fighting Human Trafficking! I’ve been asked to take part this year, so I’ll be adding Miranda to the wallpaper along side everyone else.
What is Human Trafficking? Human Trafficking is a sanitized term for slavery. There are over 27 million people enslaved in the world today, and most if it is young girls being sold into forced prostitution–both over seas and yes, in the United States. In the United States there are only 39 beds at facilities for victims in the entire nation–and at least 16,000 people being trafficked into the US from other countries each year! Not to count the domestic victims already living here.
The money that the CCA raised last year was split between two organizations, one global–Love 146, and a local shelter trying to get up and running–Gracehaven in Ohio. (Toledo, Ohio is one of the largest trafficking hubs in the U.S.) Both organizations were able to expand their particular fights against this heinous problem in 2010. Love 146 is setting up Task Forces around America, local groups of concerned citizens bringing the fight and awareness to their own corners of the nation. Internationally, Love 146 set up the Cambodia Border Officers Project . This is total prevention: officers patrol the border crossing, looking for possible victims and the kids they rescue will never know the horrors they might have. Gracehaven used our funds in the ongoing renovations that are necessary to bring the house up to code–plumbing and air conditioning were installed, along with two new bathrooms. They hope to be up and running soon but must first have six months of operating expenses in the bank. They are currently at one fifth of their goal–let’s see what we can do to help them!
The Donations Drive goes live January 11th on National Human Trafficking Awareness Day and will last for 2 weeks. See you then!
BTW, did you know that there’s a facebook exclusive contest going on right now?
I posted this in my LJ earlier, but I thought I’d repost here.
Here’s the thing: I created a page where I had to draw my own personal line as to where to censor my comic. I’ve shown gore (the Spider Lady Splatter fest), I’ve had people swearing (the occasional shit and fuck), I’ve even shown bare breasts, though not in a sexual context. So I consider Swiftriver to be a PG-13 if I had to give it a rating.
But Bowie is a ladies man, and enjoys sex. Eventually, I knew I would hit a point in my story where nudity would come into play in a sexual sense. The page I wrote doesn’t even have full frontal nudity or anything. Want to know what I was agonizing over?
A naked butt.
I mean, honestly, I’ve seen more than that in a typical National Geographic magazine. Art museums have naked butts all the time. And not just in an art context (If you want blatant ancient Greek art/porn, go check out the Greek pottery exhibit at the MFA. Seriously. This was not worshiping the art of the nude, people. This is what this internet was in 1000 BC.)
So my dilemma was “should I show the naked butt or not?” And I ended up with “not.” I ended up drawing panties on her. Not because I was ashamed. I just feel at this point that if anyone in the comic should be nude in a sexual sense, it should probably be one of the main characters. And I don’t plan on having any of them naked at any point in the near future. I still feel it’s titillating and sexy, I just don’t want to waste the opportunity on a third-string character at this point.
So long story short. This page is PG-13, but could be considered NSFW.
