Top 10 #3: Internal Affairs

[superboyprime]

"I had been thinking about why superhero team-up comics almost never work, and I think it is because you have to set your team against ever-escalating menaces. And I had been thinking about the ensemble in cop shows." - Alan Moore

Comments

[sadoeuphemist]

To continue the discussion from the last post, this guy Smax is just such an insistent bigot that I have trouble viewing him as anything other than that? I mean, I haven't read the Shockheaded Peter arc, so I don't know what I'm talking about here, but when I tried to look it up and found out he was racist against robots, my first instinct was to say, 'oh, so it's a joke.'

You know what I mean? These characters are so openly bigoted that doing an arc where one of them is shamed for being racist against robots strikes me more as an absurdist thing, where he is shamed for no reason other than to make fun of him, rather than a genuine attempt to communicate that"hey, bigotry is bad."

Also, this is absolutely not how colorblindness works, colorblind people don't look at a painting and go, "oh look, a blank canvas."

[icon_uk]

Dog's aren't colourblind in the human sense of colourblind ie being unable to differentiate between certain colours.

Dogs are receptive to far fewer colours overall than humans are. They can see more than black white and grey (which is the generally understood idea and what I think Moore is referencing here), but will see things only in shades of blue, yellows and purples.

So, if Moore is using the standard assumption, Kemlo wouldn't see the various distracting and contrasting colours and patterns Li uses, he'd see different shades of grey skin and wouldn't be able to distinguish between two colours if they were of the same degree of vividness, because it would just be two patches of the same shade of grey next to each other. I guess?

[sadoeuphemist]

?? Even if you xeroxed this comic and printed it in black and white, she wouldn't suddenly appear nude. The colors on her skin are obviously not all the same vividness and saturation.

[icon_uk]

It was the best answer I could come up with, you want more, take it up with Mr Moore.

Though again, I'm not sure dogs have the same level of vividness/saturation sensitivity that humans do, so that's probably more of a grey area, no pun intended. :)

[laughing_tree]

There was definitely humor in the Shockheaded Peter stuff, but at the same time Moore was definitely playing it for genuine drama, a weave of the two.

Though it seems I do need to take back a little from what I was saying earlier. I'd completely forgotten that Pete's bigotry was set up as early as this issue.

[gnarll]

I'm not sure how it'd work anyway. I mean the shape of the downstairs would show regardless of the pigments if you see what I mean. And not sure why its would be the colorblind guys fault.

[laughing_tree]

I see it as a joke about how a lot of superheroine costumes look like they're painted on, under certain artists. Here we have a superheroine whose costume is literally just a layer of color.

[lordultimus]

So is the point to make Sarge look like an asshole who lies about his sexuality so he can ogle his coworkers without their permission? Because if it's not, I'm finding it hard to like him.

[gnarll]

I don't know... I mean she comes to work naked. She never checked if that was ok with anyone. Probably not in compliance with dress and uniform codes. I'm not sure how upset she can get about it.

[gnarll]

Thinking about it, Sarges letting the other guy in on it seems far more skeevy than letting it slide when she comes into work very out of uniform.

[silicondream]

Yeah, if you're naked in a public space, you don't really have a right to privacy. I mean, aggressive ogling is wrong no matter what a person is wearing, but if Sarge just has her in his field of view like he would anyone else, that's her problem, not his.

And it can't just be a dog thing. Never mind colorblind humans; what about cyborgs or robots who can desaturate their vision? What about people wearing tinted glasses? What if the room is dim, so people's cones aren't working? What if the station's security cameras are black and white? Li really didn't think this through.

[sadoeuphemist]

I feel like I'm going nuts here, why is everyone just accepting this colorblindness thing? If you reprinted this comic in black and white, it's not as if she'd appear naked in the reprint. She'd look like a woman with black and white patterns all over her body.

[silicondream]

Assuming she always wears patterns that are high-contrast with respect to lightness, sure. But what if Li occasionally decides to cover up a boob with a yellow/blue checkerboard? DOG PORNOGRAPHY.

(On another note, she'd still look like a naked woman with black and white patterns all over her body, no? Skin pigments can't replicate textured clothing; no one would be fooled if I sprayed on body paint and claimed it was Spandex.)

[sadoeuphemist]

That would just be regular pornography. The other issue with this scene is how she is fooling anybody at all. If a woman walked up to me with a blue and yellow checkerboard painted on her boob, I would not say, oh, that's a nice blouse. I would say, oh, you painted your boob, and also you're naked.

I do not think there's any pattern or combination that would make her look fully clothed in technicolor, while making her look naked in back and white.

[thezmage]

I think this isn’t complicated somewhat with her backstory. She was created with the same nudity taboos of the typical Top Ten citizen but with a competing feeling that makes her completely uncomfortable wearing clothes, and this shifting pigments is her best compromise. So her nudity isn’t really a choice but more of a symbol of her creation as a sex object, and the idea that Sarge has been able to see through it all along without her knowing could very well feel like a violation.

I mean, I’m not sure what she wanted him to say. It must have taken him awhile to even realize that she was trying to disguise her nakedness, and it seems to me to be better to just not comment on it. After all, if he had been ogling her I’m pretty sure she would have known it before now, so he apparently treats her much the same as he would if she were wearing clothes.

[laughing_tree]

I imagine it's like if a character were using holograms instead of regular clothes to cover up nudity. If you have a special condition where you don't see the holograms and you're their co-worker, the responsible thing would be to tell them, "Hey, FYI, I see you naked," not to let them obliviously appear naked in front of you day in and out. If they continue to use the holograms *after* you've informed them, then the onus is on them, but not before.

[jencaasi]

I always kind of just figured the point was to show some of the complications and weirdness that can come up with all these strange characters being together. One's a dog, one's a bionic naked woman with skin pigment powers. Things get complicated.

[dcbanacek]

So this is where they got the idea for Cloverfield.