The Worst People in the World?
In case you hadn’t heard (I’ll admit, the hype around the latest incident is a lot less than it was 3 years ago), Mike “Gabriel” Krahulik has re-opened the “Dickwolves” controversy a few weeks ago at PAX Prime when he said that pulling the Dickwolf merchandise was a mistake. In case you were unaware, nearly 3 years ago, Penny Arcade made a joke about poor villagers being raped to sleep nightly by dickwolves (not to be confused with Law & Order creator Dick Wolf). They then made some merch about it. Then, everybody got really mad at them for making a joke where rape was part of the punch line and ultimately profiting from it.
This happens only a few weeks after Mark Millar came under fire for his use of rape within his own comics (aka Wanted, Nemesis, Kick-Ass 2) as a plot device. To Mr. Millar, rape can be used as a plot device insofar as it is up there with the worst thing a bad guy can do. Murder and torture have grown pretty commonplace in pop-culture these days. Comic books and video games are just chalk full of murder. Often at the hands of the good guys even. So if murder, torture, kidnapping and general bodily harm are par for the course, how do you make your villain stand out as a really, really terrible person? You make them rape someone. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
