Wednesday, February 11, 2009

THE NUDE EVOLUTION BOMB


A fellow fan who has read (as I have not) 2008’s BRUSH WITH PASSION, a biography of Dave Stevens (1955-2008), informed me that in that book Stevens reminisced that in retrospect he wasn’t entirely happy that he’d done a near-nude drawing of a Bettie Page lookalike character for Pacific’s ROCKETEER comic. True, most people would concede that this “exposure” (the pun had to be said) renewed fandom’s interest in the works and career of the classic queen of nudie-photos, who had prior to ROCKETEER been largely forgotten by mavens of pop culture. The renewed interest led to an assortment of Bettie Page comics and merchandise and some money to the long-retired Page before her death, the same year Stevens passed.

Of course, Stevens may have been regretful because he became personally acquainted with Page after drawing the heralded ROCKETEER scene. Even though what he drew was largely if not totally based on photographs over 30 years old, one might argue that he “unveiled” some of Page’s feminine mysteries for a new audience, so he may have felt self-conscious about that.

IMO, though, he had no reason to be self-conscious. Putting aside the material benefits to Page in her later years, what Stevens did in his drawing—modest as it is, even compared to nudie-photos of Page’s time—is just another of countless manifestations of the “look/don’t look” sexual dynamic that defines men and women, perhaps not just culturally, but biologically.

In SEX, TIME AND POWER, Leonard Shlain argues (and I paraphrase for convenience) that human evolution came about largely when the female of the species changed from a predictable estrus-cycle to a more unpredictable form of reproductive availability. From that, Shlain argues that the female animal in human form gained the ability to exploit her newfound mysteriousness, an ability to say “no,” so as to make the male of the species a little more deferential to her whims, which in turn promoted more lasting forms of familial bonding.

Thus history, not Dave Stevens, casts woman in the role of the veiler of mysteries, and man as the unveiler. One can cavil about exceptions, but dominantly, hetero men want to look (and more than look) because they’re told they can’t/shouldn’t/need to wait till the headache goes away. A good nudie picture, whether snapped or drawn, captures this ambivalence between looking and not looking.

If I were compiling a “best 100 most iconic moments of comics” list, Stevens’ROCKETEER homage to the nudie-cuteys would place high on that list.

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