Speaking of Marvel and diversity, in 2002, Marvel published a Cage mini written by Brian Azzarello with art by Richard Corben. It was rough, gritty and unforgettable.

However, on one page, Corben—known for his take-no-prisoners, wear-no-pants underground comics—drew Luke Cage au natural. Colorist Jose Villarubia played “Il Braghettone” to this particular incident, putting some shadows on Cage’s manhood. But a Spanish blog has revealed the unexpurgated scenes.

As usual the female toplessness was fine, but male frontal was a no no!

cage corben 1.jpg

cage corben.jpg

12 COMMENTS

  1. there’s a whole list of things i do naked in my kitchen… cooking eggs, however, is largely on the “no” list… that is the only real thing wrong here…

  2. @Charles Knight: I know, I searched too. Third panel. As Heidi is saying: no problem to show a whole lot of the naked woman but a very small part, almost undistinguishable (is that even a word?), of the male is out of the question. -_-

  3. The male/female nudity comparison here is baseless. Breasts and genetalia are not afforded the same standards, as demonstrated by the girl’s cooch also being conveniently rendered in shadow.

  4. “I can’t believe I’m saying this but…em… where?”

    Yeah, I thought this at first, too. But then I look again and I guess you can see like a tiny put of the penis base, going down.

    “The male/female nudity comparison here is baseless. Breasts and genetalia are not afforded the same standards, as demonstrated by the girl’s cooch also being conveniently rendered in shadow.”

    I think the truth is halfway in between what you’re saying and what Heidi’s saying. Female breasts aren’t sexual organs, but they’re clearly sexualized body parts, much more so than male breasts are. I mean, c’mon. (I don’t necessarily think this is even right, but it’s how our “culture” has generally evolved. As recently as the ’70s, you’d see female breasts in movies and it wasn’t that big a deal. And of course the European Renaissance was full of fairly non-sexualized images of naked angelic boobs.) On the other hand, yeah, it’s the male and female crotches that are the much bigger issue, and both men and women have that part hidden almost always in art. (But there again too, look back to the Renaissance, and further back to the Classical era, and you’ll see that male genitalia in particular were just shown on statues quite often.)

    It’s strange how things have “evolved” so that our society is much more prurient and yet much more prone to censoring images of the human body. I think what it comes down to is that we realize that many people just have a default setting to sexualize everything, so those in charge try to head things off at the pass by censoring things. Compare that to the much more “repressive” Christian culture of several centuries past, in which Renaissance statues let it all hang out, because the culture didn’t have the propensity to think that a significant amount of viewers would use the statue as masturbation fodder.

  5. Some years ago I listened to an interview with Amy Heckerling about her unsuccessful efforts to get the MPAA to let put Robert Romanus cock (in a discernably turgid state?) into Fast Times at Ridgemont High (in a scene where the MPAA, otherwise, had not problem w Jennifer Jason Leigh’s tits being prominently on display).
    Heckerling described a long frustrating back and forth that finally resulted in her starkly confronting the MPAA powers-that-be with the question (I can’t remember how Heckeling phrased it: my words): why are you so tolerant of my movie displaying a girl’s tits, ass, pussy — but so dead set against my movie showing boy dick ? Heckerling then described how the MPAA officials actually responded with a clear answer: because the male appendage is aggressive!

    Heckeling seemed to have not had much of an idea how to respond to that (not sure I would have, either).

  6. One of my favorite all time comics. Azzarello and Corben were a weird mixture, but they put out a simply stunning comic with this.

  7. I liked Banner a lot better. Cage…well, I’m kinda inclined to agree with Dwayne McDuffie’s “Ah, I see, they’re trying to get me to not buy this comic” response.

    Sure had some fantastic art, though.

    In the end I love Corben but I think I’m just not much of an Azz fan. Banner’s the only work of his I can think of that I liked. I suppose I’d put him in with Ennis and Lapham (as a writer; I love Lapham’s art) — I respect and admire his talent, and I see why it’s appealing to some people, but it’s not for me.

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