Flashing The Flesh
I was extolling the revealing virtues of Army shorts in recent posts. The covers of 1960's war comics often flashed soldier flesh, in spite of the impressionable ages of their readers.
When I was younger I was much attracted to blond young men, a combination of surfing influences of the time and a schoolboy crush, but I suspect I might have found this character a bit too blond.
He's clearly intended to press buttons with his audience and I immediately suspected a gay hand behind the picture (as is my wont!)
The short sleeves and badges, the exotic (to a Brit!) Australian labelling and the sensual skin tones all hint of erotic intent. The stretch lines on the right leg might be slightly over emphatic too. Wearing shorts in the jungle seems a bit daring, with all those creepy crawlies around. However it's that leg-up pose and the sheer briefness of his shorts (with just a hint of sexy, ragged hems) which really grabbed my attention.
Look at his left leg, what do you see?
At first I thought the shorts were billowing wildly outwards and revealing naked buttock inside. Then I realised that his bottom looked too small, but it looked like the lower roundness of his exposed butt cheek had then been hastily camouflaged by the artist to look like the inside of his shorts. Still a bit racy! Eventually I saw that if you disregard the dark shadow that seems to continue the hem line curving down from the top of his thigh around the outline of his bottom, then the smaller billow implied by the skin colouring becomes more obvious.
(Still sexy though!)
Maybe it's just my weird brain, but that confusing shadow wouldn't be there in a photograph, there's no scientific basis for it being there. I prefer to imagine that the artist wanted to live up to the Commando tag of the series and show his readers a bare fleshy buttock!
As I have remarked before, he didn't have to draw it like that did he?
That comment might equally be appled to this cover image. Once again we see unusually short shorts in evidence, with just the teeniest hint of ragged edge to suggest they were once much longer
(they would have been in real life, but don't think I'm complaining!)
The fly on his shorts finishes well above his groin, having a pee would entail dropping them round his knees or ankles - with all those sex-starved comrades around. Maybe that's why he 's shortened the legs, to get it out that way! The area below his fly is confused, it's blurred and bears no relation to the contours of his body, erotic or otherwise. The blueish area between his legs is just wrong and the dark shadows and open leg to the right of it end abruptly (like his fly seems to).
This was once a much more interesting picture that has been doctored.
The open leg kneeling pose is not devoid of eroticism either. It's legitimate I suppose, but it's not a standard firing position. Odd that he's straddling rocks like this, one of which is touching his inner thigh and looking rather like a buttock and the other having a very suggestive shape indeed!
An artists revenge on the censor?
For some reason the jungle seems to give even greater flesh-flashing opportunities. I think the warm, humid atmosphere must rot the cloth. There's no need to look for hidden eroticism in this picture. The soldiers tattered threads, square jaw adorned with stubble, hunky (and hairy?) bared arms and menacing weapon all adequately deliver the goods and the artist has even given him ginger hair for niche tastes. Personally I think he's too well tanned to be a ginge, must be out of a bottle.
A handsome GI lost in the jungle for my American readers. This is from a different book but it looks like the same artist is responsible. This chap's showing a nice bit of chest hair but that part of his body still in uniform is beyond reproach or insinuation from me, no funny shaped rocks even. Very straight. However, the full cover below shows he's in a very dangerous situation, allowing us to imagine him being captured (and tortured?)
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| click to enlarge |
This final example is not flesh-baring at all, but at first sight it looks like it is, with the charging soldier seemingly showing a bared right leg, like a mason. It's actually a trick of the light but that shadow and the highlighting of the leg below is really very odd.
As I may have said before, the artist didn't have to draw it like that did he?
(I'll pass over the suggestive angling of the gun pointing up between his legs from the trench).
For other articles in this series click on the 'war comics' label below