Do You Have What it Takes to Cross That Line?

If sex sells, don't you find it ironic that people seem to be afraid of it?

Never has this been more true than in the field of animation.  Even in a time when the LGBTQ community is SLOWLY gaining representation in the medium, there are some things that are still considered taboo in the industry, even among adult animation.  That's not to say that the subject of sex isn't brought up, of course, but is it ever any more than some safe, antiseptic TEASE?  Do we ever actually get to SEE anything?  I'm speaking, of course, of good, old-fashioned, straight-up NUDITY.

I've touched on this double-standard before with my earlier pic of the Dark Queen from Battletoads, which I drew in rebellion of her 2020 redesign.  It always seems that animation would seem to prefer focusing on the ugliest things imaginable than something that's truly beautiful.  Consider the most prominent examples of adult animation in recent years, whose definition of the medium seems to be simply to make you cringe...Genndy Tartakovski's "Primal", the Harley Quinn animated series with its spinoff "Kite Man: Hell Yeah!", and the animated adaptation of "Invincible".  What do all these shows have in common?  Enough buckets of blood to feed a weekend getaway for Dracula and 100 of his closest friends, enough mountains of gore to choke even Art the Clown, and in some cases, enough F-bombs to make anyone from Joe Pesci to Gordon Ramsey go, "Jesus Christ, do I have to wash your fuckin' mouths out with soap?!".  But God forbid, anyone should even SUGGEST throwing a beautiful naked woman up on screen*, and suddenly, you're in a room full of low foreheads, all fidgeting and wringing their hands nervously..."Er, uh, well...you know...that's a bit much, don't you think?"

(*And no, that scene with Knockout in the DC animated movie, "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay", doesn't count, because it was ONE-WHOLE-FRAME!  Literally BLINK, and you'll MISS it.)

Now OBVIOUSLY, I'm not suggesting that we need full-frontal or hardcore depictions of sex acts in our animation.  Hell, even JAPAN censors THAT shit (though I will say that, even in anime, nudity is not what it used to be, but that's another show).  But being able to see a lovely pair of full, round cartoon titties on-screen...or the screen slowly panning up to reveal the side profile of a woman's sleek, naked body...maybe even focusing on her shapely, round ass swaying back and forth as she slowly walks away from the camera...you're telling me that these things would lead to the collapse of Western civilization?

Well, at least ONE animated show didn't think so, and 27 years ago, they pretty much proved it.  I am speaking, of course, of Todd McFarlane's "Spawn".  Here, we had a show that every bit as much blood, gore and profanity as any of the shows mentioned above, only THIS show wasn't afraid to give us the naked ladies.  Granted, there was significantly more of it in Season 1 than in Seasons 2 or 3, but it still didn't drop off entirely.  Hell, you even got to see WANDA naked on the show, a couple of times.

Which leads us to the image you now see before you, with Spawn and Wanda facing off with representatives from two of the other shows I previously mentioned and seeing if either of them actually has the guts to cross the line that "Spawn" happily stepped over nearly three decades prior.  I'd actually completed the picture a couple of days earlier, but I wanted to do a couple of touch-ups on Wanda (and I'm glad I did, seeing as how she IS pretty much the centerpiece of the image).  Plus, I wanted to collect my thoughts for the Pic Description.  Even now, I'm not entirely certain if this came off as an organized thesis or just a bunch of nonsensical rambling.  But I guess that's not really what you came here to see, anyway.

So, as always, I hope you like the pic.  And comments/thoughts are always welcome.  Enjoy.