Uh oh! Trouble in Robogirl paradise! Apparently some of the sexy robot ladies are just as bad as real ladies in the not-shutting-up-and-obeying-the-men department.
Anyway, I found this online. I have no idea what comic it’s from. Do any of you comic book experts know?
Metal Men… even though one of them is a woman.
I think not Joe – the sigil is the symbol of Mercury (horns atop of the Venerian looking-glass).
It’s the Metal Men, who often appeared in DC’s Brave and the Bold, but I’m not familiar with the story.
No, Joe is right. They’re the Metal Men, DC characters who’ve been around since the Sixties. Judging from the art (and the blatant misogyny, as opposed to today’s more passive-aggressive sort), I’d say this is one of their earlier adventures.
What I find interesting about this panel is the professor’s implication that unquestioning obedience is a Manly Virtue.
Wait, even the robot lovelies will be uppity bitches, with opinions and stuff? Nobody tell poor DKM, he’ll be heartbroken.
/me missed the point… sorry Joe!
I can think of two options for dealing with that:
1) No actual artificial intelligence. Just will-less, soulless automatons with certain preprogrammed responses. This is what you get if you want a combination roomba/sex toy.
2) Build it like Warren’s robo-girlfriend on “Buffy”, where she suffers feedback if she doesn’t agree with you and answer when you call. This is the option you take if you want to subjugate a thinking, feeling being.
DKM? Preference?
Seraph, well, remember, Meller does envision robot lovelies, but also hints that submissive fleshy females can be bred.
http://manboobz.com/2011/08/16/david-k-meller-on-women-getting-cancer-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha%e2%80%a6lol/comment-page-5/#comment-52498
Once again I bow to the vast amounts of arcane knowledge that manboobzers have at their fingertips.
Writing Metal Men has long been one of my dream projects. I love old quasi-educational comic books (did you know that mercury is the only metal that’s liquid at room temperature?).
The robot woman is Platinum, the only female Metal Man, who is usually stereotypically feminine and constantly crushing on her creator, Doc Magnus. On one hand, she’s a pretty sexist character; on the other hand, she’s interesting as the only member of the group who shows a strong interest in developing her personality and becoming more human, even if it’s only to get into Doc Magnus’ pants.
These sorts of romances in fiction (like human/mermaid or man, different animal species, etc) always confuse me. I mean, is it like a Data “I am… fully functional” kind of thing?
Mermaid or merman, I mean.
So wait… this strip is about the girl wanting to join a… metal band? Is it a pun? Is it an intentional pun or just a hilariously awesome accident? Or have they actually formed a band and she wants to BE THE LEAD SINGER OR SOMETHIN?
Viscaria. Guess you don’t want to come to one of my Alien Contact Mixers, huh? 😉
@Viscaria
The Metal Men are all shapeshifters, so presumably she could form genitalia. Not sure how appealing a platinum vagina is, but there are options.
@Shaenon
They added a second female member – Copper – in 2007. I don’t remember much about her, despite reading the miniseries she appeared in, but Wikipedia says her chief trait was sarcasm. The Metal Men haven’t shown up post-reboot, so I have no idea if she’ll make any future appearances.
Funny though, I never really thought of the Metal Men as particularly obscure. Huh.
I’m getting an error whenever I try to log into WordPress using my FaceBook account.
If Copper was into music she could be a conductor!
…Ba dum TISH.
. Not sure how appealing a platinum vagina is, but there are options.
NOBODY is gonna come to my Alien Contact Mixer, are they *pouts*
Depending on how unpolished the various robo-genitals are, and whether or not my OCD kicks in, I’ll show up to your mixer ready to spitshine and make some robot very happy. 😀
@Shaenon
Holy crap, you’re the Narbonic Shaenon? It took a post about comics for me to get a clue.
Are you sure the robot out in front is the only female robot there?
The robot in red* looks awfully like Ann Coulter. Just noticing.
*the one decorated with the “mercury” symbol
That would be Mercury, shockingly enough, and, yeah, he’s a dude-bot.
Uhm… I’ve seen enough anime to know how this is going to end…!
I’ll be coming at your Alien Contact Mixer… if you know what I mean…
Excellent, ozy and bagelsan! Now I must contact the aliens, which might take a while, but will be totally worth this!
Well it’s not that I wouldn’t… necessarily… fool around with aliens. And stuff. It’s just that I’m not really sure… how it would work?
Somewhere along the line this got weird.
Viscaria, if you’ve got reservations, just come to the munch. Totally casual, just remember not to unmask the aliens or out the kinksters. 😉
http://comicsmedia.ign.com/comics/image/article/800/800729/transformers-spotlight-20070629024335415.jpg
You can have your aliens…
I want Optimus butt <3
@Ami: DAT ASS.
Ami: So strangely… compelling…
OPTIMUS IS FROM CYBERTRON! He counts!
yay! 😀
Probably my favourite comment thread in a good long while.
Platinum Vagina will totally be the name for my band, if I ever get around to forming one.
And I might attend an alien mixer, as long as there isn’t any Pak’ma’ra’ porn.
Ugh. I’m resistant to this kind of humor. I don’t think I have the capacitor to appreciate it. Can’t you transform your joke into something a little more grounded?
With merpeople it varies. Some old-school merpeople had two fish tails in place of their legs, with fully human genitalia between them. Some merpeople have mammalian lower halves (dolphins or seals – think Madonna’s “Cherish” video), so they’re compatible, even if positioning would be a little tricky. Other versions have the legs joining together lower down.
As for other species…well, that varies, too. I remember reading a porn comic that showed a lamia (beautiful woman up top, snake below) directing her lover to “under the split scale”. Maybe people figure “standard” mermaids are like that?
…which raises a bigger question: if she can form a platinum vagina, she could just as easily form a platinum penis, so what exactly is it that makes her a woman-who-must-be-left-behind?
I wonder, which is scarier for MRAs: a woman or an androgynous person?
There’s no reason an MRA should be transphobic to androgynous people, except that the sort of irrational feelings towards women make it much more likely for them to have similar views towards anyone appearing feminine.
Meller seems to be a classic case of inter-related crazy ideas: repressive views on women, insane brand of libertarianism, believer in any conspiracy theory under the sun. (In the skeptic world, this state of being under the thrall of multiple irrational ideas, rather than just a single delusion, is called “crank magnetism”.)
@Xanthe:
I agree. There’s no reason whatsoever to be afraid of an androgynous person, simply for the sake of them being androgynous. But, as you point out: I think that the fears and irrational hatred towards women makes it more likely to happen.
Given the potential for a “woman” (fictional metal robot) to grow a “penis” (fictional platinum genitals due to shape-shifting powers), I’m idly contemplating which is scarier and more likely to get an irrational reaction/outburst/abuse.
Over at the blog “What Were They Thinking?!”, they had a field day with classic Metal Men. The blog’s on a break until the new year, but the Metal Men entries are so bizarre it’s worth going back through the archives.
Xanthe:
For all we say they’re not pro-male, they’re anti-female, that’s not quite accurate, since their irrational hatred extends to anyone who isn’t male.
Kinda reminds me of this guy. Which is to say, >ew.
New innovative technology always has problems that have to be debugged. I should surprise nobody that newly manufactured (or grown) robocuties occasionally will have to be reprogrammed to be more sensitive to their owner’s wishes and have a higher rate of positive conditioning reinforcement where compliance and obeidience is concerned.
There will always be a few that can escape the lab (or the manufacturing plant) giving the appearance of functionality and utility, but having hidden compliance and positive response defects! That’s what debugging (time consuming, expensive, and inconvenient) does.
Live and learn. And then buy the cybercutie or wifebot of your choice, tailor made to YOUR personality and masculinity!
Because mentally/emotionally you are 4 years old, and unable to accept the concept of other people being actual people with thoughts and feelings of their own.
Delusions and ranting!!!
David K Meller
Behold our glorious future:
Meller – do you just post some variant of the same comment on multiple threads as a rule, or does your robo-debugging comment just happen to be relevant on multiple threads today? Just curious.
I’m just going to paraphrase Henry Higgins here: “By rights, he should be taken out an hung/For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.” That’s some serious grammatical carnage being wreaked, there.
Someone will take that out of context and claim I’m calling for MRAs to be hung, I just know they will…