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Walks the fine line between good and bad?

I was wondering. See in comic book characters there's the Heroes like Superman, the Villians like Joker, and the Sidekicks like Robin. But there's another catagory and I forgot what it was called. It's where the character isn't exactly the good guy or the bad one. An example is Catwoman, you know, she'll stop bank robbers but she'll keep some money for herself. Does anyone know what the label is?

Batman was probably the first of the anti-heroes. He failed to stop and identify himself when the police ordered him to do, like a criminal would do (plus he was wearing a mask, which in many areas is illegal unless there is some event like a parade or carnival going on.) He was also guilty of child endangerment (Robin—doesn’t matter that they were a team, doesn’t matter that Robin wanted to get revenge in the guys that killed his parents. As far as the law is concerned, Batman was using a child as a shield against police gunfire, and that’s what he would be charged with.)

Batman would also break and enter to get evidence, use strongarm tactics and bully witnesses for information, beating it out of them. Basically, anybody who climbs up the sides of buildings in a getup like that after dark is going to be ASSUMED to be a burglar, until proven otherwise! You’ve probably read about guys who like to climb tall buildings. They usually get arrested for trespassing, reckless endangerment, etc., etc. Bruce Wayne would have been locked up in a mental ward and all his assets frozen by the courts until he was ‘cured’ of his desire to take the law into his own hands. If they caught him, of course.

The trouble is, that was a simpler age. Everybody who has ever been bullied by someone bigger and stronger in a dark alley has wished that there was really a Batman…someone who was just as tough as the bad guys, but was on your side… someone who would come and beat them up and protect you and take you away where it was safe.

Things have changed. We now have deliberate anti heroes (the authorities just THINK Batman is a bad guy, but we know better.)But now we have guys like the Punisher and the Hulk.

These are morally flawed heroes for morally flawed people. Look at the Hulk—he uses his super strength to GET HIS OWN WAY. How does that make him any better than a villain? All he is, is a three year old throwing a tantrum—with super powers. They should call him ‘Anger Management man’.

And the problem is, people admire this! Everybody wants to have power, and everybody thinks they should be the exception to the rule. We all want to fly at super speed and not get a speeding ticket. Since we can’t fly at super speed, we want the cops to arrest everybody ELSE on the road, but us!

That’s why heroes like Superman and Captain America are so important. They are the best, the noblest. They give us something to live up to, not something to live down to.

We don’t have super powers, but there is one way in which we can be super, and that is to be morally straight and noble of character. Again, there are a lot of people out there who do not have the self-discipline for it and think it is only a means of controlling others.

But who could you trust more, Captain America or Punisher? Which one would you rather that your friends were like? Which one would you rather be like? I know I’d rather be like Superman and Captain America in their moral character than like the Hulk in his.

11 MAR 07, 2129 hrs, GMT.

Here is my chance to talk about my favorite artist of all time, Robert Williams. I was first exposed to his work back in art school, when I managed to get my hands on the infamous Zap Comics! I was knocked out when I first saw the erotic comic stuff of Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, and of course, Robert himself.

In the mid 1980's I was again to be stunned when I saw his paintings at the Zero One Gallery in Los Angeles. He would have to be one of my major influences, so how lucky was I to have to have such a famous artist write the foreward to my art book The Red Box.

Mr. Williams has a long history of involvement in the American hot rod culture, and he was involved early on with Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, and Ratfink.

He started Juxtapoz Magazine in 1994, and is credited with starting the lowbrow art movement... a movement that began with hotrod art and "kustom kulture", but has grown to include so much more.

To say that Williams' art is pin up art is only part of the equation... it is cinematic, film noir, and heroic on the scale of 19th French salon painting. Here is a lowbrow artist with a great fine art pedigree. His work is included in many high profile art collections, and there is a waiting list to collect any of his pieces!

His psychedelic art includes devil girls, supervixens, femme fatales, punk rock girls, and everything phantasmagoric. Then he throws in the hot rod art, and it's quite a grand scale surrealist painting!

His most famous art work is probably his 1990's Appetite for Destruction album cover for the band Guns and Roses.

Stacy Lande is a Los Angeles based artist, and her pin up art is most often placed in the lowbrow catagory. Her book, THE RED BOX, from Last Gasp press, features introductions from Robert Williams and Frank Kozik. Stacy has had a lifelong obsession with pin up girls, and her erotic paintings explore the more allegorical side of pinups. Her subjects are femme fatales and devil girls, and her fascination with the succubus has prompted her work to be described as "predatory pinups". Stacy's paintings have been featured in magazine articles, notably Juxtapoz, Detour, and Hot Rod Deluxe; films, notably Gone in 60 Seconds starring Angelina Jolie and Nicholas cage; and art books, such as Weirdo Deluxe, from Chronicle Books, and Vicious, Delcious, and Ambitious, from Schiffer Books.

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