Month: April 2012

Hi,

I have decided to add commentary to my comics. I have been drawing Naked Man Comics for over 10 years. I have blogged about things from time to time. But I never added commentary before. I am migrating my old stories into the Totally Naked Man domain. I figured adding commentary will help old fans look at my pages different. Or, at least, I feel it safe now to post what were digs at people in real life and what was complete fiction.

Back in my Zetaman days, I ran around with other costumed people. When I retired as Zetaman a lot of them were very vocal on how they felt about me. A bit of the criticism might be right. Most of the comments were not. It was my fault, to be honest. I tried to screen people the best I could. But people can mask very well.

This story’s premise is that there are a bunch of creeps I met online teaming up and calling themselves the Rose City Rebellion. My ex-wife was going around seeking intimate attention from other Real-Life Superheroes. When we broke up, I made the whole thing public. At the time I did not see a problem with it. My ex used a forum I built to share naked pictures of herself. Because I did cause a stir online, my ex needed to do some damage control. She found some other people I did not have a good relationship with and create a new team. From what I gathered; they spend a lot of their time at buffets. My ex-wife decided to find someone who called himself a Real-Life Supervillain (Mavalo or something like that) to draft a very personal blog detailing information about me, who I was dating, and my parents. When I read that blog and saw how much it hurt other people, I retired as Zetaman.

But I felt like I had to say something back. I did, using a character I created as a teenager, Totally Naked Man. I figured I can at least vent. I was not going to go into many details. But I was going to just make a jab and move on. Little did I know I would be going on a decade later.

Totally Naked Man is singing in this because I loved Mighty Mouse cartoons as a kid. Mighty Mouse always sang. The orange in Totally Naked Man’s hair is yellow and red mixed together.

I did poke fun of the blog creator by creating The Blazing Bag of Poo. Basically, calling the person who wrote his meth fueled blogs a $#!#-head.

-Illya

Totally Naked Commentary

This is a complicated page. The two people I was digging into were a couple named Cat and Sean. They were not nice people at all. But just because they were not nice people, and they wrote terrible things about me did not give me the excuse to joke about Cat’s weight issue. This is where I failed and wrote some unkind stuff in comic form.

Cat has Colitis. She was often in the hospital for this. It was terrible.

One time I took Sean out while Cat was in the hospital. All he did was complain about the medical issues. I did my best to empathize. My own wife, at the time, was also in and out of the hospital. It is tough. There is a little bitterness because it seems like the medical issues will never end. There is a feeling of hopelessness. Still, Sean was really mad.

When I retired, Sean and Cat were spending time together with my ex. Because of the garbage my ex put me through (like having people pretend to me my friend or ripping me a new on podcasts) I was distrustful of anyone close to her. Sean and Cat took it as an insult and that I had to answer to me about my activities.

So, I did what anyone would do, I told them where to go and how fast to get there.

I tried to do street work again as a civilian. Sean took every opportunity to belittle me with his blogs. He ripped apart my site because of spelling errors I made. Sean even photoshop my face on Osama Bin Laden’s body.

The last straw was a news article featuring Cat and Sean, A.K.A. Lunar Veil and Dark Wolf. I read the article. A reporter followed Dark Wolf on a patrol. Everything DW did was an imitation of a colleague of mine, Antiman. Down to getting the mug shot newspaper, the routes to patrol, the homeless den under McLoughlin Blvd in Portland. In the article, LV talked about taking down a puppy mill in Beaverton (which was impossible for her being bed ridden all the time). It was a total piece of fiction.

I was frustrated. Here are some fake people talking garbage about me as well as lying to the media of who they were and what they did. I decided to vent about them via my comic.

 I decided to write Sean as Shawn the Pizza Bandit. In the article they were in, there was this picture of Lunar Veil cleaning a gun while Dark Wolf ate a pizza. I thought that was hilarious. What was not funny and still not funny was dragging Cat’s colitis into my story. I knew Dark Wolf cheated on Lunar Veil few times. He bought some Real Life Supervillain woman a penguin. Another time Cat emailed me about hacking into Sean’s computer and downloading porn to it.

Sean treated Cat horribly. That is what I wanted to say. The joke was that Shawn the Pizza Bandit purposely starving Catherine the Walf because he only likes skinny women. Shawn treats his partner like garbage and gaslights her.

Had I been a better writer at the time I would have gotten the point across. I hurt Cat and that was wrong. Granted, at the time I was still pretty heated about the harassment these two were throwing at me. But harassment is not an excuse to behave like them. I would have liked to be better, but I was not.

I will not be revising some of the dialogue because it is an opportunity to finally this off my chest. To normal people outside of the Real Life Superhero community, the character dynamic is innocuous. But to Cat, this joke hurt her. I was wrong to do it and  I am sorry. I reacted as a child to people acting like children.

-Illya

Totally Naked Commentary

Pretty straightforward page to move the story along. I did walk around Old Town Portland to make sure that the background would be accurate.

Totally Naked Commentary

This was a fun concept. I’d imagine anything that harms the skin would be Totally Naked Man’s weakness.

Totally Naked Commentary

The wide shot of Cat and Shawn is based on a photo of them in real-life. Dark Wolf and Lunar Veil did an article for some magazine. There was this picture of Lunar Veil on one side of the table and Dark Wolf on the other side. Lunar Veil was polishing a gun and Dark Wolf was eating a pizza. This is WHY I thought the “Shawn starving Cat” was going to be funny. It was not, as I alluded to a few pages ago.

Why the article frustrated me enough to make a parody?

I read the article. Lunar Veil claimed to shut down a puppy mill in either Beaverton or Hillsboro. She physically investigated the location, gathered evidence, and presented it to the police for the arrest. This never happened. The poor woman could barely move much less accomplished what she claimed. Dark Wolf had the reporters follow him around his patrol. Dark Wolf explained his operation method when “crime fighting.” What he did was copy our mutual colleague, Antiman. Everything Dark Wolf did was what Antiman did, down to the spots where Antiman liked to patrol. All the while Dark Wolf was writing blogs about how much I sucked.

I may have been lame in what I did, but at least I did what I said I did. I did not have to imitate anyone else. If I found an idea that worked from another RLSH, I would incorporate but I would cite where the idea came from.

Totally Naked Commentary

This is based on a real event. Cat sent me an angry email about what “I” was doing to her and Sean. Apparently, I was hacking into Sean’s computer and uploading porn. I was supposed to be doing this to ruin their relationship. One, I have no idea how to do that. Two, why would I waste porn on people I don’t like?

God, these two were total nutters.