Waht I Think About Stuff-full Metal Orgasm Anthology [nsfw]

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Future sex is scary…

 

What I Think About Stuff-Full Metal Orgasm Anthology Review [NSFW]

DISCLAIMER: The following article contains images (both actual and mental) that are unsafe for work. Proceed at your own caution. If at any point during this article you develop an erection, punch yourself at the base of the shaft and keep reading. This shit’s better than porn.

You sure you wanna go on with this?

Do me a favor and check if anybody’s looking for a sec.

Okie doke then, let’s go!

Sexpunk in a nutshell.

By using this visual medium, I can immediately present the core idea behind Full Metal Orgasm and the sexpunk genre. Brent Millis (the editor and publisher of this anthology) presents it in a much more eloquent manner, but you didn’t come here for the literature, did you? You came for the tits and you’ll get tits aplenty.

And asses. Because this website has values.

I met Brent through Facebook and he presented the anthology asking whether ‘I’d like to check it out, no pressure.’ So I read it, expecting that at best, I would write a review about how I could fap to this and say that it’s a great example of erotica, written by competent scifi writers.

What I did not expect was that I’d get my mind blown to fuck

Pictured: myself, mid-narrative blowjob.

Sexpunk is, in a nutshell, hentai cyberpunk. It deals with the strange, unexpected and cock-wilting paths that sex can (and will) take in the future. It is not fap material. It’s nightmare fuel and the product of imaginative people who had a ton of fun weaving these stories, without once slipping in quality.

The idea of how sex might become an entity on its own right and how our perversions will evolve alongside us is not a new thing in science fiction, but it’s always been a no-no for most writers, remaining forever in the realm of fictional anathema.

Right up there with deicide and the responsibility of man toward his progeny.

Sure, scifi series like Transmetropolitan hinted at the weird future-sex that was to come, but Full Metal Orgasm takes it a step further and my God it…is…glorious!

I’m talking involuntary observation of masturbation, leading to epic fuck-session (followed by pancakes) glorious.

Full Metal Orgasm (at least to me) was scifi blasphemous, delightfully horrible and funny as fuck. But more on that later, as we look deeper into uncomfortably-themed science fiction about the disgusting things science can (and will do) to a human body with…

Sexualeyes by M.T. Starkey.

*bleep* partner is about to achieve orgasm. Increase thrusting to 300 rpm.

Sexualeyes was the story that got me into the anthology face-first. It was violent, gruesome and it detailed the specifics of illegal product testing in the market. What kind of products?

Well this is a cuberpunk anthology, so why don’t we go for the most useful but also most icky bit in the human body? And what’s the ickiest bit, besides the genitals? Well, how about the eyes?

And while we’re busy making the eyes better at their job and give them wifi access, why don’t we also give them a cool feature that lets you read someone’s sexual responses and gives you tips on how to make them cum? Also, why don’t we use this as an excuse to make fuck-zombies?

This story was a great introduction to this anthology’s theme. It made me shudder and shiver but, most of all, it intrigued me enough to want to look further into it.  

Without having read the table of contents, I moved on to the next story called…

Cyborgasm Stompfuck by Elizabeth A. Black.

Actual Google Image result withheld in the interest of maintaining any semblance of a reader base.

Look at the title. Just look at it. Some of you will be shocked by it. Others might act the prude and think this is too low brow for your tastes. As for me? Well, I laughed my ass off.

And then I read the story.

Elizabeth Black explained to me that the theme women’s abuse has always featured prominently in her fiction. She deals with sexual abuse, mental and verbal abuse in all walks of life and always seeks to present it to her audience in a way that will shock and force them to action.

But if every other piece of her work is aimed to raise awareness, then Cyborgasm is the bit where she gets to tear the abusers a new asshole. It’s a piece that just radiates anger. I’d call it revenge porn, but that would be too literal a term and would not do it any justice.

Instead, I’m going to present you with the basic premise of this story: women’s abuse is a very real thing that is happening right now. But there are limits to how far it can go. I mean, a woman is a human being that is protected by law, society and her own biology, setting a limit to how much she is going to take before she either defends herself or plain old snaps.

But what happens is she’s a sexbot?

Built to your every specification and programmed to do every despicable thing no carbon-based unit would ever agree to?

What happens if that woman is an automaton that can be broken, smashed and crushed and then repaired, ad infinitum? What happens if that automaton is also your property and unable to defend itself?

Cyborgasm nearly made me lose my lunch in a good way and promises a great payoff, too (with assorted food for thought). But Full Metal Orgasm isn’t all about grimness, no sir. Hence…

Jizzemboweler by Made in DNA

Apparently, Japan no longer holds the monopoly in fictional Asian killer space sex-borgs.

Jizzemboweler was so lighthearted and refreshing (in comparison to Cyborgasm) that it made me smile in that stupid way you smile when you first hear a great iteration of the Aristocrats joke.

It’s terrible and terribly funny and it deals with space vice cops and sexually deviant serial killers. It doesn’t take itself seriously for start to finish and the ending…

Let’s just say that someone sticks his cock where they shouldn’t have in the first place.

Of course, light-heartedness and fun with anal sex jokes is all well and good, until you get to…

The Companion by Deborah L. Warner

You’ll come for the guy-on-guy sex, you’ll stay for the intriguing scifi dystopian setting.

I’m not into dudes, so when I read Mrs. Warner’s credentials, my homophobic impulses kicked in and I wanted to put this story off for as long as possible. But then I read on further and I realized something:

The Companion is a very well presented and written science fiction piece. It subtly presents a terrible future, where mankind is plagued by famine, overpopulation (coupled with a severe decline in birth rates) and above all, crime. A totalitarian world government is also hinted at, but never presented.

The Companions is one of those stories where you get a chance to glimpse at a much bigger image that just dwells just beyond the corner. You get the information you need by subtle hints, while avoiding unnecessary exposition and you get to learn about the conditions of living (and the extremes that people go to just to survive in the story’s setting).

Mrs. Warner also told me how this story ties into a greater science fiction series and you know what? Maybe I’d like to give it a go, someday.

Dude-on-dude not doing it for you? Well then son, how about you try…

Little Death by James ‘Grim’ Desborough’

I…uhhh…umm…God, where was I going with this?

Little Death was one of my favorite entries in this anthology. Like the Companion, it hints at a bigger setting, at impossible technology and the future of both sex and hitmen.

Actually, scratch that. It doesn’t just hint at the future of sex and hitmen. It hints at something else: at something that is dystopian, but not in the usual sense of the word. It’s not a world that has been twisted into shape by the hand of a malignant power. Instead, it’s a story about mankind having become something more (and less) than men, by virtue of their technology.

The fact that it is hot as fuck and throws you a curve-ball that smacks you upside the brain also helps.

It was also the one and only time I gave half a shit about fictional snipers.

Night of the Mother by Rick Moore

Trust me son: you have no fucking idea.

Night of the Mother is a tentacle hentai horror story. Here is a succession of my reaction faces as I read through it:

2 pages in.

6 pages in

8 pages in

Ending

This story is competently written, scaring the living fuck out of you when appropriate and making you laugh your balls off when required. If you love Japanese gorror B-Movies and a great story, the Night of the Mother is just for you.

But how can you follow this up? Well, the only thing I can come up with is…

Espionage Dolls by Glynn Barass

Big tits and bounteous boo-tay. IN SPAACE!

When I later talked with Glyn Barass (who is a pretty cool guy) I was surprised to find out that he is actually a very mature person who is currently living out his life-long dream of being a writer for his favorite RPG gaming line.

I also found out that his work is mostly serious, well-founded with a non-nonsense approach. He’s also great at horror.

Keep that in mind as you read through a story that could perhaps make the best porn scene you could ever watch, ever.

Besides Gianna Michaels’ first (and only) anal scene.

But enough with sexy fun and games. Let’s get down to earth and hide inside a bunker with…

Wasters by John Trevillian

Dystopia never read so goddamn good…

Wasters reads like you’re on drugs. It’s fast, it’s strong, it’s read in a break-neck pace and the words reek of cordite and sex in back alleys.

The words are highlighted by neon signs and you sit in the cockpit of the story the entire time, plummeting through grim darkness and thinking: 

Oh God, please, make me wake up when it’s over…

If you thought sexpunk would be all about cock-jokes, then this is the story that will make you change your mind. It’s violent as fuck and it takes you on a ride through a sociopath’s brain.

Thank God the anthology doesn’t end this way though, or I’d be having a very hard time coming up with a punchline. What we get instead, is the perfect balance between grimness and goofiness, with…

Day of the Wang by Scott Corum

This doesn’t look suggestive at all…

“Hey, whatcha reading?” my girlfriend asked, as she saw me hunched over this anthology’s final entry.

“It’s a story from Full Metal orgasm. It’s called ‘Day of the Wang’”

“Hahaha, no way!”

“Yes way.”

 

“Can you read it to me?”

And I did. I even did all the voices and the sound effects when the cyber-cock took over the heavy-duty machinery. I had to stop at some points, because I just couldn’t keep a straight face but you know what?

She never once asked me to stop. She stayed there and she heard every goddamn word. Because Day of the Wang may be a story about a killer robo-cock, but if it’s good enough to make me girlfriend sit down and listen to it, then it’s good enough for you.

So this is FMO in a nutshell. You go in thinking you’ll get this:

DAYUMN!

And you end up getting your stupid brain blown to shit by awesome stories, written by exceptionally talented people. So if you’re looking to get yourself some excellent science fiction the likes of which you haven’t seen before, FMO is for you!

Addendum:

The downright vool people that have worked on this anthology and where to find them:

 

Michael Starkey is an Australian Nightmare weaver, said to secretly breed killer Dodos with laser eyes and the voices of screaming toddlers, in the interest of further upsetting the Australian ecosystem. You can find his FaceBook page here:

 #)

Elizabeth Black writes very angry and thoughtful erotica. When she isn't writing erotica, she builds horror landscapes and populates them with the damned:
#
http://eablack-writer.blogspot.com/

Brent Millis lives in Japan, smack-dab in weird country. He likes to use his fiction to make people terrified of their cocks. Friend him on FaceBook and ask him about his Sexpunk-themed purity packages.

http://www.facebook.com/made.in.dna

Deborah Warner has so far successfully made a living from writing yaoi fiction with surprisingly epic backgrounds. She's also a huge scifi nerd, even though she doesn't look the part.

http://sybpressyaoi.com/

James "Grim" Desborough is an rpg author who has worked for a number of great gaming companies (Wizards of the Coast and Mongoose Publishing, to name but a few). Unbeknownst to him, his Slayer's Guide to Rules Lawyers also helped me dodge a bullet when I was about to punch a know-it-all friend in the balls mid-game.

http://postmortemstudios.wordpress.com 

http://talesofgrim.wordpress.com 

Rick Moore is the kind of guy I'd buy a dozen beers, only so he could tell me his own version of the Aristocrats. Nuff said.

http://www.myspace.com/zombieinfection

Glynn Owen Barass works at my dream job as a writer for the gaming company Chaosium for Call of Cthulhu. He's also making a Lovecraft-Mythos inspired biker gang roleplaying game. He was gonna tell me more, but then I started throwing my money at him.

http://www.freewebs.com/batglynn

John Trevillian's skull if filled with writhing, screaming maggots, controlled by a greater malevolent intelligence underneath.

http://www.trevillian.com & http://www.talliston.com

Scott Corum is the creator of Hot Chicks RPG and he can run my game any day he wants.

What I Think About Stuff-the Dark Knight Strikes Again

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The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Or How to Turn the very Character you turned into an Icon into a Huge Joke in 100 pages or less.

DISCLAIMER: This review may contain a number of heretical Batman-related opinions. Fanboys are kindly requested to show some understanding and refrain from shaking the Pillars of Heaven in rage against this reviewer.

The other day, a friend of mine told me how writing reviews about good (or moderately good comics), actually ruins the comic book for anyone who’d be interested in buying it. He told me that it would be best if I tried a really bad one.

I chose to take his advice, so here’s a piece of shit for ya:

The cover promises Revolution, Rebellion and if it was part of a song, it’d be the guitar shredding bridge before the chorus. Sadly, none of this applies to the actual comic book.

Dark Knight Strikes Again is Frank Miller’s worst work, overshadowing (in my opinion) even All-Star Batman and Robin, that other bat-sturbation festival this man chose to write in the process of turning himself and his most beloved character into a miniseries-long farce.

I can’t stop imagining Batman flipping a switch and turning on Batmobile’s neon decals after this, synched to the rhythm of a Snoop Dog song.

To be fair, this miniseries wouldn’t have been half as bad on its own right (in fact it would have been funny and awesome as all hell), but what made it so goddamn terrible was that this was intended as a SEQUEL to the Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller’s most stellar work, and at the same time the comic book which forever resolved the who would win in every fight in every possible comicbook crossover ever, if Batman was one of the contestants.

Hint: Batman would win. Batman would win every goddamn time.

What can I possibly say about the Dark Knight Returns except that you should buy and read the shit out of it, unless you want to die unfulfilled? What praise could I possibly heap on comic book that summarizes (and reinvents) Batman as a character on its own right? How can I not marvel at something that was created by a 30-year old comic book writer/artist in 1986 that has become lodged so hard inside our pop culture that we can’t even CONSIDER a superhero universe without a Batman in one form or another?

And at the same time cause us to support the shit out of the multiversal theory if only for the off-chance that each of us is Batman in some distant, possible universe?

What I’m trying to say is that the Dark Knight Returns was an awesome comic book and that it shows a certain kind of narrative genius and consistency I’m hard pressed to find in comic books to this day.

The other thing I’m trying to say is that it was just goddamn fine on its own. It did not need a sequel. Because there was absolutely no way anybody would ever be able to follow up the Dark Knight Returns in any meaningful, equally awesome way.

It would be like Kurt Vonnegut writing a sequel to the Sirens of Titan, where Malachi turns into a zombie, gains superpowers and has a punch-out with Winston across the outer rim of the Galaxy.

When I found out, however, that the Dark Knight Returns had a sequel, I absolutely shat my pants with joy (being the impressionable, misguided youngster that I used to be) and rushed to buy it. In my defense, I considered that the fact that this had been written by an older, more mature Frank Miller would be much more focused and interesting and would expand on Return’s themes consistently.

I thought I’d get my hands on a short, yet violent and sweet addendum to Returns, sprinkled with just a bit of political commentary, featuring superheroes beating the everloving shit out of each other. What I got instead was this:

Riveting stuff.

Pages upon pages of sociopolitical satire. In a goddamn Batman comic book. Just try to wrap your head around that, why don’t you? I know a lot of people accuse Frank Miller of adding way too many far-right political undertones in Returns, but at least in Returns, those undertones were subtler but also served as a plot point!

The kind of plot point whose end result is a giant motherfucking a-bomb.

But in Strikes Again, the satire is set here on its own right. Granted, Miller does try to shoehorn it into the narrative but let’s face it honey: you can’t use a pile of diarrhea. In my opinion, it’s obvious that Miller used his Returns fame as a tool for blackmail against DC comics in order to force them to print this goddamn mess.

I even bet he slapped one of the editors in the face when he presented them with the finished pages and they told him that there is no way DC would agree to print this drivel. I bet he also called his mother a whore and kept shouting “DO YOU KNOW WHO THE FUCK I AM? I’M FRANK GODDAMN MILLER, BITCH! NOW SEND THAT SHIT TO THE PRINTERS AND PACK YOUR STUFF FROM YOUR GODDAMN OFFICE BEFORE I HAVE YOU THROWN OUT OF THE GODDAMN BUILDING!”

The same argument was obviously paraphrased as the sole sales pitch for every dumb-ass DC miniseries since.

But you’re not here just to see me heap praises on Returns and damnation on Strikes Again, are you? No, of course not. The internet hates Strikes Again and you can get that hate anywhere you like with just a simple Google search.

Internet’s handiest hate machine.

What I’m going to do instead (before moving on to further bashing), will be to try and outline some of Strikes Again’s best features. And trust me, it has a couple good ones going for it.

·         The Dark Knight Strikes Again sequelizes the shit out of Returns (in a good way):

No matter how much I hate this comic, this frame makes me punch the air and shout FUCK YEAH!

Frank Miller started this series with a very clear (and awesome) goal in mind: to reunite and reinvent the JLA as a whole. This is made apparent in both the opening intro to Returns and Strikes Again and it’s something you can both root for and dream about:

The resurgence of heroes in a world that once shunned them, but now desperately needs them.

Returns dealt with Batman’s perspective on this matter. But when Batman’s tale was said and done, it was only natural that the rest of the lot would follow his lead and return to active duty. If Frank Miller hadn’t spent more than half the goddamn series on a bunch of talking heads that contribute absolutely nothing, this could have been the best JLA story out there, hands down.

Though I have to hand it to him, Batchick was pretty fucking hot. If only the rest of those panels weren’t getting in the way…

·         Strikes Again has a very interesting character development arc for Superman:

Granted, it does only cover a tenth of Superman’s screen time on this comic book, but it’s otherwise a story that I’d have loved to see unfold.

And it would have been so, had Frank Miller not been so preoccupied with turning the whole thing into a Batman fanfic.

Some spoilers ahead. But then again, you’d care if that comic wasn’t so full of shit, its binding is brown.

1.       Superman hooks up with Wonder Woman: This is a development I was expecting and anticipating since I read Alan Moore’s For the Man who Has Everything short Superman story.

What’s that? You haven’t read it? That’s okay, lots of people live their lives without truly knowing beauty.

A lot of people will call this opinion of mine shallow and pedantic. How I choose to pair up two superheroes in my mind, simply because their powers fit well together and not on the merit of their interactions, their backstory or their mythos. That Superman and Lois Lane work as a couple because of her lack of powers.

These people also fail to consider that I give less of a fuck about Lois Lane than I do about Spiderman.

And trust me: if I cared any less about Spiderman, he wouldn’t have existed in the first place.

Personal bias aside, it is inevitable for Superman and Wonder Woman to end up together. Why? Because they’re both super-powered beings that have faced countless dangers across time and space and have worked together to save Life, the Universe and Everything on innumerable occasions.

What I’m trying to say is that they’re the only people in the entire DC universe that have anything in common with each other.

Let’s face facts: After spending a whole day fighting off cosmic invasion forces hell-bent on eradicating humanity, you can’t exactly go back to talking about your day at the office.

2.       Superman and Wonder Woman have a kid:

YOU’LL HAVE TO SPEAK YOUR OBJECTIONS LOUDER, SINCE I AM UNABLE TO HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MY POWER SCOUTER EXPLODING!

Her name is Kara, she’s half Kryptonian and she’s raised as an Amazon, meaning she’s stronger than her dad but lacking proper moral directions. She could have been the star of the show, right next to Batman. Instead, Frank Miller presents her like an absolute goddamn idiot fascist teenager.

All this AND MORE from her first exchange of dialogue with her dad, no less!

3.       Superman comes to terms with the idea that even though he serves and protects mankind, he is not entirely human:

Trust me, this frame is absolutely RUINED when taken in context.

This is a good thing to see. Every good Superman story does contain Superman’s struggle to remain human and not turn into the invincible Big Brother figure. He tries to abide by the laws of men while at the same time protecting them against an increasingly hostile cosmos.

And that makes him much more human than human. The fact that he constantly tries to get on the same level with us powerless little Earth Monkeys, despite him being able to snuff out suns is his most endearing and interesting characteristic. In Strikes Again, Miller tries to see what would happen is Superman lost that characteristic, but fails miserably because he was too busy ejaculating over every panel and piece of dialogue featuring Batman.

·         For the first time in his entire career, Batman has an obvious and meaningful goal:

This is the whole point of this shitty miniseries, right here, in just this one panel.

This is strictly my opinion and I’m not aiming to infuriate somebody and I sure as hell ain’t in the mood for trolling. With that in mind, I need you to consider this:

Batman is a wasted character.

Why do I think that? Not because Batman doesn’t have any powers. Hell, having powers is what holds back most of DC’s heroes. In fact, not having powers (and a huge goddamn fortune to spend on superheroing) frees Batman and allows him to do much more than all of them combined.

So why the hell doesn’t he do that? Why does he insist on trying to rehabilitate serial killers and clean up Gotham

A city which has repeatedly proven itself not to be worth the effort.

Thus wasting his money, abilities and freedom? Why doesn’t he do more? Sure, before the DC reboot he did attempt to bring out Batman’s brand of justice globally by founding Batman Inc., but that only occurred to him after more than 50 years’ worth of adventuring!

Frank Miller knows this to be the case and tries, while examining Batman through rose-tinted glasses thicker than Saturn’s belt, to bring this point to light and use it to the story’s advantage. And that’s a good thing. That’s a damn good thing.

Too bad it’s ruined by lack of background and Miller forgetting this whole damn point during the entirety of the narrative.

In my opinion, this a conclusion Batman needs to reach as soon as possible in the rebooted DC run, before the character gets bogged into the mire of decades-long continuity once again.

That’s it for my good points in Strikes Again. In case you haven’t noticed, only one of the three is referring to Batman. Why is that, you ask? Well, mostly because Miller took Batman and turned him from this:

Pictured: the reborn avatar of justice and vigilantism, risen from its ashes

Into this:

Pictured: a bitter old fuck with kryptonite powerfists.

He turned Batman into an unfunny little person who keeps reminding everyone (and constantly being showered by remarks of) how awesome and excellent and great he is, how he changed everything and brought the superheroes back, how he’s the only one who can stop the evil powers that have taken over the world, etc., etc.

But you know when else he did the exact same goddamn thing and we believed it, without once needing to be reminded by it by anybody? In Dark Knight Returns. That’s where Bruce Wayne was both a hero and a symbol. In Strikes Again, he’s just a kid in an old man’s body screaming: “Hey! Hey, superpeople! Everybody! Look at meeee! LOOK AT MEEEEE!

”

“I MEANT TO DO THAT! I’VE PLANNED FAR AHEAD ABOUT EVERYTHING BECAUSE I’M AWESOME AND COOL AND REALLY SMART! Now will you please like me? Pleeeaaaassseee?”

Also, the art sucks balls. There’s no backgrounds in almost any frame and Miller’s style was obviously slipping, as evidenced by the following example:

“Frank, there’s no way you can convince me this page is finished. You just-” “FUCK YOU BITCH, I’M FRANK MILLER!”

And that’s not even the worst example. It’s just the first, worst clue toward how little a fuck Frank Miller gave about the art.

You know what kind of food Strikes Again would be? It would be the cheese and bacon-smeared French fries complimenting your huge-ass, delicious Dark Knight Returns smokehouse burger.

You’d try it once, then bust your friends’ balls for the rest of their lives on how dumb they were for picking the Jack Daniels sauce steak over this piece of culinary art.

They’re greasy as fuck, unnecessary and you can’t even stand to eat them along with the burger, for fear of ruining the taste it has left in your palate, opting instead to try a few, then push them to the side of the table and never take a second look at them again.

They’re the culinary equivalent of trying to date that stripper you met on your bachelor party.

Addendum:

Another theme that’s made apparent in the intro of both Returns and Strikes Again is how much Frank Miller is counting on something much greater than us to come and save us in our time of need.

And I get that. I get what he means by presenting Batman as the ultimate human symbol and Superman as the almighty agent of the machine that oppresses us, but let’s face facts here:

If this story was written any better, it would have been Superman that would have been the bad guy. Why? Because Superman already knew how corrupt and far gone his enemies were and would have anticipated Batman’s return in the near future.

Also, by the end of Returns, Superman’s defeat changes his way of thinking: Instead of reporting back to his corrupt, retarded leaders, he opts to keep his own agenda. So what’s exactly stopping Superman, who knows his masters/supervisors are evil as fuck and irresponsible to boot?

Nothing. Absoluytely fucking nothing.

I understand that Miller decided to take the safer solution and make Luthor and Brainiac the villains, but let’s be honest here: the resolution shows that they had nothing on the Last Son of Krypton in the first place. It meant that Superman (if not dumbed down for the purposes of this narrative) would have whooped their asses and taken over.

And that’s the kind of story I’d love to write and/or read. Batman and the JLA fighting against Superman, with a repeat of the Batman vs Superman showdown from Returns, albeit with a shitload more explosions.