Saturday, September 13, 2008

More on Bendis' goofy-@#$ swearing in Secret Invasion

As he did in the previous issue of Secret Invasion, writer Brian Michael Bendis included self-censored swear words, represented by caps-locked number keys (i.e. "@#$%!"), in Secret Invasion #6. And, as he also did in the previous issue, he included such self-censored swear words with odd-numbered characters, so that if we assume a one-random-SHIFT + number-key-to-one-letter-in-a-swear-word ratio, there were a couple instances of highly idiosyncratic swearing in this issue as well.

For example, when New York City super-crime kingpin The Hood gathers his syndicate of super-criminals on a rooftop to watch the melee between the Nick Fury lead superheroes and the Skrull invaders, one of them responds to the action by saying, "@#$, are you guys seein' this?"

A three-letter swear word? That can only mean the random villain said one of the following:

"Ass, are you guys seein' this?"

"Fag, are you guys seein' this?"

"Tit, are you guys seein' this?"

Those are the only possibilities I can think of, anyway. I'm not up on NYC criminal slang, but all three of those sound rather unnatural to me. But hell, maybe they just swear funny in the Marvel Universe.

Here, a New York policeman asks some demonstraters with signs welcoming The Skrulls what's up, and the one of them sees some actual Skrulls approaching, and says "@#$, look!"

Again, what did he remark?

"Ass, look!"

"Fag, look!"

"Tit, look!"

Maybe "ass" is the new "damn" in New York swearing style..?

4 comments:

SallyP said...

I agree that it's a little silly. On the other hand, I guess I prefer it to Frank Miller's GRAPHIC profanity.

Maybe they're saying "poo"?

malpractice said...

I kind of thought Miller might of been commenting on this very kind of modern comic writing technique and how ridiculous it is in ASB&R.

Caleb said...

Hmmm...the demonstraters might have been saying "poo," but I don't think villains are allowd to say that, or they'll lose their villain union card...

Mory said...

Madame Masque is saying "WTF", which as we all know is pronounced "ootuwf".

The second guy was so shocked that all he could say was "Fuh!"