Here at my annual Comics Competition, I have been rather unfair to the distaff side and not featured hot guys as a distinct category before. In fairness, the comics pages don't give me much help here. Most comic dudes tend to be Dopey Dads or Alarming Alcoholics. Let's remedy that by featuring some the ruggedly handsome men you can check out over the breakfast table every morning.
 | Randy Parker Judge Parker While not THE Judge Parker, this newly minted magistrate is known for his lantern jaw and his many adventures with the fairer sex but he never seems to quite close the deal. He knows how to work it like a claw which would be smuttier if there were any hope of him getting to second base. While he often takes the backseat to longtime partner Sam Driver, this barrister is a versatile player. |
 | Sam Driver Judge Parker This strip is blessed with not one, but two handsome brunettes. So handsome that they are almost indistinguishable. Sam is the more adventurous one whose primary activity is avoiding sex with his incredibly hot wife so he can solve mysteries with other preternaturally attractive women and not have sex with them either. |
 | Rex Morgan, MD When it comes to not having sex with his wife, nobody tops Rex Morgan who stretches the bounds of ambiguously closetedness even by comic soap standards. His true proclivities are less of a subtextual theme than a running joke that everybody except June seems to be in on. I've never quite figured out what Rex actually DOES other than pose provocatively and come-on to cabin boys. Not that there's anything wrong with that. |
 | Mark Trail Soap strips tend to eponymous, but not more so than Mark Trail, forest ranger, nature writer, and backwoods vigilante. No hirsute evil doer is safe from his Right Fist of Justice®. He also manages to tease two women with his arboreal cluelessness; his long suffering wife Cherry and indefatigable outdoorsy fag-hag Kelly Welly. While no side of this triangle has ever been consummated, there is still hope for a Cherry-Kelly hot-springs party someday. |
  | The Phantom The Ghost Who Walks In Purple Spandex wins the token superhero slot mostly because he doesn't shoot white fluids out of his body as a superpower. Just what is his superpower anyways? Other than an uncanny ability to be a fashion disaster in any age, he mostly just shoots and punches his enemies and drugs his friends/victims. His fondness for cheek-clenching fabrics makes him the most fan-servicey of the nominees. Since he frequently cavorts lasciviously with PhantomSpouse Diane, he is the most arguably heterosexual hunk in this field despite his fondness for young boys in diapers. |
This category is tough call. All the guys are hot, but they each seem to come with some baggage. While their true proclivities stay family-friendly perhaps they can inspire some truly lurid slash fiction. Let the best man win.
18 comments:
TOUGH category! Aside from Randy Parker (who really hasn't been in the strip until the last month or so, and I started reading it in mid 2007), trying to figure out a front-runner is no piece of cake. Kit Walker might be a shoe-in since he likes to walk around in purple body paint (show-off), but there are times when we see Rex in a towel, so I'm voting for him.
This is an almost impossible category and I’ve been wracking my brains, trying to come up with another candidate but with no success. Let’s just analyze the contestants in order of increasing heterosexuality.
Mark Trail: Face it, Mark is a living Ken doll. He has never indicated the slightest tinge of sexual interest in either of the women who are inexplicably hot for his body, any of the various men, hirsute or otherwise who appear in the strip, or even young Rusty, who is doomed to the sterile hell that is Lost Forest. Mark is like Oakland, there is no there there.
Rex Morgan: Rex is the most obviously gay member of the group (NTTAWWT), but he has gone to great lengths to cover up his proclivities with a beard (who I am sure we will be seeing later in this contest) and a child who may or may not be the fruit of his loins (via turkey baster). That aside, he has some of the most vapid expressions I have ever seen anywhere and frequently looks like a heavily-made-up woman on the wrong side of middle age or some sort of plastic mannequin (maybe the original Autons or something).
Sam Driver: Sam is constantly surrounded by hot women who almost always throw themselves at him. There must be something there. Sam managed to usurp the lead role in this strip from the eponymous character almost from the get-go, but he may be in danger of losing his alpha status. Between the new guy with no legs and a new Judge Parker, Sam may be in trouble.
Randy Parker: There have been rumors and questions about the nature of Randy’s relationship with Sam and we know that he isn’t a “family man”, but Randy does seem to be able to land the occasional babe. Most notable, of course, being the lady CIA agent. He probably needs to work at this some more. Someday in the not too distant future, people will think the strip is his and he can take the alpha role.
The Phantom: Unquestionably the most hetero of our contestants and definitely not afraid of commitment (since he’s fulfilling a 400 year-old vow made by an ancestor). On those occasions when we see him with his wife, there is a lot more physical intimacy and affection displayed than by any of our other contestants (in fact, more than all of them except Randy put together). On the down side, he is a bit overmuscled and he lives in the middle of the freaking jungle. (And that boy in a diaper is his SON, yelo, shame on you.)
Who to vote for? I really don’t know. I can’t think of another possibility, though I’ve tried. Given the choices, I suppose I’d tend toward the Phantom if I went that way, but it’s a very reluctant vote.
As always, an insightful analysis, D-X. I would swap Rex and Mark on your scale but that's a quibble. According to Wikipedia (so it must be true) Rusty is adopted so there is a little Humbert Humbert creepiness there. And even if it is your own son, dressing a kid in the jungle in a diaper has to say something.
Yeah, I debated where to put Mark, but I figured asexual is farther removed from heterosexuality than utterly closeted homosexuality.
I think you made a mistake, the first three pictures all appear to be of the same guy.
Well, I'm not into dudes -- which means I wouldn't fit into the category -- but I figure it has to be the Phantom.
Zach,
Randy has curlier hair than Sam. And Rex is the one wearing thong panties.
I'll go with Sam Driver, Inexplicable Chick Magnet (thanks, Cardinal Truman A. Fable) based on his proven ablility to attract provocatively-clad hotties for my reading pleasure. Nobody does it better.
I will go with Sam Driver as well, thought Randy can look hot when he has glasses on. Without them he sort of looks like Dick Tracy, which is definitely not a compliment (complement? zomg learn vocabulary). I think that Judge Parker Sr. is hotter than both of them, despite being a old =P.
Rex Morgan looks handsome when you first see him, but after a while his overly-chiseled features, heavy eye makeup and constant stocked expressions with perfectly round lips start to get creepy. Also, denying sex for your wife so you can go camping with some random teenage boy is pretty much a turn off.
The Phantom is just... gross. I really don't find underwear on the outside of your purple spandex clothing attractive, but maybe I'm alone there. Also he's boring as hell, you can't even make fun of him like the others.
So I think I'll stick with Sam as my option. He is probably the closest thing poor female comics readers will ever get to eye candy (sigh) and as a bonus he's never too far from a huge rack and horny women, so the guys can get something from it too.
Lindsey,
You are the rare dissenter on the hawtness of superhero pajamas. For the record, I'm with you. Pants don't need to be that tight.
I'll give you a write-in - Moose Miller! Granted, he's not much to look at, but the man does dishes! That'll ring my chimes any day of the week, after 30 years of marriage...
How about putting Moose and Molly in the Couples competition as well?
Coach Thorp, people. He's athletic, he's vigorously manly, he's well-dressed, and he's articulate! He's like all of these losers rolled into one badly drawn super-hunk!
I vote for The Phantom solely because if you lined up all the other contestants I would not be able to tell them apart
I'm certain that Second Mate Guido, teenage runaway Niki, and all the other boys of RMMD are with me in voting for Rex Morgan. God, those are some cheekbones.
Long-belated write-in for Devil (from The Phantom). Yum.
This cannot have effect in actual fact, that is what I think.
Thank you for the post, really useful data.
soap hunk? hahaha what a strange term! in the other hand great article!
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