Meathouse Man (The Grinder Comics Series)

This is some fucked up shit. Misogynistic and necrophilic fucked up shit. With illustrations. My inner feminist is vibrating with rage and is drawing disturbing comparisons with serial killer Elliot Rodger.

The meathouse is a whorehouse whose 'whores' are dead women, most of whom are former criminals and debtors although some have been kidnapped and killed precisely to be commodified by transforming them into brainless undead prostitutes. Outside of the meathouses, corpses are used as workers directed by handlers (read: puppeteers), similar to what The People do with vampires in Ilona Andrews's Kate Daniels series. The entertainment industry is dominated by corpse fights like the gladiators of old, their handlers manipulating them like show more 3-D real world video game characters.

Greg succumbs to peer pressure by patronising a meathouse where he falls in love with a coprse-whore and thus begins an obsession. The explicit artwork of this graphic novel makes it all the sicker. Necrophilic rape porn imagery is not something I want to see. And the illustrations aren't even good - it's quite grotesque actually, although that may be intentional.

Anyway, Greg decides he deserves better than an undead woman and proceeds to wait for a living, breathing woman. He meets one, he falls in love and she rejects him. He moves to another planet, meets a woman, falls in love, they're happy for a time, then she dumps him for his best friend. From here on out he hates women. Love is a cruel lie. He turns to the occupation he once shunned: gladiator-corpse handler. Turns out he's excellent at bloodily dismantling his opponents from the comfort of his 'throne' as the crowds cheer him on.

I know George R.R. Martin is a man who loves to write controversial storylines. A Song of Fire and Ice gets a pass in my eyes due to historical and cultural accuracy. Meathouse Man, on the other hand, is set in the distant future when man has colonized multiple planets. One would hope such pervasive and socially acceptable misogyny and disrespect for the dead would be but a distant memory by this time.

I'm shocked and disappointed that this is a 2014 Hugo Award Best Graphic Novel Nominee.

*Read for free via the LonCon3 Hugo Voter Pack. show less

The second page of the story elicited an oral, "Whaaaaaaaaaaa....?!" Page 5-ish made one of the most disturbing paraphilias a little less repugnant, at least for the purposes of this story; if you're tempted to put it down after page 2, if you like the genre try just a couple more pages. (This is not to say that the story was not disturbing or somehow all right or acceptable in any healthy person's view.) Keyword is story, follow that up with fictitious, and a very dark view of a dystopian future (whether ours or a parallel evolution) has been rendered. Complete with pictures. Pictures I don't need to see again...

Underneath it is the story of a man who knows he can be, and wants to be better. He tries. He gives up. It's because of this show more pattern of quitting his career at the end of the story so ironic (I won't reveal it here, don't want to leave spoilers).

Yes, as many reviews of the graphic novel have mentioned, misogyny runs through the course of the story, both in plot and picture. However, in the case of Meathouse Man, I believe that it was purposefully included to tell the story and cast a proper light on the bleakness of the world of the protagonist. I have railed against authors in previous reviews because of blatant mysogyny screaming at me from the pages. I feel you can tell when the personal beliefs or views of writer come blasting through their prose vs. when a message is being sent. I wasn't offended by the mysogyny in Meathouse Man because it felt like it was being used as a device not only of description, but of warning - to tell us to watch out where things could be going. show less

What a slimy, horrible character. Fortunately his story only takes about twenty minutes of reading time.

All these reviewers need to examine their ability to sort out fiction. There are characters who are horrible people. That doesn't make the whole work bad.

Sloppy writing makes the work bad.

Overdone and overcolored artwork makes a comic bad.

A decent story makes a work 'Eh'. A story that mashes the evil bad guy's morality in your face with an anvil ending is laughable.

Now this book is a weird one. It is something I tell you that. Not what I expected and with the knowledge that the writer was going through life struggles when writing this. This made me think about the book in a different way. Which made me see the book way deeper then I would have otherwise. This book made me question somethings about I a view love as well.

What a slimy, horrible character. Fortunately his story only takes about twenty minutes of reading time.

All these reviewers need to examine their ability to sort out fiction. There are characters who are horrible people. That doesn't make the whole work bad.

Sloppy writing makes the work bad.

Overdone and overcolored artwork makes a comic bad.

A decent story makes a work 'Eh'. A story that mashes the evil bad guy's morality in your face with an anvil ending is laughable.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2308499.html

A nominee for this year's Hugo for Best Graphic Story, adapted and illustrated by Golden from a story first published by GRRM in 1976. I have to say that the story itself didn't hugely appeal to me - Martin's early work was very dark indeed, and the theme of animated corpses serving people's industrial, entertainment and sexual needs is pretty grim. I was also struck by a lack of physical variation among the women characters, as illustrated, compared to the men. Not quite my cup of tea.

Well, that was depressing.