Lore reports that Warren Ellis is starting a comics collective called, as you may have guessed from the title, Rocket Pirates!  Submissions are open, and will remain open indefinately, or as Warren puts it: "The submissions process will remain permanently open. Unless, you know, I change my mind. I am unpredictable and I drink a lot."

All comics on the collective will be free to access, at all times, which is, in my humble opinion, the only way to go.  I guess I wasn't busy enough, after all.  Time to get cracking on those solo comic projects I've been dreaming up!  Or get Theo motivated, but honestly, that could be a whole lot more difficult.

If you haven't seen it, feel free to check out the comic Theo and I did between October 2005 and May 2006.  It had its good moments. :)

Claire Hoffman is brave.  Joe Francis is gross.  Either might be an oversimplification.  Claire covers the adult entertainment industry for the LA Times, and as such might be a bit of a masochist, or perhaps at this point simply finds the wanton excesses of American society both trite and banal.  Joe, the founder of the Girls Gone Wild empire, reveals himself as a young, frightened kid on a power-trip.  In a way, being gross is an act.  Sadly, that doesn't make it any less gross, and in a way all the more disturbing.

Claire's article covers Joe Francis, certainly, but it also covers a disturbing trend in our society.  It's not that we're losing our inhibitions, necessarily, it's that we're selling them.  Whether it's for a t-shirt and a trucker hat or for that elusive "fifteen minutes", people are becoming all too willing to do anything in front of a camera, for any reason.  Ironically, even Joe has a problem with this.  Like Dr. Frankenstein, and Girls Gone Wild his monster, it has inevitably turned against him and taken away that exposure of innocence he urgently sought and replaced it with a calculated exhibitionism.

But the women are changing, Francis tells me, and that makes him sad. In the beginning, when "Girls Gone Wild" cameramen first popped up in clubs, the women who revealed themselves seemed innocent—surprised, even, by their own spontaneity. Now that the brand is so pervasive, the women who participate increasingly appear to be calculating exhibitionists, hoping that an appearance on a video might catapult them to Paris Hilton-like fame.

The story is interesting, and it's difficult to stomach.  But I think it's honest and it's necessary, because like it or not, this is our society.

Gross, innit? 

Read the complete story: 'Baby, Give Me A Kiss', by Claire Hoffman: LATimes

Joe Francis, the founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" empire, is humiliating me. He has my face pressed against the hood of a car, my arms twisted hard behind my back. He's pushing himself against me, shouting: "This is what they did to me in Panama City!"

It's after 3 a.m. and we're in a parking lot on the outskirts of Chicago. Electronic music is buzzing from the nightclub across the street, mixing easily with the laughter of the guys who are watching this, this me-pinned-and-helpless thing.

Francis isn't laughing.

(via r.stevens)