# Bigger perv: Piers Anthony or Chris Claremont? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 29, 2016, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568 "2016-03-29T20:43:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/1 "2016-03-29T20:43:28Z")
Because it’s Throwback Thursday (except that it’s Tuesday). Anthony’s truly disturbing work on the [del]novel[/del] book-length typed wank session _Firefly_ would seem to make him the easy winner; why his wife and children did not immediately divorce/disown him upon its publication has always puzzled me. But Claremont’s groundbreaking [merger](http://36.media.tumblr.com/1980c5cb92aa550099cf247ecfc4f8e7/tumblr_mlq9lu79ua1rvm5qqo2_r1_1280.jpg) of teenage escapist fantasy with lesbian sadomasochism should not be discounted. Thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/2 "2016-03-29T20:57:01Z")
It’s not even a contest. Anthony’s fascination with little girls panties wins going away. And I haven’t even read anything of his for a couple of decades. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/3 "2016-03-29T21:01:03Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > It’s not even a contest. Anthony’s fascination with little girls panties wins going away. And I haven’t even read anything of his for a couple of decades. Sir! I will thank you to rephrase this in the form of a wisecrack! God, it’s like you’ve never participated in a Rhymer thread before. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/4 "2016-03-29T21:01:30Z")
Remember that Anthony book with the very young teenager who cuts and is otherwise unhealthy who meets the grown man from another world (maybe this was the Mode series?) and he’s all intrigued because women from his world wear heavy diaper-like butt coverings but she just wears regular pants, and they get married but there’s some proxy business so she thinks she didn’t actually get to marry him and oh god it’s all coming back to me I blame you for this. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/5 "2016-03-29T21:02:30Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Remember that Anthony book with the very young teenager who cuts and is otherwise unhealthy who meets the grown man from another world (maybe this was the Mode series?) and he’s all intrigued because women from his world wear heavy diaper-like butt coverings but she just wears regular pants, and they get married but there’s some proxy business so she thinks she didn’t actually get to marry him and oh god it’s all coming back to me I blame you for this. It’s not like I turned evil yesterday. The book was VIRTUAL MODE. There was a telepathic horse in it. Come up with a wisecrack immediately or I will remind you for the boxing match sequence in the sequel ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/6 "2016-03-29T21:04:01Z")
I hope Claremont couldn’t out do this: [this](http://hradzka.livejournal.com/392471.html). (link is a blog entry which has some quoted passages. No NSFW images but the words may require brain bleach. I think Piers Anthony is seriously mentally ill. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/7 "2016-03-29T21:07:24Z")
If it were Anthony drawing that page, the victim would be twelve years old, but that would be totally OK, because hey, it’s not like she was a virgin anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/8 "2016-03-29T21:17:32Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > If it were Anthony drawing that page, the victim would be twelve years old, but that would be totally OK, because hey, it’s not like she was a virgin anyway. Do you mean if Anthony had drawn the image from the OP? Because Claremont didn’t draw it, of course. I’d look up who did if I weren’t so lazy. Given the way Marvel historically produced comic books it is quite possible that the artist is responsible for the idea, but given how much lesbian sadomasochism there is in 80s aned 90s X-books, I feel comfortable attributing it to Claremont. And I will not speculate on Illyana Rasputin’s hymen. Not now, not ever, not for any of the X-jailbait girls except for the two whose status is obvious (Karma and Rogue). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/9 "2016-03-29T21:47:30Z")
I don’t know the character in that comic, and so am even less capable of speculation as to her level of sexual experience than you are. I’m saying that if Anthony had done something like that, we wouldn’t even need to speculate, because he would tell us himself as a way of supposedly justifying his perviness. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/10 "2016-03-29T21:55:31Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Because Claremont didn’t draw it, of course. I’d look up who did if I weren’t so lazy. I recognize it, because I remember reading it, and have it in a trade paperback. It’s from a New Mutants special, circa 1986, and drawn by Arthur Adams (who also drew the X-Men annual that contained the other half of the “Asgardian Wars” story). The blonde doing the torturing is the Enchantress, one of Thor’s main villains. And, in answer to Chronos’s question, the character being tortured is [Illyana Rasputin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magik_%28comics%29) (Colossus’s little sister, a.k.a. Magik). At that time, she was a teenager, 16 years old or so. Part of her backstory is that, when she was 6, she was kidnapped by the sorcerer Belasco and taken off to the pocket dimension of Limbo, where he trained her in dark magic for a decade. After ten years in Limbo, she defeated Belasco and returned to Earth, though little or no time had passed on Earth (so, to her brother and others, she had effectively aged 10 years in an instant). While bad things had happened to her in Limbo, I don’t think there was ever any intimation that she had lost her virginity there (willingly or otherwise), it being the 1980s, and the X-titles being Comics Code compliant. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/11 "2016-03-29T22:02:47Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > . . . No NSFW images but the words may require brain bleach. . . . Cool, though, to see the old “Kiss Me And You’ll Live Forever (you’ll be a frog, but you’ll live forever)” poster! I remember that one from the 60s/70s. A little trip down memory lane. Claremont’s writing is angsty, but Anthony’s is much more creepy, more celebrating of sexual abuse. Rapey McRaperson. Ilyana Rasputin is being mind-raped…but Anthony is writing about adult-on-child genital rape. Lots worse. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/12 "2016-03-29T22:07:48Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > After ten years in Limbo My error, based on it being too long since I’d read those books, and a faulty reference of “a decade” in the Wikipedia entry. In double-checking [her entry in the Marvel wiki](http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Illyana_Rasputina_%28Earth-616%29), she was in Limbo for seven years, and re-emerged at age 13. As the comic page in question was published only a couple of years after those events, given the slow speed of comic book aging, it’s safe to say that she was 13 or 14, at the oldest, in that encounter with the Enchantress. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/13 "2016-03-29T22:20:50Z")
I’m all for “a different time” and all and shit, Marvel let Claremont keep going…but yes…it’s worse. The Magik mini-series brutally sexualizes a 13 year old girl (I mean art wise on the covers and such) But then let’s remember this is a series where a 13 year old girl (Kitty Pryde) wanted Collosus to take her virginity before they both turned into Brood.\* \*I will admit the drama from Collosus’s POV of being in love with a 13 year old girl while 18 is very interesting. I don’t mean that to sound pervy. But then Claremont goes down a crazy road when the other X-Men chastise Peter for dumping Kitty Pryde. Wolverine: “In Russia you could marry her!” Storm: “I will never forgive you for breaking her heart!” Get a grip people it’s a fucking teenage romance. Tell Kitty to put on her big boy boots and move on. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/14 "2016-03-30T01:46:25Z")
I have never read any of Piers Anthony’s novels and I don’t intend to do so. However, whatever he may have written, there’s a story about him that I just heard last week in which he comes across as a really nice guy. Listen for yourself: > **[Show Me the Way - This American Life](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/470/show-me-the-way)** > > Stories about people in trouble who look for help in mystifying places. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/15 "2016-03-30T02:14:09Z")
One of the reading I stopped reading comics in the 1980s was that I could no longer stomach Chris Claremont’s torturing of teenagers. And that kind of stuff was spreading through comics generally. How can anyone possibly wisecrack about that? And, yes, this is my first time in a Rhymer thread. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/16 "2016-03-30T02:41:40Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > It’s not even a contest. Anthony’s fascination with little girls panties wins going away. And I haven’t even read anything of his for a couple of decades. His fascination with little girl panties is about the most innocent of the things he’s written. ---
**Author:** ![TheInimitableMaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@TheInimitableMaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheInimitableMaven)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/17 "2016-03-30T02:44:40Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > One of the reasons I stopped reading comics in the 1980s was that I could no longer stomach Chris Claremont’s torturing of teenagers. And that kind of stuff was spreading through comics generally. THIS, as well as the general convolution for convolution’s sake of a mess the X-franchise was at the time (and has pretty much remained) I became a comic book nerdette (1994, and a few months into being ten years old) are the reasons I am glad I never fell head over heels in love with the mutants as so many Marvelites have and especially did in the 90’s thanks to the animated series. That said, I don’t know what it is about Claremont and his obsession with teens, tortured or not, but just damn. He is horrible for not only that, but also for taking non-X titles and trying to make them as X-Men-ish as possible in overall plots and/or character handling and invention. Claremont’s gawdawful _Fantastic Four_ run epitomized all of that…especially the teen obsession with his creation of Valeria Von Doom (later Richards via more malarkey on the part of Claremont and those who followed him), easily, EASILY the worst character in FF history (and there have been quite a few not great characters, but in my book anyway, Valeria takes the cake). It all makes me almost downright ashamed of actually liking Claremont’s _FF vs. X-Men_ limited from the late 80’s…my favorite FF limited, and because it is actually a quite good story and one of THE better and best ones featuring the FF from that time-frame. But it also proves that Claremont was already getting to where he couldn’t write anything worth a crap if it didn’t have the X-Men to a degree and/or maintain a X-title feel with or without mutants and/or at least one or two teen characters. BUT all of that said, I think Piers Anthony has Claremont beat on the squicky front…the sheer twisted background of Magik (making me all the more glad I decided she was admittingly fun to play in Marvel Heroes (my current online game addiction), but her X-stigma made decide to not further pursue considering her as a main/signature/prestige), among other things, aside. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/18 "2016-03-30T02:51:26Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I have never read any of Piers Anthony’s novels and I don’t intend to do so. However, whatever he may have written, there’s a story about him that I just heard last week in which he comes across as a really nice guy. Listen for yourself: > > [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/470/show-me-the-way?act=1#play](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/470/show-me-the-way?act=1#play) I thought of the same story. It was first on a couple years back. I remember thinking the kid was pretty sharp to track him down. I’ve also never read any of his books, and I have no opinion on the actual topic if this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/19 "2016-03-30T03:18:06Z")
Piers Anthony has a book titled “The Color Of Her Panties” which is mainly about, spoilers. the color of a woman’s panties. Perv. ---
**Author:** ![magnusblitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@magnusblitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magnusblitz)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2016, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568/20 "2016-03-30T06:18:50Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > I’m all for “a different time” and all and shit, Marvel let Claremont keep going…but yes…it’s worse. The Magik mini-series brutally sexualizes a 13 year old girl (I mean art wise on the covers and such) I’m not familiar with the Magik miniseries (before my time) but I just looked up the four covers and I’m not really seeing it. #1 and #3 aren’t sexual in any way. #2 has her in a one-piece swimsuit-style leotard, but I don’t think that’s sexual (any more than any 13-year-old wearing a swimsuit or leotard is). #4, with her in bikini-esque torn clothing, maybe, but the image still says “demon child” to me more than “sexualized.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bigger-perv-piers-anthony-or-chris-claremont/750568.md?page=2)