I’ve always thought that one of the cardinal virtues of making your own erotica is that you have an extraordinary opportunity to make friends, and I’m pleased to have a bit of confirming evidence for that hypothesis just recently.
For many years there has been someone else making his own erotic mad science under the handle Dr. Robo. His core focus is a little different from mine, centered on the themes of erotic mind control and sexy robots (and human beings who’ve been made into them). Oh, and voluptuous superheroines: let’s not forget that! Together with his artist and creative partner Finister Foul, Dr. Robo has produced and published a hundreds-of-pages long series of 3D comics are set in a fictional setting called Metrobay. They got their start in publication from a gentleman working under the handle Jpeger, the proprietor of MCcomix.com (that is, “Mind Control Comix”) and HIPComix.com (that is heroines in peril comix, not hipster comix), and have since advanced to doing their own distribution. In addition to this principal art, both the series and the setting have benefited from the contributions of a talented group of additional artists attracted to the project over the years, including Trishbot, Uroboros, MCtek, Northern Chill, Akonkid, Dumbtime, and Sir Willoughby.
Yes a little different. There are no super-powered individuals in the Gnosis College fictional setting, and I’ve touched only a little bit on the theme of erotic mind control (remember Dr. Strangeways’s obscene hedonic machine from Invisible Girl, Heroine?). There are a lot of sex machines of various kinds, and there’s an A.S.F.R.-related theme often touched on. And of course, both Dr. Robo and I seem to enjoy working the visual tropes of mad science — of the subject stretched out upon the table, whether volunteer or victim, awaiting some extraordinary offense-unto-God transformation. Certainly all this was enough to answer Dr. Robo’s friendly hail.
It was time well spent, believe me, for it was a chance to discover still more in common, such as
(1) Origin stories. Dr. Robo reports that his thing for erotic mind control began when he was a kid. I experienced the first stirrings of my thing just as early, it seems. These sorts of things go deep for those of us who really have them.
(2) A common trope: the tube girl. I think I might use it more frequently, but Dr. Robo clearly understands its power. Here is an example, from his dieselpunk-era Metrobay story Original Sin.
(3) And another common trope: the scanner! For me it started with Looker, and I first wrote about Iris Brockman getting scanned to set up some fun personal identity porn. Dr. Robo also knows the trope and knows it well. Consider this scene from another of his comics, Adult Toys:
Yes, I can really relate.
(4) A lust for world-building. It seems that neither Dr. Robo nor I just want sexy images that reflect our thing, or even characters or stories that reflect our thing. We want whole worlds, places, fictional universes geared to the logic of what it is that we’re into. And so we set out to create them.
(5) And an understanding of popular culture as a never-ending source of fetish fuel… Well, that’s tomorrow’s post.
But if I’ve intrigued you enough about Dr. Robo’s project (or if you, like he, really like erotic mind control and robots), you can and should show him some appreciation even now. The Metrobay site at DeviantArt can be reached here, and there’s a whole site called the Metrobay Encyclopedia here. But probably best of all would be if you were to buy Dr. Robo’s work, which you can do at his Ebay store here. Happy browsing!