Apple
Cidu Bill on Sep 20th 2009
Nicole nominated this as a fairly obvious Arlo Award candidate. Is this the first time a mainstream newspaper cartoonist has gotten away with showing a naked nipple?
Filed in Arlo Award, Arlo Page, Cornered, Garden of Eden, Mike Baldwin, comic strips, comics, humor, nipples | 22 responses so far
Cidu Bill Sep 20th 2009 at 11:10 pm 1
Well, except for that time a few years back when Jimmy Johnson might or might not have slipped in one of Janis’s nipples…
furrykef Sep 21st 2009 at 12:15 am 2
I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a nipple or if it’s really just a sharp corner. Ink (or its digital equivalent) can be a real finicky medium, y’know.
Suzanne Sep 21st 2009 at 12:26 am 3
This Eve not only looks like a man (an old one, really) from the neck up, but “she” also has a man hand. Creepy. Maybe it’s Adam and he has manboobs?
mkilby Sep 21st 2009 at 01:38 am 4
Wishfull thinking. I’m sure the censors took that for an elbow, and I think they’re right.
CIDU Bill Sep 21st 2009 at 01:44 am 5
Hmm… I think you might be right, mkilby. I guess this is an Arno.
Spiritcatcher Sep 21st 2009 at 04:10 am 6
did the censors see the colored version or just the black and white ?
Mitch4 Sep 21st 2009 at 07:01 am 7
Yeh, the drawing in several ways adds to the confusion. Those might be just cartoony eyes but to me they look like glasses. It also seems to be an anachronistically contemporary haircut style, which may be contributing to what Suzanne calls the old-man look. (But the gag with “organic” is at base about anachronism anyway, so maybe she’s just a contemporary suburban matron transported back to the garden?)
Catlover Sep 21st 2009 at 08:11 am 8
The mainstream cartoon “Love Is” does/did, all the time.
I gotta say, I thought that was Adam (or even Steve) before I thought it was Eve.
Nicole Sep 21st 2009 at 08:28 am 9
I agree that at first glance the person is somewhat sexualy ambiguous. However Regardles of breast or elbow, in the story the snake offers the apple to Eve, so unless the cartoonist is rewriting the story, Occam’s razor would point to this being Eve.
For that to be an elbow, the arm would have to placed in such a way that the hand would be visible on the shoulder. Also consider the slope of the chest above the forearm , it lines up with the breast below it. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Re:man-boobs. Since god made Adam in his own image, unless god has man-boobs it is unlikely that Adam does either
Morris Keesan Sep 21st 2009 at 09:10 am 10
Nicole: God made Adam in his own image, but that was *days* ago. Adam could surely have let himself go by now.
(And those sure look like glasses to me).
Nicole Sep 21st 2009 at 09:20 am 11
The do look like glasses
Daniel J. Drazen Sep 21st 2009 at 10:19 am 12
I thought it was a really nerdy Adam with glasses.
David N Sep 21st 2009 at 10:59 am 13
Yeah, for living in Eden Eve’s got some surprisingly rough mileage on her. And I agree, inorganic glasses on.
mkilby Sep 21st 2009 at 11:16 am 14
No, her hand doesn’t go up toward the shoulder, it’s on her hip. She’s got that ’sceptical stance’ look. But there’s another possibility: maybe the colorizers goofed, and that triangle was supposed to be a green leaf.
Darren S. A. George Sep 21st 2009 at 01:36 pm 15
Didn’t the Far Side do this gag with “I guess it’s been washed.”?
Keera Sep 21st 2009 at 04:05 pm 16
It’s a boob. I have a pair of my own so consider me an expert.
Nicole Sep 21st 2009 at 05:17 pm 17
Keera — LOL LOL
mkilby — What I meant is that the only way that could be an elbow is if for some reason she had her hand on her shoulder. It is not possible that her hand is on her hip. Her body is rotated slightly toward the left. For that much of her elbow to be visible with her hand on her hip, she would have to rotate her shoulder joint so that her arm was at almost a 90 degree angle to her body.
And I have an elbow, so I am somethig of an expert
Frank the curmudgeon Sep 21st 2009 at 09:34 pm 18
Then again it could be her right elbow and forearm extended across her bust in an reflexive act of modesty. On the otherhand there is no bite in the apple so she (they) did not know sin and there was no call for modesty. I don’t have boobs but have made a study of them for three score years. It’s a boob.
Cidu Bill Sep 21st 2009 at 09:43 pm 19
Premiering this month on Fox: “Boob or No Boob”
mkilby Sep 21st 2009 at 11:24 pm 20
Quite appropriate, given that all the commentators on Fox are boobs.
a noid Sep 24th 2009 at 07:59 pm 21
I think this comic has a much deeper meaning. Eve’s question suggests that not only have the first two humans created poisons to use against insects, but have been using it long enough to decide that they don’t want to eat from the trees they have already used it on. It’s all a comment on mankind’s inherent evil and ingratitude. God creates a paradise for the first man, but he’s lonely, so god yanks out a rib and makes him a mate, but then they wonder why the (reference to afterlife concept that didn’t exist yet deleted) did God create all these little bugs that eat our food? You call this a utopia? Let’s kill them, since god said we could do whatever we wanted with the animal. So it was only a matter of time before they disobeyed God directly and ate the apple. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it, but that is definitely a nipple.
Araxie Oct 23rd 2009 at 06:11 pm 22
All we would have needed was for Adam to have read an article reporting on the Snake’s dubious farming techniques, and all of mankind would have been changed forever.