So, speaking of “strong women.” ^_^

Venus With Biceps is the product of an overtly acknowledged lifelong fetish  for muscular woman. David L. Chapman has collected memorabilia, advertising, erotica, and other ephemera portraying women with muscles, often nude. I’m not going to tell you it’s not fetish-y as heck. It is. But it’s still kind of interesting. My favorite pictures in the book are advertisements showing women lifting weights and the like.

While I like muscular women, I have only one story about me and bodybuilding:

In 1993, I volunteered for Gay Games in New York City as security. This mostly meant sitting around and BSing with folks at the Martial Arts competitions, because the Games were full of really nice people and went off without a hitch the entire time. My last event was the Bodybuilding event, being held in Paramount Theater in Madison Square Garden. The guy running the event was, well, a drama queen, and spent most of the day having screaming fits about the parade of contestants, or locking himself in the office sulking. I ended up directing contestants to the warm-up area which was: down the hall, take the elevator to the top floor, across the hall, in the back, through the door…behind Barbra Streisand’s tour equipment. ^_^

I wandered up there when all the contestants had checked in, hung out with a young woman who was also security whose girlfriend was a Judge for the competition. I met a woman who eventually went on to get the silver medal – she let me feel her bicep. That was special, let me tell you.

The MC was a comedienne whose shtick was extremely abrasive humor. She called the audience “tampons” and was angry, because at the last second, they added a second MC. He was, if anything, even more abrasive than she was. The crowd disliked them separately, but when they started trading sexist insults at each other, we all squirmed in embarrassment.

Finally – 3 hours late – the bodybuilding competition began. At 2AM it was finally done. And so was I. I’ve never watched another bodybuilding competition in my life.

Fun book, though. ^_^

If  you’re a fan of Girl’s Ride, hapless thieves or vaguely futuristic settings and happen to have an obsession with drawings of girl’s butts, Umesato the Third! Volume 2 (三時代目は梅くくり！) has something for you. In my review of Volume 1, I covered the basics of the setup: Kukkuri is an extraordinary schoolgirl, surrounded by sidekicks Hana and Niki-ne who aid and abet her in her hijinks as master thief, the third of her name.

Fans of Isomoto Tsuyoshi will appreciate the art and the carefree nature of the story. Like Sei and Nan, Kukkuri, Niki and Hana are not weighed down by life drama. You might also like the DIY steampunk/futurist technology, like the Tin Man-esque  Yuuji-san and the helmet that takes Hana’s brain over and causes her to attack Kukkuri.

The plot is classic “wacky thief is wacky,” complete with cops running along after them, like Lupin, St. Tail and so many thief series before it.

Yuri is, as it was in Volume 1, Kukkuri’s extreme physical snuggliness with Niki and Hana’s raging crush on Kukkuri. Like the rest of the story, it is playful, rather than deep. And it would be more than good enough for me, but the tortured anatomy just to allow ass/crotch shots sucks away the fun.

Ratings:

Art- 6
Story – 8
Characters – 7
Yuri- 4
Service – starts 4, but ends at like 8. …the fuck?

Overall – 6

I like the series, but the service destroyed my interest in reading Volume 3. And since clearly, as the thing went on, the editors insisted on more service, I think it’s just a good idea to stop here.