The pic you see above shows Brazilian artist Mike Deodato Jr on the left, who’s drawn any number of stories for Marvel, DC, and a few other publishers, and on the right is fellow Brazilian artist Will Conrad whose work I most associate with Buffy and Angel titles from Dark Horse, though a look at his Facebook page shows work with Marvel and DC characters. Thanks to the native Brazilian Gay Leaguer Ale who found this pic posted on Conrad’s Facebook page. Ale was kind enough to translate the dialog from Portuguese to English.
Mike Deodato: “Come here, Will!!! I need to be fucked in the ass!”
Will Conrad: “Get out, faggot! I don´t want to fuck you! Aargh!”
As you might imagine, Ale didn’t think the joke was funny at all. He explains the word “baitola” is a very offensive slur in Portuguese, similar to faggot. And “Eu preciso dar o toba” literally means “I need to give my ass hole”.
I’ve looked at posts going back to the beginning of this year on both Deodato’s and Conrad’s Facebook pages and this seems to be the only photo with this kind of dialog. Again, I don’t read Portuguese but all the photos are of artwork or people and things from their personal lives. Conrad’s list of nearly 5,000 Facebook friends unsurprisingly has a number of people in the comics business. Admittedly, that’s a large list of people to look over though I noticed among them are Gail Simone, Marc Andreyko, Jose Villarrubia, and Stephen Sadowski, all of whom are either gay or an ally. Does this fact change anything about their banter?
What do you think? Are Deodato and Conrad using offensive language or do you think they’re just “boys being boys”?
Conrad’s Twitter and Deodato’s Twitter.
Here’s a screen cap of the pic from Conrad’s Facebook page.
