Retrievals I: Atomica on liquid skin

One of the most magnificent on-line resources of our day is the Internet Archive, a place to which I upload versions of all the comics and art I have been involved in creating, in hopes that they will continue to be there long after I am gone and can no longer pay the rent on sites that I control. The Archive takes snapshots of the Internet and they try to save as much of it as they can, and this has meant for me that some sites which I saw perhaps a decade ago and thought long-vanished can still be found.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century I remember being inspired by the work of “Atomica,” whose small collection of photomanipulations and hand-drawn art worked on certain erotic themes that turned out to be deeply resonant for me. The art might be considered crude, amateurish, and perhaps disgusting by many, but I didn’t experience it that way. I found it rather to be something that made me less lonely by realizing that there was someone out there thinking similar strange thoughts to what I was thinking. So I was sad when I found that the art had vanished. I was sad not just not to be able to see the art anymore, but also sad to see a part of the old Internet — that outlaw zone of people doing do-it-yourself, let-your-freak-flag-fly-proudly projects. An Interent before most of the Internet was turned into a big ugly mall patrolled by corporate goons in which you are the principal product for sale.

Recently in some old notes I found the URL for the “Galaxy of Terror” site to which the Atomica art had been uploaded. That old URL led nowhere, of course. But part of the Internet Archive is something called the Wayback Machine, a huge collection of snapshots of pieces of the Internet as it once was years ago. Put in a URL and, if you’re lucky, you can find view of how a certain site looked in 2015…or 2005.

I turned out to be easy to get back to Atomica, because all that art had been uploaded by 2002.

This post is the first in what I hope to make a series in short essays in retrieval, looking for deserving artists who fell into obscurity and can be found (as far as I can tell) principally in the Internet Archive. By bringing these artists to light again, putting their work on the open Internet, I hope that others will be able to find an enjoy it, that search engines will once again be able to find it and, who knows, maybe some long-dormant artists will be inspired to create again.

So, Atomica.

One of the things about Atomica’s art that intrigued me is that while there isn’t very much of it — my download of all the contents of the relevant file list shows fewer than 70 items — it seems to allude to an imaginative world of considerable size and complexity. It’s like seeing a lost civilization in a few pot shards and inscriptions. The world is like ours, but there are invading species of some kind that want to assimilate or mate with women. One of these is called a hydra. Somehow connected with the hydra is some sort of rather dangerous drug or cosmetic called liquid skin, which turns the flesh of comely young women into goo.
Liquid Skin is produced by a sketchy outfit called the Atomica Corporation.

Dangerous as it is, liquid skin is something that these comely young enjoy playing around with as a sort of sex aid, something that allows one to literally melt together with a partner.

Text reads: Liquid skin is a safe product for adults only. Turning flesh into liquid for 25 years. Surgeon General Warning: Do not use repetitively. Effects will become permanent.

Text reads: Atomica, turning flesh to liquid for 25 years.

It is sometimes hinted that liquid skin is a dangerous thing to play around with.

Text reads: Liquid Skin: For the final act of togetherness.

Text reads: There were 7000 accidents with Liquid Skin last month.

Indeed, results can be fatal.

Text (with some spelling corrections) reads: I told you…if she’s allergic she’ll caccoon [sic, believe “cocoon” was meant] and become a Hydra and with the signs she is showing she’ll be the worse [sic, believe “worst” was meant] kind man, get her out of here…no you don’t understand that’s not your girlfriend she’s already gone…she’s dead that thing in there can eat everyone you know, now get it out of here or I will…

It can be badly abused.

Text reads: By the end of the day Jessica resembled nothing more than a plastic bag full of goo, thanks to some hardcore college pranks and Atomica’s Liquid Skin.

And indeed it can lead to some very alarming transformations.

Text reads (caption by caption, and freely corrected): Cindy drinks a whole gallon of Liquid Skin (1) Oh shit there are worse [illegible, possibly “cramps”]. (2) Well they should be, you’re hand is inside you. You’re liquid now, Cindy. (3) Look, we can remove her mouth. (4) Look, she drank so much she’s absorbing into me. (4) OMG, you’re fucking contaminated too! If you’re not careful we’ll just be a puddle of goo. (5) No, really, get away from me. You two planned this! Do you know you’ll become hydra? You drank so much you will never become human again.

Pretty squicky stuff, and yet it had its influence on my own comics writing, with notions like liquifying people and also the creation of two-human chimeras. If you want to see the whole gallery, you can access it via this page at the Internet Archive.

Bathtub dissolution

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My original tumblr post was here.  Original text:

Source: venusrbecky

 

To deliquesce

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My original tumblr post was here.  Original text:

victoriousvocabulary:

DELIQUESCE

[verb]

1. to become liquid by absorbing moisture from the air, as certain salts.

2. to melt away.

3. Botany: to form many small divisions or branches.

Etymology: from Latin deliquescere, “dissolve”, from de-, “down” +liquescere, “become liquid”, from liquere, “be liquid”.

[Rivenis – Dissolve]

(via mudwerks)

Melted into a soda

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My original tumblr post was here.  Original text:

Bottled fairy

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My original tumblr post was here.  Original text:

I’ve been unable to determine to provenance of the image, but it is clearly a grayscale of one that was originally in color.
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This version of it found here.

Partially molten

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Original post here. Image contains a URL to messy-online.com. Original text:

xelinaliquid:

It feels so good when I’m partially molten… I can feel parts of my body fusing together…

Splat!

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Original post here. Sourced to messysexglam. Original text:

xelinaliquid:

That time I split myself into two bodies, one made of vanilla and the other made of chocolate. We made ourselves sticky just enough to climb up the walls and on the ceiling. We finally melt ourselves onto that solid girl, just before we turned her into liquid too to absorb her.

Tasty girl soda by accident

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Original post here. Original text:

letsmeltyou:

An accident
Accident by melt-liquify

Almost gone

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Original post here. Original text:

venusrbecky:

Almost Gone by melt-liquify

Bathtime!

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Original post here. Sourced to archive.loveisover.me.