I’ve learned more about porn in the past two days than I have over the course of my entire 30 years, and it’s all because of this. It didn’t exactly shout “porn” to me in the first place, but so many bloggers were calling it “hentai” and “tentacle porn” and “tentacle rape” and there I was, thinking:
What the hell is tentacle porn?
I certainly don’t live in a vacuum and I take in a lot of media, but I don’t have a vast knowledge of porn because its not really my bag. I don’t make judgments of the people walking out of the velvet curtained “adult movie” room at the video place (unless they smell bad or are wearing one of those tank tops with the arm holes cut all the way down to the waist – that’s just gross), and I don’t walk in there myself because I’d rather watch Pride and Prejudice anyway (Colin Firth is the ONLY Mr. Darcy).
Now, I can put the words “tentacle” and “porn” together, and figure it out, but putting the two together had never occurred to me. “Hentai” had to be looked up. But, I didn’t come to the Heroes for Hire cover with that knowledge base, so I didn’t see “tentacle porn”; I saw heroes threatened by some sort of tentacled monster. Still do.
I didn’t immediately go to “TENTACLE RAPE!!!!!!” because, again, it never occurred to me to put those words together (not to mention there isn’t a rape going on). I thought that it wouldn’t occur to kids to put those ideas together and they would just see “hot babes in danger” on the cover, until I read this little nugget:
That just floored me, and brings up a couple other issues. Chief among them, parental supervision, any kid’s cognitive ability to make abstract connections, and their ability to make them independently. Those will be addressed in part two. Until then, here some other tentac-ular images to sate a tentacle craving appetite:
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Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
Heh. “Tentacle porn” (which I love, btw) is Hentai. I’ve never seen an animated “porno” film without tentacles and those tentacles always seem to find an orifice.
I’m glad a female counterpart sees it much the same as I do. While I admittedly subscribe to Heavy Metal and watch a fair amount of pornography, this whole animated porn bit – especially with the added dimensions of tentacularism (???) – is just… weird, man. It’s just WEIRD!
As I always say, “Whichever guy is all into tentacles creeping up on – or IN – a girl is just… creepy.”
I’m quite familiar with the concepts of hentai and tentacle rape.
I think it’s just funny that people would relate those things with marvel at all…but looking at the cover it IS very similiar to the covers of hentai comics simply because of the way the art has been done, all shiny and with the tentacles all drippy.
i think it’s a side-effect of comic-globalisation.