Oh goodness me, some of the things here! I have definitely had some of those said to me.
This is very -- very -- true. And to be honest, a lot of the big companies known for comics and art don't really tend to treat their people very well. Disney will chew you up and spit you out, or just have you as essentially indentured labor at their parks. It's especially awful because even the sketch artists who can draw you something have to draw completely on-model -- they have a very narrow selection of things they are even allowed to draw -- and cannot draw anything that is even remotely "inappropriate", regardless of whether or not it's innocent humor or even something that appeared in one of their own movies.
People also don't consider contractual restriction and how Marvel, Disney, et cetera also reserve the right to completely throw you under a bus if you should say anything they don't like, even on your personal time or personal accounts; to claim anything you create while employed there as their own or tangle it up so badly you might as well not be able to use it; and to deny you residuals and royalties despite using your work. Usually it's the artist or writer that has to find this out and take it to them, and threaten legal action (or initiate legal action) before anything is done. It really is a reprehensible side of the industry.
As I work usually in more mature stuff most of the time, I get all kinds of crazy questions and things said to me. I've had people get really fascinated with the idea of me they've created in their heads as reality, which can get kind of scary sometimes! Naturally, I've had people ask me about how to draw anatomy that no book or course ever covers; I've done workshops and the like at conventions, too.
One of the most memorable times that a friend and I always laugh about is when we were presenting this workshop together. I had done a number of these anatomy workshops, and she's a really superb fellow artist. But we are always able to get each other laughing very easily, and sometimes we keep each other laughing. The workshop went overall very well, but as we were discussing human genitalia, I was going to take the male and she was going to address the female. We started joking with each other and had the class in stitches. We challenged each other to come up with the briefest, most concise ways to remember how to draw the parts, and I came up with "hot dog in a turtleneck" and hers was "you can cup it!"
It was a memorable workshop though, and I still have people today telling me they never forgot what they learned, so despite us being goofy, at least we did a good (?) job!
To bring it a bit more back to the original topic though, I've had all kinds of comments on my work. From people implying I'm a sex maniac (which I'm definitely not) to people assuming I don't get out much. And still others who assume I'm some sort of satanic sorcerer. I think life as an artist is the kind of life that invites strange, often distressingly odd, commentary...
