Okay folks, it's time to play:WHAT HORRIBLE MISFORTUNE IS GOING TO BEFALL THE SUPERHEROINE?
Today's contestant is Greer Nelson, better known as "Tigra."
The ad copy for "New Avengers" #35 includes:
"Guest-Starring Tigra. Poor Tigra. Poor Poor Tigra."
What fate-worse-than-death will befall our feline female?
Will it be:
1. Being forced to kill brand-new super-hubby on heart-shaped honeymoon mattress?
2. Undergoing unspecified torture that leaves her sterile?
3. Being forced to eat strips of boyfriend's face?
4. Finding out that her babies are figments of her imagination and going insane?
5. Being strapped to table and having one of her arms amputated?
6. Being tortured with power drill?
7. Enslaved and rented out as "living experimental art" by gimlet-faced supervillain?
8. Tentacle porn?
9. Impaled by large iron rod through chest?
10. Head torn off body?
11. Being mind-controlled and raped and being forced to give birth to rapist's son who is really reincarnation of rapist? And having co-workers think everything is marvelous??
12. Being mind-controlled, forced to wear bad 80's costume, and watch as mind-controller has sex with other women besides herself?
13. Having heart torn out by Wolverine?
14. Having intestines torn out by Wolverine?
15. Having eyes ripped out and replaced with tiny cameras that allows her attacker to spy on her friends?
16. Having crazy supervillainess leave "tiny footprints" on her brain as she gives you a fatal hemorrhage and sets your pregnant body aflame?
17. Having her race of feminist warriors be misled by a large elderly fat lady and try to overturn the US Government?
18. Shot in spine and stripped naked while her attacker laughs uncontrollably, leading to an awkward moment?
19. Sai through the bread-basket?
20. Enslaved in extended S&M sketch to third-tier supervillain and having sex with him because her animalistic sex drive betrayed her?
If you guessed #7, you're wrong, because that's what happened to Tigra last week!
If you guessed #10, you've confused Tigra with Pantha, which means you have to turn in your fanboy membership card.
And if you guessed #20, you are still having flashbacks to the extended S&M sketch from an old "West Coast Avengers" posted in Scans Daily a few weeks ago. Which means you have to really get out more.
Everyone knows she has a problem with anything in pants. COME ON.
ReplyDelete...most of the others I recognise (shame on me, I guess), but, who did #11 happen to?
ReplyDeleteI mean... c'mon. That's just... wrong.
Being mind-controlled and raped and being forced to give birth to rapist's son who is really reincarnation of rapist? And having co-workers think everything is marvelous??
ReplyDeleteMs. Marvel.
#21--Have to sleep with HAnk Pym some more...
ReplyDelete"Being mind-controlled and raped and being forced to give birth to rapist's son who is really reincarnation of rapist? And having co-workers think everything is marvelous??"
ReplyDeleteI loved how Ms Marvel brought this up at the birth of Jessica Jones' baby, as a funny childbirth ice-breaking story that might dissolve the tension in the room or something. I thought it was a bullshit story she made up within the confines of that single issue of the Pulse for shits and giggles, but apparently this actually happened in a Marvel comic and no-one suggested the writer get some help.
Remind me again - why is DC getting singled out and blamed for mainstreaming misogyny in kids' comics? Seems like there's plenty of blame to go around.
In the case of Ms. Marvel, most likely because it happened over a decade ago (more?), at a point when the horrific implications of mind control weren't really considered too deeply. I haven't read the issues themselves (just the Busiek reexamination from his run of Avengers), but it was probably not represented as rape, but more like a "bad marriage." If even that.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, the creators are surely still alive, but not on the book and may not even be working in comics. Whoever was running Marvel at the time isn't running Marvel now. There's no one to get mad at, so while it engenders a certain amount of disgust, the anger is minimal, or at the very least, unfocused and part of the general gestalt instead of a specific outrage.
Actually, the story where Ms. Marvel was seduced and raped, then gave birth to rapist's-son-who-turned-out-to-be-rapist-himself was later referenced in Avengers Annual #10, which was the first appearence of Rogue, coincidentally. In there, she rips the Avengers a new collective ass for completely ignoring how the situation must've felt like for *her*, and instead going all puppy-eyed over the whole thing. It was written by Chris Claremont, if I'm not mistaken, and marvelouslydrawn by Michael Golden. I thought, at the time, it was a very powerful moment for her.
ReplyDeleteI trust Bendis. Judd Winick, he's not. And really, we should stop being vague and not naming names...Judd Winick is the hack's hack who can't tell a story without torturing a woman. I don't care if he was friends with Pedro or not, he's a garbage writer who should never be paid to write a joke on a cocktail napkin, forget a comic.
ReplyDeleteYes, let's trust Bendis, who gave us Womb-Crazy Wanda in Avengers Disassembled, reduced his own creation of Jessica Jones into a hysterical baby-momma in The Pulse, transformed Ultron into a woman who killed the Sentry's wife in New Avengers, and from the looks of cover solicits, is going to turn the Wasp into the next host of Carnage.
ReplyDeleteBendis' storytelling skill has already degenerated to Chuck Austen levels, and all he needs to do to show that he has the same level of misogyny is create a new supervillain called Virginia Dentata (although he's arguably already done that with Girltron).
Well, Bendis did do the whole mind-control thing in Alias with Jessica Jones being the Purple Man's pony-girl for over a year, and having the then-teenaged Spider Woman as a drugged-up sex-slave for an MGH dealer, so his writing back-catalog can probably stand a little scrutiny.
ReplyDeleteSo the Ms Marvel rape/child/rape thing was old-school Marvel? Somehow that doesn't seem much better - weren't they doing comics exclusively for kids back then?
I am just tired of this. I came back to comics a year ago, and I am probably already about to leave simply because no one seems to want to tell a story anymore without torturing a lady or giving someone their wish and then taking it away instantly, ala the GA/Black Canary wedding.
ReplyDeleteTiring.