I am not normally one to cry "misogyny", especially for anything more than 3 decades old.
But, in this case....yes, Avengers #200 is truly cringe-worthy. The problem is not that it was a comic written in the late 20th Century that had all the rape and incest of a Greek epic. The problem is that somebody thought it was a good idea to publish.
Yes, there is context that mitigates it. But, the context relies heavily on comic-book bullshit far more than it should considering that rape and incest are actually problems. (I respect Claremonts attempts to fix the problem. But, that is ultimately just a back-write.)
Was "rape" a word they could have used in a comic at that point? (Not the idea or implication, but the specific word.)Without calling it rape, Carol absolutely expresses quite a bit of the language of someone who has been raped.
He really should have known better. Rape and incest are aft-brain crimes. But, they are also socially defined. Even if Shooter's aft-brain did not scream in revulsion, he socialized fore-brain should have made the save.I think you are spot on that Shooter was aiming at a science fiction paradox story and forced the issue to the detriment of the characters, all in service of his 'cool idea'.
There was a similar question about Doom and Sue Storm in the 2015 "Secret Wars". But, that was more a question of writers and editors not getting the same memo. (At least one actually changed his "official" answer about a plot point, implying that he or somebody else made a mistake.)The one thing I found of interest was the mention of feuding writers. Makes me wonder if anything like that still happens these days, or if any of them care enough.
The difference is that in those cases, the bad guy rapist is identified as a bad guy. The heroes are not shrugging it off. More importantly, there are no mental gymnastics required to make it okay.Wrecker definitely seemed like he was going to rape that sun bathing rich girl in the Sentry arc. Hood's gang and Tigra? Any Mandrill appearance?
Yeah, I mean, DC never did anything like that. I mean, can you imagine if they published a run where one of their heroes (maybe a space cop or something) totally banged a 14 year old girl, but it was okay because she was an alien, he thought she was legal and they were wearing magic space rings? That would be so messed up if it happened.. Marvel sunk low that day.
Or, hey, how about that time Mockingbird was drugged and raped by a cowboy, and Hawkeye's reaction was "get your hands off my girl" (as in "step away from my car, punk").