Rape in the Avengers and Avengers #200

[Michael Watkins]

Let's not forget Moondragon raping Thor not long after. I think it was pretty much a thing that male teenage scifi geeks liked to read about at that time. Google the Gor books if you don't believe that.

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well Moondragon has done other questionable stuff; like altering Quicksilver's mind, for instance.

[ed2962]

Yeah, that's exactly what she was going for. I can't say I feel happy about how the retcon turned Bobbi into a cheater, BUT I understand where the writer was coming from. I don't think she realized the can of worms she was about to open with that story, but I can tell her intention was to give Bobbi her agency back, and that wasn't something that was necessarily bad. I think it made sense for the story she was telling since the beginning and how the book was being promoted.

I believe that was her intension, but her retcon renders the original story nonsensical and ignores the fact that Bobbi regained her agency in that very story ( as well as the stories following it).

[ed2962]

I haven't read the story. Maybe Cain felt it was better for Bobbi to be more than a victim. :shrugs:

It's not a terrible comic in isolation but it only makes sense if you haven't read the original story.

[ed2962]

That was Mantlo or Shooter? Either way....oi gevault.

It was Steve Englehart. The crazy thing wasn't making Mantis ( a former bar girl ) the mother of the savior of the universe...it was when she married an intelligent tree from outer space who put his mind into the reanimated corpse of her dead boyfriend.

[Mike_Murdock]

I don't mind that by itself, I think the bigger issue is the "Mantis is the Celestial Madonna but she's a whore, get it guys?" stuff that's basically outright stated. I'm always torn between giving Steve Englehart credit for trying to subvert stereotype by making her the Celestial Madonna or blame for the fact that he made the character a Vietnamese street prostitute who was good at martial arts in the first place.

[The Cool Thatguy]

the aftermath was the breakup of she and Clint's relationship. if nothing else, it made Clint look like a real heel. so I wouldn't say that it was handled well. that would be a stretch.

I disagree somewhat.

People act like all Hawkeye cared about was that Bobbi killed Phantom Rider.

It ignores the fact that Hawkeye approached Bobbi, in confidence as her husband, and asked what happened with Phantom Rider. Bobbi lied to him.

To a degree, its understandably, but this is Hawkeye. Exceptionally emotional, and him reacting poorly to being lied to is expected.

More than that, when Bobbi killed Phantom Rider, it's worth noting that she had no tactical justification. She had backup, she had overpowered him, and he was beaten.

So that's another mark against Bobbi. Clint had reason to be mad, all things considered.

[Michael Watkins]

I disagree somewhat.

People act like all Hawkeye cared about was that Bobbi killed Phantom Rider.

It ignores the fact that Hawkeye approached Bobbi, in confidence as her husband, and asked what happened with Phantom Rider. Bobbi lied to him.

To a degree, its understandably, but this is Hawkeye. Exceptionally emotional, and him reacting poorly to being lied to is expected.

More than that, when Bobbi killed Phantom Rider, it's worth noting that she had no tactical justification. She had backup, she had overpowered him, and he was beaten.

So that's another mark against Bobbi. Clint had reason to be mad, all things considered.

fast forward to post-Disasembled Clint Barton indiscriminately putting arrows in people; not to attempting to rage kill Scarlet Witch...

[Michael Watkins]

I don't mind that by itself, I think the bigger issue is the "Mantis is the Celestial Madonna but she's a whore, get it guys?" stuff that's basically outright stated. I'm always torn between giving Steve Englehart credit for trying to subvert stereotype by making her the Celestial Madonna or blame for the fact that he made the character a Vietnamese street prostitute who was good at martial arts in the first place.

first Asian Avenger and she's a barefoot kung fu-ing prostitute. not a good look.

[Black Manta]

As a kid I really liked Avengers 200, with all the crazy time stuff going on in the mansion. (Although I guess Beast is a super racist with that Poc-a-hontas line. He should be run out of Marvel). I was really upset that Ms. Marvel didn't return to the Avengers. She was always joining them on missions. I think she official joined after their court case in the 190s, had a few missions and was pregnant in 197. 200 was a bizarre story. I think the only was to "fix" it was to say that the Avengers were mind controlled to the point that they wouldn't look for her later on. I wonder why they didn't have her return and rejoin the Avengers? She was a really great character.

[Kuwagaton]

ROFL, that description of Mantis. To be honest as offensive as some of that stuff could have been and was, I just plain didn't like that era of Avengers and so (being born in 87 myself) as I heard about the things that went down, none of it surprised me. The closest I've come to this particular story was CSBG, though.

Anyway, I don't remember Byrne creating any gay superheroes when he jumped over to DC.

Maggie Sawyer was undeniably a lesbian.

[Michael Watkins]

so what was worse; Carol's time as an Immortus receptacle or her as a sloppy drunk during the Busiekavengers era?

[Drops Of Venus]

So, Shooter did not say Northstar could not be gay, just that Byrne could not explicitly say so in the comics. Why? Because there was a stupid CCA that they were worried about keeping on the covers so parents would let their kids buy them, and Shooter's job was to make sure the writers followed it. Byrne just likes to whine about Shooter.

If Shooter had his own personal no gays rule, Byrne would not have been getting away with telling everyone Northstar was and implying it as best he could in the pages.

Anyway, I don't remember Byrne creating any gay superheroes when he jumped over to DC.

Except it's not just Byrne. Like the article itself states, talks about how Shooter had a personal rule against openly queer characters (or at least what would be perceived as queer; gender minorities like Ayesha and Cloud probably got away with it because people at the time weren't forward-thinking enough to even recognize the queer themes of those stories) were already a common knowledge in the industry for a long time. It all comes down to what you choose to believe, and I choose to not believe in the guy who decided that it was a good idea for the only openly gay representation in Marvel Comics for a long time to be the worst possible kind.

It made no sense given that it goes against pretty much every bit of continuity that there's been since then. Also I take issue that this "gives Bobbi here agency back." While I do agree that "rape as character motivation" for female characters is majorly overused in comics, this is one of the few cases where they handled the aftermath WELL!! And she did grow as a result, it was a good story about overcoming such horror.

I don't see how turning her into the villain of the story basically somehow "gives her her agency back." I just think that that's a problematic take on it as well. Also if you're going to make such a massive retcon that affects pretty so much of her history, you don't just do it in like one page offhandedly.

I think the aftermath is questionable. I don't think things were handled very well with Hawkeye, specifically (not gonna lie, I think the retcon made him look better). Bobbi, however, did get to grow because of it as a character, which was good. Like I said, I don't think the writer really realized the depth of what she was getting into. I wish she had acknowledged more of some of the stuff that happened in the aftermath (like how BOBBI was the one telling people she was under drugs the whole time and why she lied about it), but I also give her the benefit of the doubt because it was the last issue of a cancelled book, so who knows if she had plans for the story to be more fleshed out and simply didn't have enough page time to develop it.

Also, I don't think Bobbi was the villain at all. People keep saying that and it makes no sense to me. Even with the retcon, the Phantom Rider STILL was an abuser. Cain changed Bobbi's POV, but not HIS POV, which means that the way he treated her was still the same. The guy was still a controlling lunatic and he still was a threat to her safety. Just reread that whole scene in which he died; THE GUY WAS THREATENING TO KILL HER! In a position like that, was she really the villain for letting him die? Just because she gave him her consent initially, it doesn't mean he magically got a pass to do everything he did in that story. There are real life cases of people who suffer verbal, emotional, physical and even sexual abuse WHILE in consensual relationships; are they less justified to stand up to themselves just because the relationship wasn't initially forced on them? Because that's the position Bobbi was, even after the retcon.

[Colossus1980]

well Moondragon has done other questionable stuff; like altering Quicksilver's mind, for instance.

Wasn't StarFox on trial for his power of suggestion in Dan Slott's She-Hulk? It was implied he abused his power by sleeping with women?

[JKtheMac]

A lot of the examples in this thread seem to trace back to Shooter though.

No idea how that is an answer to what I said. The context of this thread is that time period. And my main issue with the tread is the lack of understanding and context about that period of history.

In 1980 I was 13, an impressionable age, an age when I started to notice attitudes around me in my small town, on the news and in TV drama. This was not an enlightened age. In may ways the eighties were more repressed than the seventies and there was a gradual backlash and movement towards conservative attitudes.

The press of the day would treat feminists as extremists. Members of my family dismissed them as “bra burners” and the issues picked up by the press involved test tube babies potentially meaning there was no need for men, despite the obvious fallacy of that assertion at the time. The press also seemed to ignore any possibility that one could be male and feminist. Many jokes at school were anti-feminist or down-right oppressive. It was common to see scantily clad women in TV comedy as figures of fun.

The most famous woman of the day was Diana but nobody wanted to know anything about her apart from her see-though summer dress and her pageboy haircut. The clear implication being a potential princess just needed to look pretty and produce an heir.

[Ghostwise]

In the Wundagore Nights story, do you think that Modred the Mystic raped Scarlet Witch off-panel at some point?

I re-read it twice recently (for some Modred and Spider-Woman work) and didn't notice subtext in that direction.