BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Captian Marvel truth  DTSTAMP:20250913T070217Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:506-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n Captian Marvel truth \n\n https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=xyMYj9R8YDY\n\n\n\n my comment\n\n You could had excerpted the \"They Li ve\" sunglasses realization scene:) \n\n What can MArvel do to get the pe ople who are angry about the lack\, and it is a lack of female characters? Or is the answer the Xmen female characters are coming? \n\n What are yo ur thoughts on Sylvie from the Loki show?\n\n I oppose your position on th e people behind the scenes. Did Chris Claremont have passion for Ms. Marve l when he was writing her? she wasn't Wonder Woman from an age perspective or media clout. I think writers simply failed\, and that is ok. Writers h ave the right to fail. I think the writers (most of whom are women) for sh e hulk/ms marvel/Wonder woman in film or streaming in the last ten years\, or similar female comic book characters\,  simply failed.  \n\n to your question\, are we\, we meaning a \"united humanity\" or comic book fandom \,  going to avoid tokenism? \n\n What is the parallel to tokenism? It i s admitting + embracing a majority. tokenism in media is when a character has an aspect rarely viewed in a certain way. Black Lightning for example. The first character described as black in a non black owned comic [black owned comic books had black headliner characters pre milestone] book firm to headline a comic. That is tokenism. What is the parallel? DC comics adm itting to the growing number of potential black comic book buyers they sim ply don't have a black comic book headliner and will not. \n\n There are going to be women who say they want more female superheroes\, to be as var ious as the male superheroes\, and various not just in success but failure . DC+ Marvel can simply say\, we don't have the female headliner character s for that. \n\n IN AMENDMENT\n\n Her words in the video show the problem . The producers\, people with the money\, are giving their money to people who can convince them of market trends. Black panther could had been made in the 1960s / without question 1970s but it was till now because the sta tistics show the average wealth and purchasing power of blacks in the movi e going market alongside their viewing habits warrants a black panther. Th e studios thought women would go all in for women\, especially after DC \, to be blunt\, botched wonder woman. Linda Carter is only a few years diff erence from Christopher Reeves and Wonder Woman unlike superman had a 1970 s hit show. Superman one was made in the late 1970s. So\, DC was able to m ake the superman movies with christopher reeves\, make a supergirl movie\, make the batman movies with keaton  though never gave adam west's batman anything \, and Linda Carter with a successful wonder woman show before t he first superman movie with christopher reeves\, who she is extremely nea r in age too\, was given nothing. So\, Marvel felt women moviegoers wanted superheroes. Captain MArvel made over a billion dollars from a 175 millio n dollar budge. The Green Lantern movie made 200 million \, it broke even. No one hates green lantern for that really bad film. Was the writing the best? no. but\, male superhero films that were poor and I argue far worse than Captain Marvel movie didn't lead to their characters being hated or t he actors in the roles being deemed unpleasant. \n\n So to avoid tokenism \, I think an admittance of bias [both positive or negative] + truth have to occur. \n\n Marvel + DC were started at a time where negative biases e xisted which meant most superhero comics are males\, it is that simple. So today\, making movies on popular characters will be mostly male character s. Milestone comics whom I love more than DC or Marvel\, never had a femal e character be the headliner of a comic. So\, I think comic book firms jus t have to be honest and say\, we don't have too many female characters tha t we can headline for movies. Cause the reality is\, the modern audience i s popularity driven. yeah\, Kpop demon hunters\, but here is the problem u sing them as a yardstick. They never went to theaters. they were in the ne tflix ecosystem only\, which has a particular membership demographic. Mill ions of people \, though it may shock folks\, do not have netflix. Now you can argue\, Marvel + DC need to learn from Netflix and work through their streaming services\, which all the companies want to do or are trying to do I think\, but that is a whole other argument\, because streaming servic es don't have to deal with the customer base of movie theaters. \n\n I th ink the industrial change is coming where firms will work through their st reaming services and then when things click take them to streaming and sel l blue ray and all of that. Which will allow for affordable testing to occ ur. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n IN AMENDMENT 2\n\n The rape of ms marvel from carol strickland\n\n https://carolastrickland.wordpress.com/ms-marve l/\n\n\n\n FULL TEXT\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n So I was reading this issue of Ave ngers\, #200 to be precise. Ms. Marvel had suddenly become pregnant — ho w she didn’t know — and the pregnancy had lasted only three days\, but apparently this was full-term. In issue #200 we had the grand birth and t he revelation of Marcus (the grown baby-no-more) who said he’d wooed Ms. Marvel and won her over and impregnated her with him and la-de-da\, was n’t it romantic. All the Avengers said\, “Ah!” and Ms. Marvel left w ith Marcus to a happily-ever-after ending.\n\nBut I didn’t get it. Here Ms. Marvel had been kidnapped\, held for “weeks\,” according to the na rrative provided by Marcus himself\, and not been won over even though Mar cus had done the A-B-C of stereotypical male-mindset romance: given her ni ce clothes\, serenaded her with history’s best musicians. Why\, I bet he even gave her candy and flowers. At no time is love or respect — not ev en “like” — mentioned. But apparently she hadn’t been won over bec ause he says\, “with a boost from Immortus’ [mind] machines” (which he had access to)\, Ms. Marvel finally became his (and we may think of thi s being the truly possessive use of the word). At which point he impregnat ed her using non-technical techniques without her knowledge of what he was truly doing.\n\nOkay\, class\, anyone see anything wrong with this?\n\nAp parently the guy wanted foreplay before he raped her. I don’t know why h e couldn’t have artificially impregnated her if he just had to use her b ody. Maybe in some sick way he thought he was in love with Ms. M.\n\nBut t he point is\, it was rape and obvious rape at that. The writer had to go a n extra\, knowing step to add that line about mind control. If he’d just left that off\, it would have merely been a fanboy romance\, where the bl onde and buxom heroine is swept off her feet by flowers and candy (no need for romance or love)\, and readily agrees to anything and everything the hero (or fanboy in clever disguise) wants.\n\nBut time went by and NO ONE said anything about the rape! Not one word besides how some readers were s o happy that Ms. M had finally found a good man. \n\nI wanted to barf.\n\n Granted\, I don’t presently condone the very vehement tone of the articl e — really\, I don’t know how many Cokes I’d had before writing this \, but I bet you money I’d been reading a lot of feminist literature tha t had me all fired up — but besides the tone I have to agree still with my sentiments of that January in 1980 within the pages of LoC #1…\n\nThe Rape of Ms. Marvel\n\nby Carol A. Strickland\n\nAm I just overly sensitiv e\, or what? I know that I have a tendency to shoot my mouth off about the role of women in comics\, but shouldn’t everyone be concerned when a co mic displays a struttingly macho\, misogynist storyline that shreds the fe male image apart with a smirk — and rewards the one who did the shreddin g? I should think that such a story would create an uproar in fandom — b ut where is there even a whisper of discontent?\n\nI realize that females are only a small part of comics readers and fandom\, but it should not jus t be the women who raise the roof over such a story. It should be everyone . Isn’t everyone entitled to respect as a human being? Shouldn’t they be against somthing that so self-consciously seeks to destroy that respect and degrade women in general by destroying the symbol of womankind?\n\nCo uld it be that the great masses of fandom actually approved of a travesty like Avengers#200: “The Child is Father To…”?\n\nIn that issue\, an all-male Marvel staff\, presided by Jim Shooter and watched by the Comics Code\, slaughtered Marvel’s symbol of modern women\, Ms. Marvel. They pr esented her as a victim of rape who enjoyed the process\, and even wound u p swooning over her rapist and joining him of her “free” will. Such a storyline might have fit into the 1950s\, when people actually believed su ch a thing was possible — I mean\, they thought that women invited and e njoyed rape back then — but to present such a storyline today shows a co llection of medieval minds at work. Or at vicious play. For such a storyli ne to pass throug the echelons of editor\, editor-in-chief\, and Comics Co de can only be a crime.\n\nFor those not familiar with Ms. Marvel\, or onl y familiar with her from her unsatisfying stint with the Avengers\, let me explain who she is relative to circumstance and character:\n\nMost people know\, if they don’t truly understand\, that women have been stomped on by the comics industry ever since there were comics. From the sniveling L ois Lane of Action#1 right through today’s so-called “liberated” her oines (you can tell who they are by their low-cut or see-through costumes and stolen dialogue from the outdated Feminine Mystique)\, the male-domina ted comics industry has gone out of its way to preserve the macho male and weak (or vicious) female image\, ensuring the small percentage of females in their reading audience.\n\nYou’d think that in the comics of the 198 0s there would be zillions of characters who were themselves first\, women second\, and adventurers always. But look closer\; where are they? Wonder Woman is a preaching man-hater with a memory that has more holes in it th an her lover has lives\, if that’s possible. She is a symbol of modern w omanhood\, supposedly\, and that makes her an interesting character. Now t hink — name a male comics character who is a symbol of manhood: there is none! That’s because a male comics writer realizes that a symbol cannot be of real interest to a reader. But becauase women are all aliens from a nother planet\, it’s all right to make them symbols\, especialy if they are misshapen cliches drawn from maligners of the women’s movement\, the people who designate females who want to be themselves as “bra-burner s\,” an archaic and never-correct term.\n\nBlack Canary is less than a s hadow of her man\, the ultra-macho Green Arrow. The Invisible “Girl” w himpers and complains from the nearest corner while her menfolk do the fig hting. The Wasp dreams of new costumes and new hunks to pester. Supergirl cries over a broken date.\n\nThese are the stalwarts of comicdom’s femal es. The truly liberated women\, those Tigras and Elasti-Girls and Black Wi dows\, are resigned to limbo or just prolonged neglect. As of this moment in the comics industry\, only Chris Claremont is portraying a modern woman — and he manages to do it with every one of them entrusted to his care. People may not agree with all that he is doing\, but they must agree that he is lightyears beyond the other writers (even Jo Duffy\, who is next in line to him)\, and that is a very sad picture of comics. This is the Nine teen-Eighties\, folks. But who would believe it\, to look at the state of comics?\n\nBack in ’72 Marvel had created a trio of books designed to ho ok the female audience: the insipid Night Nurse\, the violent and poorly-w ritten Shanna the She-Devil\, and the interesting Claws of the Cat\, writt en by Linda Fite and drawn (in its first issue) by Marie Severin and Wally Wood. The Cat was a fascinating character\, even if she was a bit heavy-h anded in places. But like many a TV series\, the book was given only a few shots to make it. Cat #4 was the last issue. The concept was later reinca rnated as the vapid Hellcat\, whose costume-derived powers were never expl ained. The original Cat’s powers came from scientific treatment and trai ning\, but the Hellcat merely put on her emblemless costume to be super. I suppose women can’t really be expected to train at anything\, but must rely on chance to give them the skills they need to make it in the real wo rld.\n\nIn 1974 the Cat was revamped in a different fashion: she was mutat ed into a horror-genre Cat creature named Tigra. When given a solo shot in Marvel Chillers a year later\, she surprised everyone by becoming a styli sh\, snappy-pattered heroine whose future could have been bright. But she was bogged down in a five-issue continued story\, and if anything will los e a reader’s interest faster than a multiple-issue tryout story\, I do n’t know what it is. Tigra and the Cat-People have been forgotten by Mar vel except in two team-up stories since then. Surely such a sparkling\, we ird hero should be popular in today’s menagerie of sought-after non-huma ns like the X-Men\, Hulk\, et al.\n\n1976. Marvel decided to try to cash i n on the “liberation craze” yet again with a new spin-off from the pop ular Captain Marvel to be called Ms. Marvel. She would\, like the Cat\, be a symbol of the liberated woman. They plastered the words “This Female Fights Back!” on the cover and bared a lovely blonde woman’s navel — thus began Ms. Marvel. For the same number of beginning issues\, both the Cat and Tigra had Ms. M beat hands down. But for some reason Ms. Marvel s tuck with it. There was a shuffle of writers\; Chris Claremont admits that he didn’t give Ms. Marvel his entire attention at first. Thus it was th at Marvel’s own origin remained a jumbled mess until almost her twentiet h isuse.\n\nOnce Mr. Claremont settled into his job\, though\, Ms. Marvel began to do things. Things few\, if any\, women characters (or men\, for t hat matter!) had done before. While her first adventures had been composed of the obligatory fight scenes upon more fight scenes\, now her stories b egan to have plots\, now her life as a hero was being tied into her life a s a civilian. By the time Carol covered her navel in a Cockrumized costume \, the comic had hit new heights of interest in plotline and artwork. Noti ce I didn’t add “for a heroine” there. That’s because Chris Clarem ont and Dave Cockrum were both looking at Ms. Marvel as a person — a bea utiful\, female person\, yes\, but a super-hero above all! There is only o ne drawback to this duo of issues: that existing artwork was changed from showing Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel’s alter-ego) in sensible desert-explor ing wear to having her in a midriff-exposing blouse. The Word was to make her more sexy\, attract more male readers not so they’d get hooked on Ms . Marvel’s electric characterization\, but so the comic could become a C ode-approved girlie mag.\n\nMs. Marvel was mature\, powerful\, intense and sure of herself.\n\nAnd two issues later she was cancelled. Now she start ed to pal around with the Avengers as a fighting companion\, and later\, a s a replacement for the Scarlet Witch. Under the writing of Jim Shooter\, Ms. Marvel suddenly developed a pushy\, intimidating quirk to her nature. Mr. Shooter\, whose portrayal of females has not changed one iota since hi s writing as a fourteen-year-old in the mid-1960s\, has a Gerry Conway-ish quality to his work. No\, no\, Mr. Conway is not the only or worst writer to do this\; he is simply the most consistent\, when it comes to portrayi ng any female who does not cower in the corner or behind her man when thin gs get rough\, to categorize her as 1) pushy — and usually hypocritical\ , 2) over-sexed\, and/or 3) a castrating manhater. Ms. Marvel was granted the character trait of oversexed pushiness as she proclaimed Wonder Man a “hunk” and that she’d really like to get to know him better — heh\ , heh.\n\nWith Shooter giving up the writer’s role in order to edit The Avengers\, David Michelinie stepped in and Ms. Marvel became one of the su per-gang\; a normal super-hero\, although one to stop action with an “im portant” message about liberation. Many writers do this for some reason. I suppose they don’t realize that example has always been a better teac her than preaching. Most comics females today do a lot of preaching. This is why most female characters today are uninteresting and frail.\n\nWith a landmark issue coming\, big number 200\, staff wondered: what to do for t he occasion? It was decided that Ms. Marvel would have a baby. Michelinie said that it would be the Supreme Intelligence’s kid\, since the Supremo r has always wanted a Kree-Terran hybrid. This would natually lead to an i ntriguing adventure\, a climax to the years of scheming through countless comics for the Supremor\, and a probable end to the Supremor himself\, onc e Ms. Marvel beat him up for what he did to her — and her child.\n\nAh — but Jim Shooter said no! What If #20: “What if the Avengers Fought the Kree-Skull War without Rick Jones?” had ended its tale with the imag inary/parallel world Supremor merging his intelligence with the inert form of Mr. Jones to become himself his precious hybrid. Jim Shooter\, editor- in-chief of the Marvel Multiverse\, proclaimed that the story would be too much alike and too soon after the What If? story. He didn’t bother to l ook at the many times in which the Supremor’s plans have infiltrated a h alf-dozen titles within as many months in years past\, with no complaint f rom readers.\n\nInstead Mr. Shooter came up with a wonderful plan of his o wn for Ms. Marvel’s anticipated Happy Event. He would make magic number 200 a landmark in bad taste. He would portray a rape that would be applaud ed and rewarded by all who had news of it.\n\nTo my way of thinking\, this shows questionable judgment on Mr. Shooter’s part.\n\nBut let the finis hed product help you decide. For those of you who either missed it or chos e to forget it as quickly as possible\, the plot went something like this: \n\nMs. Marvel is three days pregnant at the start of the the issue\, and is about to give birth to a full-term baby. For some reason the Avengers d o not call in an obstetrician\, but leave their most powerful member in th e unspecialized hands of mentor Tony Stark’s good buddy\, Dr. Don Blake. I suppose Blake won’t bill them the way an obstetrician would.\n\nIn a male-fairytale version of birth\, Ms. Marvel delivers in a non-birthing so rt of way (I don’t understand it either. Let’s look at the physical pr ocesses involved–!) There is no pain\, no labor\, no logic… All the wh ile Ms. Marvel is exposed to the other Avengers without shred number one o f privacy during the non-birth birth.\n\nVarying scenes show us that the s tory is well-written. It is merely the plot that is the blot of blots on t his work. The Wasp\, not knowing that the baby’s father is unknown even to Ms. Marvel\, congratulates her on the delivery and baby. We see its mot her: exhuasted\, humiliated: “I’ve been used!” she snarls. “That isn’t my baby!” Later she refers to it as “that thing.” There is no trace of maternal instinct that any other conventional heroine would ha ve been oozing\, even at such an inauspicious time. It is a scene well don e. Yet compare the concept of this\, the rejecting\, angry\, raped mother with the final image of Ms. Marvel. The change is heinous. It and the plot line spoil everything in their wake.\n\nThe story goes on: the child\, a b oy who names himself Marcus\, develops at an ever-increasing rate\, passin g quickly through childhood to become a young adult. He explains his origi n\, starting with his real father\, a man Ms. Marvel never coupled with: I mmortus.\n\nThe mere use of such a character is controvertible in itself\, for in well-known previous Avengers plotlines\, Immortus killed Kang\, hi s earlier self. Mark Gruenwald has explained that the Immortus who killed Kang was clearly a parallel Immortus\, for if Kang were killed\, there wou ld be no Immortus around to kill him. Yet Marcus (and an editorial note) c learly remembers his father as the Immortus who killed off his earlier sel f.\n\nI’ll pass the Bayer as I continue…\n\nAnyway\, before this Immor tus-who-could-not-have-existed popped into existence\, he had become anxio us for a “mate.” Not a lover\, not a wife\, just a “mate” from goo d old Terra. Knowing that mortals can’t exist in his home of Limbo\, he created a sort-of semi-Limbo\, rescued a victim of a Terran sea disaster — a woman who could be Carol Danvers’ twin — and\, in Marcus’ w ords\, “through a combination of gratitude and the subtle manipulation o f my father’s ingenious machines\, the woman fell in love with him.” S ubtle manipulations. Equals brainwashing. Equals brain control. Immortus c ouldn’t get this unnamed woman into bed with him\, so he changed her per sonality and took her against her will. Equals rape.\n\nIt seems mortals c an’t spend too much time in semi-Limbo\, although Marcus has been there all his life. His unnamed mother vanished when he was a boy to go to her d eath in the real world. Marcus was left with only his father\, a wonderful role model\, being a rapist and such.\n\nDaddy vanished (when he killed h imself off a few millenia before)\, and Marcus was left alone. Not particu larly liking semi-Limbo\, he decided to go to Earth. He concocted a scheme by which he could be unnaturally born on Earth\, speeded up in growth\, a nd thus be able to prevent the destruction his presence in normal space wo uld eventually create. He coldly chose the mother of the thing that would be himself: “The powerful combination of Kree and human strengths\, woul d be the perfect vessel\,” he decided\, and chose the perfect double of the only human woman he had ever known and loved: his unnamed mother. Of c ourse\, his old-fashioned father and mother taught him you can’t reach a woman on a level as a human being\; he couldn’t explain his plight and let her decide if she wanted to go through with his crazy idea or not\; he wouldn’t even consider that she might have a better idea for getting hi m to Earth. Instead he went about wooing her: poetry\, clothes and music h e furnished\, thinking that those are the only things women are interested in. When Ms. Marvel didn’t respond\, as he explains to her in the prese nt\, “…Finally\, after relative weeks of such efforts — and admitted ly\, with a subtle boost from Immortus’ machines — you became mine.” \n\nThis is not hidden between the lines. Little kids can read the obvious fact: he raped Ms. Marvel. The artwork goes to great lengths — two clos e-up panels — to show Ms. Marvel’s ecstacy during the pseudo-mating.\n \nAh ha. Another lesson to be learned from comics. It’s okay to rape. Wo men enjoy rape.\n\nImmediately after implanting himself in some sort of ps eudo-scientific fashion into Ms. Marvel’s womb\, machinery teleported he r to her jet\, seconds after the time she had been abducted by Marcus. The machinery also wiped out her recent memory — better to leave these fema les ignorant\, right? Marcus couldn’t care less about the feelings of a woman who suddenly found herself pregnant — and giving birth — for no apparent reason.\n\nThis is not Marcus’ fault. He is ignorant of human f eelings\, being brought up by the equally unfeeling Immortus.\n\nThe expla nation of Ms. Marvel’s rape is made to Carol\, Thor\, Iron Man and Hawke ye. It is obvious that Immortus’ machines have renewed their effect upon Ms. Marvel. Remember the angry rape victim at the beginning of the story? Now with a glisten in her eye and sob in her heart\, she tenderly strokes the rapist’s cheek and tells him that she will return with him to his h ome. She even adopts his Oedipal way of speaking. Of all the times Marcus refers to her directly\, it is as “Carol” three times\, “my love” once\, and “mother” three times. From Marcus being “that thing\,” he is now “my child” to Carol. And she’s going home to play a differ ent kind of house with him. Aren’t the kids eating this up?!\n\nOne shou ld think that the other Avengers who have heard this story and see Ms. Mar vel’s sudden reversal in attitude toward Marcus would stop her from goin g back\, knock some sense into her… anything. But look at this carefully -chosen audience: Hawkeye — Marvel’s answer to the neanderthal Green A rrow\, a psychological sickie (catch his last act with Death Bird). He pro bably gets a kick out of Ms. Marvel’s Getting Her Due. Iron Man — ak a “playboy” Tony Stark. In keeping with his public image\, Tony choose s to avoid the implications of this event. And Thor — if anyone can matc h Jim Shooter’s medieval thinking\, it is he.\n\nThe story ends with Ms. Marvel and Marcus teleporting to semi-Limbo. Iron Man begins to have seco nd thoughts: “We’ve just got to believe that everything worked out for the best\,” he temporizes. He isn’t convinced\, but he won’t make a scene.\n\nMr. Macho\, Hawkeye\, turns sloppy John Wayne sentimental: “T hat’s all we can do\,” he says. “Believe… and hope that Ms. Marvel lives happily ever after.” It is a fitting end to this male fantasy. A desirable woman/mother figure is raped and then chooses to be the lover of her rapist/son. Raping is manly. Women love to be raped. Perversion is wo nderful for kids and other people of taste to read.\n\nThe story would be almost laughable if it weren’t written in such earnest. Someone really b elieves this tripe\, maybe. Or someone just wants to have some fun.\n\nMay I ask a stupid question? Where is the Comics Code during all this? Ther e’s their stamp on the cover\, covering the “S” in AVENGERS — but where are they? This dirty joke that someone at Marvel dreamed up is all o ut in the open — not a bit of it is between the lines to be hidden from the innocents who make up such a large proportion of the audience. And the entire plot is a deadly insult to every woman.\n\nThe bottom line to Aven gers #200 is blatant irresponsibility\, with every nuance of immaturity th at that word provides. “Misogynist” is also a very applicable word. Bu t instead of either\, we’ll probably see the words “collector’s item : rape issue” next to the number 200 in the Avengers column in next ye ar’s Price Guide\, with an inflated price to match it.\n\nIf it takes a second round of witch hunts to rid four-color standard comics of trash lik e this — count me in! \n\nThe Aftermath\n\nOkay\, we can all agree that the issue depicted rape\, and that it was deliberately thrown in\, probabl y to get back at a “liberated” woman.\n\nAnd that there was no negativ e reaction to it except\, seemingly\, mine.\n\nI never saw the next issue of LoC\, but it seems to me that someone did loan me issue #3\, and I reme mber reading reactions to my article that\, summed up\, told me that I nee ded to get laid to get my head on straight. So I continued to think that I was the only one who had recognized this as rape\, had recognized the fac t that rape is a bad thing\, and that Marvel was the personification of th e Anti-Christ. Well\, that they needed to improve\, let’s put it that wa y.\n\nAnd then came Avengers Annual #10\, 1981\, written by Chris Claremon t.\n\nIn the story\, Spider-Woman rescues Carol Danvers\, who has been min d-wiped by Rogue (this was back in the days when Rogue was a middle-aged h ick maniac instead of a sweet young Southern waif). The X-Men get called i n (it was an Annual\, after all) and Carol winds up recuperating at Profes sor Xavier’s\, where the Avengers pay her a visit.\n\nTo my extremely pl easant surprise\, Carol berates them for leaving her in the lurch. Althoug h the word “rape” is never used\, the story did concentrate on that “subtle boost from Immortus’ machines” line to heavily imply it. It actually seems to sink in to some of the Avengers’ minds that rape might not be good. That a woman might be injured in many ways by it.\n\nIt was great to know that others had seen Ms. Marvel’s plight and had apparentl y been as pissed off as I had about it.\n\nThen one day in a fit of X-Men frenzy\, I bought and actually read The X-Men Companion II (of course I ha d volume 1 as well)\, copyright Fantagraphics Books\, Inc. 1982\, and drop ped the book in shock when I got to page 23 of the Chris Claremont intervi ew. He’s talking about the portrayal of women in comics:\n\nAvengers #19 9\, where Carol Danvers is introduced to the Avengers\, and they’re told that in two days she has become eight months pregnant by an unknown fathe r\, or by force of persons unknown\, and the reaction of the entire crowd\ , men and women both\, is to the effect of: “Can I babysit?” “Can we knit booties?” “Can I make cookies for the baby?” “Oh you must be so happy?” and my reaction was\, “What an insensitive crowd of boor s.” Actually\, my reaction was a lot stronger than that. But how callous ! How cruel! How unfeeling! Considering that these people must have seen M s. Marvel only a couple of days before\, or even a couple of months before . She wasn’t pregnant then. How could she be eight months pregnant now? Now\, if that had been the point David [Michelinie] was trying to make\, t hat these other Avengers are callous boors\, okay then\, I may disagree wi th the point\, but if he followed through on it\, it would have made sense . But it seemed to me\, looking at the story\, looking at the following st ory\, that he was going for: “This is how you respond to a pregnancy.” \n\nAs Carol [Strickland] pointed out in her article in LOC [#1]\, women t end to get very short shrift in comics. They are either portrayed as wallf lowers or as supermacho insensitive men with different body forms\, who al most invariably feel guilty about their lack of femininity. And it’s alw ays seemed to me that\, why does this have to be exclusive? Can you not ha ve a woman who is ruthless and capable and courageous and articulate and i ntelligent and all the other buzz-words – heroic when the need arises\, and yet feminine and gentle and compassionate\, at others? That was what I tried to do with Ms. Marvel. I tried to create a character who had all th e attributes that made her a top-secret agent yet at the same time was a c ompassionate\, warm\, humorous\, witty\, intelligent\, attractive woman.\n \nOf course\, Star Trek: The Next Generation did a story where they Ms. Ma rveled Deanna Troi\, giving her an instant pregnancy. But this time the en tity that did it wasn’t human\, didn’t know anything about humans\, an d so it was forgiveable\, although she seemed entirely too calm\, too acce pting of the whole ordeal to me. But then I never really did understand Tr oi much anyway. She was so wishy-washy until the very final seasons. (Oh\, how I wished she could be more like her mother!)\n\nAnd of course\, DC Co mics had its own liberated female super-heroine\, the equivalent of Ms. Ma rvel: Power Girl. So what did they do? Impregnated her without her knowing who the father was. Oh\, they left off the rape bit (though it was entire ly involuntary on her part) but they added incest – weren’t they cute? \n\nYou win some\, you lose some. But most of the time you just hope that some people will grow up. Apparently some comics writers still don’t kno w (1) that women are human and (2) which century we’re living in.\n\n\n\ n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250913 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR