Solomon Grundy #3

[xdoop.insanejournal.com]

This is from Solomon Grundy #3. It's written and illustrated by Scott Kolins. For #2, click here.

Ivy kisses Cyrus Gold so she can control him and tries to get him to take a package to a factory that will destroy the factory, but her kiss does something to awaken Gold's Grundy persona.

Comments

[darklorelei.insanejournal.com]

Deeefinitely don't dig the losing -> naked Ivy connection. Sketch. I mean, I get the conceit, but...gross.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

I don't think it's got to do with losing so much as it has to do with Grundy being toxic to all plant life. Given we know she often dresses in live plants I'd say that if she'd been clothed after he'd come into contact with her, that would have rung false.

I agree with the general "ICK" assessment of this though...

[xammax.insanejournal.com]

I honestly got a rape scene out of this and I was not happy. I was not fucking happy at all.

[unknownscribler.insanejournal.com]

It's no different to Ivy kissing folks she wants to mind rape into doing her will.

[xdoop.insanejournal.com]

What Ivy does is not mindrape.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MindRape

[unknownscribler.insanejournal.com]

everything else is there to resemble a rape - violation, helplessness, and the poisoning of what could otherwise be a source of joy.

Ivy's victims are aware of what's happened to them, that they were forced to do her bidding in a way that quite likely abrogates their moral code and sense of self. They're aware, either during or after the effects wear off that they were powerless to do anything about it. And kissing a beautiful woman should be a thing of simple uncomplicated pleasure that doesn't leave you a drone.

By the articles' own criteria Ivy's whammy kiss qualifies.

[xdoop.insanejournal.com]

mindcontrol =/= mindrape

Have we ever seen anyone act abused or traumatized by Ivy's mindcontrol?

(http://tinypic.com)

[xammax.insanejournal.com]

Long Halloween. Its Batman so it doesn't stick around because its Batman but this showed some of the best protrayal of what this would be like.


Besides forcing an action on an other person against their will through some form of physical force... close enough for me.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Then a better question might be, "If not, WHY THE HELL NOT?" because what she does IS a complete violation

And we have seen at least one Arkham Asylum employee left a broken shell by her using and discarding him when he'd served his function in assisting her escape.

[kagome654.insanejournal.com]

You know as well as I do that if it didn't happen to someone important it doesn't count.

[xdoop.insanejournal.com]

When was this?

[thormonger.insanejournal.com]

A touch that destroys organic life? Nope, no possible Blackest Night potential there.

I wonder what Grundy's Black Lantern costume will look like...

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

I don't see him being eligible, since he's not quite dead and isn't being animated by the Black Lantern itself, he's already an ambulatory corpse.

[thormonger.insanejournal.com]

Black Hand isn't dead either. I suspect that there will be a few members of the Black Lantern Corps who aren't zombies. Sort of like Superboy-Prime being part of the Sinestro Corps, despite not using a yellow ring.

[pyrotwilight.insanejournal.com]

It's pretty obviously been a mini about Blackest Night to a degree from the start. The Solomon Grundy one shot had Phantom Stranger warning about the coming blackness.

[filkertom.insanejournal.com]

Honestly, what's not to like?

Oh. Right. Everything.

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

Blargh. The art's lovely, but does anyone else here see the implications of sexual violence?

Seriously, it makes me want Gotham City Sirens to come quicker.

[(Anonymous)]

Um, Ivy is quite fond of poisoning dudes by kissing them. Are you somehow missing the implications of sexual violence there?

[unknownscribler.insanejournal.com]

We all know that women can't possibly perpetrate sexual violence against men

[midnightvoyager (from insanejournal.com)]

...Yeah, I kinda wanted to say a "Not that farking fun, is it?" to Ivy after this.

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

Afterwards, though, are they crying, naked, unconscious, and bleeding?

[(Anonymous)]

Most of the time I recall them just being DEAD.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Often writhing in pain, scratching the sores, choking on the fungal spores and in the processing of dying an agonising death.

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

Yup. Because she's a supervillain. She kills people because she's evil.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Not quite sure what your point is there. Being evil is really neither here nor there, as you asked "Afterwards, though, are they crying, naked, unconscious, and bleeding?" and I offered what would appear to be an equally humiliating list of alternative reactions to the aftereffects of getting close to Ivy.

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

It's really just my opinion, but I don't want to see sexual assault in comics, because it's unnecessary and generally handled poorly. Phsyical violence is different, because they're supervillains, that comes with the title.

This might be because I'm reading Starman now, and I'm starting to love Solomon Grundy ;-;

[trueredorion.insanejournal.com]

And yet you don't have a problem with what Ivy does?

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

I've only seen her use her mind control powers in Hush, but in there, neither of her victims were particularly traumatized by what had happened. Selina was pissed a bit, and Clark was fine.

[darklorelei.insanejournal.com]

Because I can't possibly think BOTH are wrong. Okay!

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

wait, wtf brain? I actually do think Sirens looks pretty neat.

[stig.insanejournal.com]

Except Sirens is written by Paul Dini. Setting aside his work with the character in the animated series, his most recent work with her in Detective Comics...even worse than this.

Ivy is attacked by a giant plant in her cell. She escapes it. It grabs her. She disappears, and reappears, sans clothing, outside a police station, begging for help and bleary-eyed. Batman shows no sympathy (or even suspicion of attempted sexual assault), merely knocking her out and taking her to the cave. We find out that the giant plant is - in a move almost as stupid as something written by Loeb - a ripoff of the plant from "Little Shop of Horrors" that absorbs the souls of those it has eaten.

The Plant breaks into the cave, it then graphically rapes Ivy, on-panel, in a large whole-page spread - though we don't see penetration, she's pretty much bound, gagged and whimpering. Batman out-mans it and it disappears forever, followed by Ivy - still traumatised - developing a violent phobia of her own powers, rendering her powerless and useless.

I await with glee the day that Dini retires or is fired from DC, and can no longer get his dirty paws on the female characters of the Bat-verse. It's seriously like he just wants to carry on the DCAU except with as many horrible sexual fetishes as possible shoved in.

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

Wait, really?!

I dunno man. He pretty much wrote the best canon Catwoman in 'Tec #845-850, and his work with Harley Quinn has been great, and the new Ventriloquist is kinda cool, Roxy Rocket is great, and really are you sure that's Dini? Really?

[stig.insanejournal.com]

It' in "Batman: Detective", the TPB. See a review right here: http://mildredmilton.livejournal.com/16293.html and a scan of her outside the GCPD station, after the first 'rape': http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5275/1685/1600/DC82301.jpg

Dini is one of the most sexist writers that DC currently employs. Look at how his favourite characters include:

* Harley Quinn - a professional psychiatrist turned into a giggling manic schoolgirl by ‘female weakness’. Unable to do anything but follow a continuing cycle of subservience and abuse because "She's Crazy".

* Poison Ivy - see above.

* Catwoman - his major arc with her reduces her to “Woman with heart in Fridge in Idiotic Deathtrap” and "Batman's one lost love ever (who he's never going to commit to a relationship to)", less than half a year after the final issue of her series established her as a strong, independent character who didn't need him. All to attempt at making Hush 'cool'. To presume that you could ever do anything interesting with a character that dull and derivative, and then use the old 'damsel in distress' card...urgh.

Oh, and don't even try and say 'he made up for it by having Selina get her revenge'. Not only had the damage already been done, but additionally it's an incredibly stupid way to wrap up the arc, demonstrating that your protagonist is just as bad as your antagonist - worse, because while he would prefer to simply kill her, she condemns him to a slow, agonising death from his wounds or from poverty. After the share of misfortune we've seen her suffer, it's nice to know she isn't going to be very merciful, isn't it?

* Likewise Zatanna - all the character-building and ideas created by past writer (including Grant Morrison in 7 Soldiers: Zatanna, where she actually seemed as powerful and complex as Doctor Strange), are thrown out the window in favour of a Mary-Sue of his wife - a “Batman’s Almost-Girlfriend” who he has doing regular conjuring tricks over and over in order to make her look cute. In any of the stories she's appeared in, she could have solved the case in five seconds flat, but...it's a Batman book...and it's written by Paul Dini.

* Oh, and the ‘new, improved’ Ventriloquist. I’ve explained this before, but here we go again: The Ventriloquist-Scarface team worked only because it was a juxtaposition of how pathetic Arnold Wesker was compared with his alter-ego; look, for instance, in BATMAN: CITY OF CRIME, where his blank expression and silent demeanour next to his alter-ego gives him an almost frightening aspect. Replacing Wesker with a beautiful vapid blonde woman negates all of the character’s interesting features and potential for scariness, partly because it suggests that Scarface is more of a malevolent spirit than one man’s alternate personality (it is scientifically and psychologically impossible for two separate people to engender the exact same alternate personality), and partly because it implies that beautiful blonde women are just as pathetic as sad, useless old men. Which is a pretty broad generalisation, no?

* …And continuing with that earlier trend, the new Ventriloquist’s basic origin? “Hush’s Old Girlfriend”.

[drsevarius.insanejournal.com]

Holy shit. Did Dini run over your cat or something?

[thehefner.insanejournal.com]

...

WELL on the plus side, I have to say I really prefer this skin tone for Ivy. More of a green-brown pallor, more earthy than the neon-She-Hulk green tone she often has.

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

Definitely! She looked like she's popped out of my garden.

[thehefner.insanejournal.com]

... man, I dunno what you're growing in your garden, but if it looks like Pamela Isley, I want some!

[menagerie.insanejournal.com]

I'm kind of confused by the Grundy transforming back and forth. (It's also changing the lighting and background color apparently! O_O)

[trueredorion.insanejournal.com]

He's not transforming, the panels are switching between what he actually looks like (the human Cyrus Gold) and what Grundy thinks he looks like (normal Grundy).

[queenursula.insanejournal.com]

All these people saying that Ivy deserves to get raped are creeping me out. :(