Rare Jean Loring Sighting

[lordultimus]

Comments

[tcampbell1000]

Jean Loring has never been treated terribly well.

Version 1: Silver Age superhero writers tended to regard male heroes' romantic subplots as an inconvenient necessity at best. Jean in the original Atom stories was a sometime helpmate to the Atom, conveniently reluctant to marry until she got estabilshed in the law, and otherwise about as interesting as rain-sodden pulp.

Version 2: The closest that "classic Jean" got to agency was when Ray sprang his secret identity on her less than 24 hours before they were to be married. He did this, by the way, by transforming to the Atom in front of her, thinking as he did so, "She's already had two breakdowns, I hope this doesn't cause a third!"

...

Just...just gonna let that last paragraph breathe a minute, there...

...

She actually considers not marrying Ray for a few hours because secret-keeping is toxic, then decides this is one of the things that needs to fall under mutual forgiveness. That's fine, and it's actually true that a healthy marriage needs that. But the whole thing is ridiculously rushed, and it doesn't help that the people she's talking this through with, her bridesmaids, are also disguised superheroes and therefore also actively gaslighting her. (Sue Dibny is not among them, though she shows up in the wedding party later.)

Version 3: In the Eighties, Jean appeared just long enough to get caught in an affair, basically so it'd be justified for the writers of the series to recast Ray as a small-scale barbarian hero in the Amazon with a barely-legal alien woman clinging Frank Franzetta-style to his leg. I guess the Warlord DC Comic and Conan movies had done well enough to justify this attempted pivot. I won't hold it against Ray that he got written as somebody's bitter midlife-crisis fantasy for a year and change, but I gotta say, as soon as Jean was gone, she was instantly forgotten.

Version 4: All the bad things to say about Identity Crisis have already been said (who still wanted this?) and she's basically remained the same ever after that, albeit slightly more fun when Eclipsofied. The irony is that only by reaching cartoonish levels of dissociation has Jean managed to get any attention paid to her internal life. But that attention has not extended past "Aw, LOOK! She thinks this is romantic, isn't that TwIsTeD?!" And it sure hasn't tried to be consistent with any of the other three versions of the character, let alone tried to make them consistent with each other.

I feel bad for her...but not as bad as I feel for characters who used to be treated well and then got the shaft. Y'know, like Sue Dibny.

[dan_ingram]

...do you have scans of version 2?

Because just reading the summary, I'd almost be willing to kill to read it now, lol

[superfangirl1]

The cliff notes version.


https://www.cbr.com/justice-league-atom-ray-palmer-jean-loring-wedding/

[tcampbell1000]

I put it up!

[dan_ingram]

Well, that's one stabbing spree averted!