Marvel's Voices Infinity Comic #97: "Unlike Any Other (Part 3 of 6)"

[alliterator]

"Legacy characters like Bobby, like Northstar, like Jessie Drake came of age when their stories were deemed "untellable", and I think – understandably – stories of queer suffering, of surviving tooth and nail, are less en vogue now, both for publishers and readers. But they’re still stories important to tell. Our scars still matter, even if not everyone understands them, or finds them harder to look at or market."
-- Anthony Oliveira



Emma Frost and Shela Sexton (also known as Escapade) are sitting in a fancy restaurant. Only...Shela doesn't remember how they got there. So Emma explains that there was an airplane and a Hydra hijacking that Shela herself stopped.

Comments

[huntleyhaverstock]

I read this last night after seeing the scans here, and it's a truly clever and moving story. Designing a story that can only scroll vertically downward around a character falling from the sky -- and not letting you in on that fact until halfway through, leaving you to think that the blue sky background is just lovely window dressing -- is a creative use of the medium, turning its limitations into strengths.

Emma may be a bastard, but we know that the one flaw in her diamond heart is the children she's lost and let down. This story plays to that beautifully.

And these scans, by necessity, leave out my favorite part of the narrative: Escapade has to work hard to stay switched with the passenger she saved. She could let go at any moment of this increasing physical strain, save herself, and let a total stranger die. And she refuses. She's a kid who's barely started living. No one would blame her. But she holds on to the switch tighter and tighter, knowing she could and probably will die, just to make sure she saves someone else. I dunno about you, but that's Spider-Man-lifting-the-impossible-weight-of-machinery for me right there.

Boring cis het white dude here, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt, but I read Escapade's powers as empathy made manifest. She can be anyone, and anyone can be her.