Mike Carey on the Magneto/Rogue relationship

[xdoop]

[Banned]

Comments

[kiplingkat]

After having Lobdell repeatedly try to shove that non-existent 'ship down my throat through the 1990's, I just have a bad knee jerk reaction to it.

I can't see the two of them as a couple. Yes, they could have sex like bunnies, but actually hanging out together, enjoying one another company? What would they talk about other than being mutants?

Plus Magneto is not exactly Mr. Emotionally Functional. When we last checked in, he was still hung up on his wife (a friend of mine has a very interesting theory as to *why* he is so hung up on Magda after all this time), and has not really dealt with her abandonment and let her go emotionally.

But I do trust Mike Carey, so *if* someone is going to go there, maybe he can make it work.

I just wish they would cut both characters loose form it and move on...

[kiplingkat]

Of course, there is also the fact that Rogue did not back off. In fact she threw herself at him a couple times. And each time he turned her down.


http://s835.photobucket.com/albums/zz275/KiplingKat/?action=view¤t=scan0031.jpg

[joysweeper]

That image reminds me pretty strongly of one I saw on Star Wars Insider once, of Count Dooku and Asaj Ventress. Dooku stands there glowering, Ventress drapes herself all over him. I thought it was a reflection of the different ways bad guys are portrayed depending on gender. The male villain isn't always but certainly can be the impassive, relentless, unknowable force. The female villain virtually always has that element of sex, and sometimes that irritating hint that she's just passionate and unless she's thoroughly mad, she could fall for a hero and that would be all she needed to turn back on evil.

Off topic, I know. But this isn't the first time I've seen a composition like that, and remembering the other case got me thinking about why this pose tends to crop up.

I am using a Thrawn icon to comment on art and the society in which it was made. ...How did this happen?

[cmic]

I am a blatant Magneto apologist and I like Rogue fine, but this relationship always seemed forced.

I can't even imagine them being attracted to each other (honestly, I can't imagine them even forming personal opinions of each other) so I don't even think they'd fuck like bunnies. They'd ambivalent like bunnies.

[lamashtar]

*coughwhitequeencough*

Yeah. :(

But I have some nifty sword and sorcery shots of evil queens looming or sitting impassively in their thrones. They're dressed in bikinis or topless, but that's better than draping themselves over The Man.

[lamashtar]

I'll bite. I've read whole essays on his mental functioning! Why does your friend think he's hung up on Magda still?

[halialkers]

I dunno, the Draco in Leather Pants phenomenon says that male villains often have elements of sex about them. Even Don Juan has a seedy aspect to him, though a female Don Juan would not be very likely, unfortunately. Tropes have not yet advanced enough for that. >.> Though Catherine the Great was as close to a real-life counterpart as Real Life can create.

[joysweeper]

It's not that the male villains can't be or aren't portrayed that way. It's that they're also portrayed as Evil Towers of Ominousness, and any sex appeal they have in that state is entirely apart from the writhing sensuality of the female villains.

For the male villains, sexuality is an accessory. Some pick it up casually, some base their entire image or purpose around it. For the female villains, sexuality is built into their entire premise. It's having skin. They'll do different things with it, and for some it's a much bigger part of their image than for others, but there are very few without it. Isard might be one, I suppose. Advances on Fel notwithstanding.

[halialkers]

What about when Bastila Shan went to the Dark Side? She didn't exactly turn all stripperific....and then Mary Marvel's evil costume arguably showed as much skin in Final Crisis as the heroine Wonder Woman's did.....

[joysweeper]

This is why I like Ysanne Isard, the villain of the X Wing Series. She was in love with the Emperor, and she kissed Fel once against his will, but sex just generally has little to do with her. She's one of the few female villains who is neither stunningly hot (admittedly this depends on the artist) nor hideous, she dresses like an Imperial, and there's no story about how she was a good girl who fell on hard times and went bad.

She went into Imperial Intelligence, rose in position until her father tried to have her killed, and then framed him for treason and took his job. I haven't seen anything of her interacting with the Emperor, but certainly she never draped herself over Sate Pestage or the Tribune. ...Really, I like Isard. Even if her reputation outstrips her achievements eventually.

[jaybee3]

I agree with you. There's nothing about Rogue and Magneto (particularly in their current incarnations and points in life) that makes me thing they would be either sexually attracted to each other or in any other way. And besides Rogue has Gambit and a whole bunch of men over the years who would knock down the door to get to her (whether they could survive it is a different matter). But Magneto? Yeesh. I hate that they're revisiting this.

[cmdr_zoom]

Wait.
Magneto and Rogue have a relationship?
When did this happen?
Also, DO NOT WANT

[joysweeper]

Angry Underwear. And did Wonder Woman get upskirt shots or grab a phallic rod with a look of bliss in Countdown?

Sexuality is always innate to women in comics just in general. Yes, the heroines are skimpy too, I'm not arguing that. I'm pointing out that in comparison to how crucial an element sex is in the men, sex is much more essential to the characters who happen to be women. Bad guys even moreso than good guys.

And I'll peace out here, since it's too late at night for this. Here I promised myself I wouldn't get into arguments about feminism...

[jessibot]

Urgh, I did not know this was happening. Major squick factor.

[crabby_lioness]

It wasn't much of one, just some gratitude over a him saving her and a bit of mutual flirting when they were all alone in the Savage Land. Nothing that would have survived a third party's presence -- or did.

[crabby_lioness]

See, this is why we need strong female characters back in Marvel Comics. There isn't a single, active woman currently out there strong enough to earn Magneto's attention.

Why yes, I am a Magneto fangirl.

[xdoop]

What about Mystique?

[corrinal]

Are they going to be on an island? Because Magneto always sexes women up when he's on an island.

[baihu]

The relationship gets blown out in full in alternate realities often though, notably Age of Apocalypse takes it and gooooooo...

[long_silence]

The X-men live on an island these days.

And this Rogue-led team in Necrosha is heading to Muir Island.

[tsunamiwombat]

Miss Marvel? The real one.

Or Miss Marvel. The fake one.

...

Mary Jane Watson?

[kiplingkat]

It's double jeopardy. First there is the fact that Magda was an imporant person during the only two periods of his life in which he was happy: His childhood and after the escaped the camps and settled in the Carptatian mountains until Anya's death.

If he lets go of her, or gets angry at her for leaving him, he might feel that it would somehow poison those precious few memories of happiness.

That was my theory. Now my friend's theory, jlmoor on the CBR forums, can coexist and is much more intriguing.

It's probably more ingrained, and he will probably never get over it. Max was a sonderkommando during the Holocaust, and as such he took part in a monstrous system to survive. Because he became a monster in Auschwitz, to him he has no intrinsic value. He has to prove he has use in order to justify his existence. He did as much good as he could safely do (which we saw in Testament), but the one act he attached the most importance to was saving Magda. That was his redemptive act, his purpose: Saving her.

Which is why when she turned on him, called him a "monster" it struck such a chord.

But because his self-worth is wrapped up in her, he can't let her go, he can't face the possibility that she did not love him as he loved her.

On Madga's behalf, there is a page in Magneto Testament #5, in which they are in the sauna talking, and she says she saw a guard throw a live baby into the fire pit while Max was standing right there, and no one did anything. He isn't listening, he's promising her that she is going to live. But to her that memory, the memory of what he did, that he was the one that had fed all those Roma in to the ovens, it probably ate at her and her feelings of gratitude and whatever residual feelings of love and childhood romance she felt for him until when Anya died, and he was kneeling there, holding her burned body, the burned corpse of their child, she called him a monster and ran.

Greg Pak was a freakin' genius for including that scene, that echo of "Fire in the Night", and jlmoor was a genius for picking up on it and making the connection.

[kiplingkat]

It's true, Moonstone, Goblin Queen, White Queen, etc. but I think it is more indicative of men's feeling about sex and women. It is assumed that an "evil woman" would automatically exploit men's "weakness" for women and sex and therefore gain power over them by hurting them in a place where they feel vulnerable.

Which is just sexist as all hell, on every single level.

[kiplingkat]

For someone who has his trust and control issues? I don't think so.

That's a recipe for Mystique getting dead awfully quick.

[crabby_lioness]

The same thing has been noted historically when men write about women rulers. They always sex them up, even when there's no evidence to support that premise.