SERIOUSLY! Contains Trigger Words Behind the cut

[shadowpsykie]

Okay so I was thinking about reading some more of the Ultimate Universe comics despite my aversion to them, mainly due to how excellent Ultimate Spider-man has been... Now I had some issues with the Avengers/Ultimate Avengers/Ultimate Ultimates Ulitmization...

Part of those issues were that I though they were too... how do i put this... Perpetually stuck in the EXTREAM! 90's! if you get what i mean... exsesively violent, some what sexist (im Looking at you Ultimatum!), and just not too many likeable characters, admitedly Cap had his moments, some very good moments, but some how those moments were always counter acted by some thing else. But I have hear on here some good things about the Ultimate comics and have decided to maybe give them a try... so i did some research.... and I found this out....


I found this Entry on the 2nd version of the Ultimate Wasp... you know... after the first one was EATEN by Blob!....

In the Ultimate Comics: Avengers a new Wasp appears (called Red Wasp). She is revealed to be a former Liberator soldier previously known as the Insect Queen, now reformed with an obedience chip and serves as a member of the Avengers. In Ultimate Comics: Avengers #5, a flashback reveals that she was Petra Laskov, the wife of a Georgian activist. One day the Red Skull kidnapped them, held the couple's child at gunpoint, and forced her to kill her husband to save her child. She does so, only for the Red Skull to throw her infant out a window, and then order his men to rape her. Along with the rest of the Avengers, she fights the Red Skull only to be overpowered until he was fatally injured by Captain America. A short while later when the Red Skull was in the hospital, Petra, dressed like a doctor, walked into his room and shot him in the head, killing him.

SERIOUSLY! She was Kiddnapped, tortured and RAPED! REALLY? can some one please tell me ANYTHING good about the Ultimates that would counter act this? or that would out weigh this? Anything that would make this worth reading?


For Legality The Red Wasp/Wasp2




if this was an innappropriate post, Or i posted the Trigger warning Wrong, please let me know....



She appears to have the same powers as her predecessor.

Comments

[sherkahn]

I think that's part of the point.

Someone trying to better themselves and the world after much trauma had been done to her on all fronts. Either Marvel Ultimates gives her story a chance to better herself and the world around her, or they continue to propagate the vicious cycle of "eye for an eye".

It's Ultimate, so I am going with the latter. But the possibility is there.

[icon_uk]

Someone trying to better themselves and the world after much trauma had been done to her on all fronts.

Doesn't the fact she has an "obedience chip" implanted sort of suggest she might not have any choice about "bettering" herself?

[sherkahn]

do we know it's still in her at this point?

[whitesycamore]

Someone trying to better themselves and the world after much trauma had been done to her on all fronts.

Like Batman!

Except that he's a man though. And you can't give a man a gory gang rape backstory for motivation. That'd just be sick.

[darkknightjrk]

It was Mark Millar. When it comes to the Ultimates, I pretty much personally discount everything that happens after Ultimates 2.

[ninjapeps]

everything after Ultimates 2 is just... horrible doesn't begin to describe it.

[biod]

Let me start by saying I love that Red Wasp costume, even if a corset seems a bit counterintuitive.
Now that that's out of the way, I too have been recently tempted by Ultimate Spider-Man. The above does not dissuade me from this. Terrible stuff has happened in the 616 universe (hello OMD!) both in and out of universe, but that doesn't make you swear off all the good stories forever does it? I suggest you take the same approach here.

[shadowpsykie]

it just... this stuff angers me... I get that sometimes bad things happen... but really? this is horrendous... Im conflicted... i don;t know what to think.

[icon_uk]

Let me start by saying I love that Red Wasp costume, even if a corset seems a bit counterintuitive.

I think it's a little too blatantly screaming "Look at me! I'm dressed in a fetishistic latex garb!!" to impress me as being anything other than "trying too hard to be edgy"

[freezer]

Someone posted the whole sordid Sadistic Choice/Rape scene a while ago. To me it felt a lot like Kingpin MAX -- trying WAAAAY too hard to show what an irredeemable bastard the antagonist was and just came across as snuff porn. (He wrote, trying to keep the TV Tropes refs to a minimum)

[biod]

Yes real Kick the Dog moments. :P

[auggie18]

Someone edited the pages so that after the Red Skull threw the baby out of the window, Petra beat him up and took out all of his men. The baby then randomly sprouted wings and flew away.


I know that it was just a fan-dub, but it made me feel better about the story in general.


Just stick to Ultimate Spider-man, though. Only read the books that you can enjoy.

[shadowpsykie]

they posted that here?

[cleome45]

"Tell, not show" is sometimes the right path for the storyteller to take. Having read that whole thing here, I don't understand why it was necessary for them to go into such loving and drawn-out (no pun intended) detail about RW's torture. Then again, I'm kind of skittish and rarely seek out "realistic" violence in media deliberately. Some things are better left to the reader/viewer's imagination.

[valtyr]

Yeah, that was #5 of the Next Generation arc. I read the first four, and I was really enjoying it, and then I got to issue five and they gave the new superheroine a gangrape backstory and threw her baby out of a window.

Oh, and she had to kill her husband with scissors. It took a while.

I was pretty WTF; it was so unnecessary. But I really liked the arc apart from that. If those kinds of things are dealbreakers for you, yeah, most of the Ultimates universe isn't really going to suit you, but I find enough there to make the gross bits worthwhile.

A couple things I find positive about the Ultimate Universe; Jan is a scientist in her own right, rather than Scientist's Girlfriend. (We get little of her actually doing science, but it is a start.) The domestic violence incident is graphically depicted, but it isn't sexualised at all despite the fact Jan's naked for some of it. The narrative doesn't victim-blame, and neither do any of the other characters. It also depicted the cycle of domestic violence well; that he'd hit her before, and they'd had new starts, and the cycle kept going, as she was inclined to forgive and believe him; it wasn't magically fixed. And she still wasn't blamed or punished for that.

Gail Richards/Barnes; in 616, it was treated like a joke that an older woman was still attracted to her old boyfriend Steve Rogers. In Ultimates, it's taken completely seriously that there are still strong feelings between them; it's never played for laughs. She gets pregnant by Steve late in WWII, and gives the baby up, and again, no hint of victim blaming from anyone. It's treated as her tragedy, as much as Steve's, when their child turns out to be the Red Skull.

I find a lot to like in Ultimates. For some people those things aren't going to outweigh the bad bits. And that's okay! Not everything is for everybody, you know?

[shadowpsykie]

can you suggest some Ultimate stories i should try?

[schrodingers_fangirl]

Another character with rape in her origin story. Yawn. Can't Marvel get off the rape/gang rape bandwagon for its female characters? Lady Bullseye, another fairly recent addition to the Marvel female character roster, has rape and torture as part of her origin story. It's really common with the Big Two and I'm tired of it being a motivator for agency from the Big Two.

[sianmink]

is.. is that Claudia Christian done up as Baroness?

And, yeah. Imagine if the new U!Spider-Man was written with rape/torture into his background. That would never fly. The usual comics double-standard that it's supposed to have outgrown by now but just can't seem to.

[proteus_lives]

Why would her back-story make her not worth reading about?

I'm not a fan of the latest Ultimates runs but I'm not following here.

[shadowpsykie]

its along the lines that we have YET ANOTHER Female heroine who was created with Rape and torture as a background. It seems the ONLY way one can create a Heroine with a dark past (or any past lately) is to have RAPE be her backstory...

Why was she a hero? Oh she was raped!

[halloweenjack]

As long as people keep buying comics like these (and going to see the movies adapted out of them), Mark Millar is going to keep writing them, and other comics writers and companies will keep imitating him (see, for example, the recent thread about how DC Comics plotted the sexualized torture and (later-retconned-away) murder of Stephanie Brown). This is, apparently, what a reliable segment of the fans want.

[tsunamiwombat]

Man, WHAT?

Ok, husband dead, sure i'm with you.
Child dead, sure i'm with you.
Raped, ok this is bad, but i'm still with you.

But husband dead childthrown out window AND raped.

WHAT
THE
FRACK
IS THIS SHIT?

ARE YOU RUNNING DOWN A CLICHE REVENGE MOTIVATION CHECKLIST OR SOMETHING? Who could actually WRITE THAT SCENE?

[tsunamiwombat]

AND WHY IS SHE DRESSED LIKE A FETISH MODEL/PORN ACTRESS?

Why is she wearing sexually fetishized latex gear? Where's the armor, wheres the guns? Wheres anything that screams -VENGEANCE-?

You know who screams vengeance?

THE GODDAMNED BATMAN.

Arrhgfdsds i'm going to go lay down now

[pyrotwilight]

I remember seeing her at some point. Always assumed she was a robot copy of Jan that Hank made somehow ala Jocasta but ULTIMATEIFIED.

Sad to see I was wrong. Sigh.

[liara_shadowsong]

...Wait, what? I don't even... The fuck? >_< No. Just... no. *gags*