Fantastic Four #306/#308/#310

[history79]

FF #306: Sharon Ventura, the new Ms Marvel, joins the Fantastic Four















FF #308











FF #310

Comments

[michaelhealy]

#NotAllMen the comic.

[shadowpsykie]

... this makes me uncomfortable in SOOO many ways....

is it weird that I "GET" what they are trying to do... but think, even for the day in age... it's still kinda horrible....?

All the rape issue aside (and it'sa HUGE issue) i also feel uncomfortable that in order to view Ben as an ally she has to dehumanize him...

then there is his attitude of "It wasn't MEN it was some men..." was ... again... i get he's trying to help... i get that in a team situation this can post some problems... but i kinda wanna smack ben over the head... a part of me wishes Crystal would come to her defense or something....

he's trying to help... and he understands conceptually... but he doesn't understand it on a personal emotional level...

[tianyulong]

Hey I hope I'm not stepping on any toes when saying this, but what is the problem with Thing's argument? I'm not asking to be a jerk or anything, I legitimately don't understand. This is an issue I don't possess a lot of knowledge about, and I'd really like some context on why the argument is flawed.

[night4345]

Nothing is wrong with his argument logically but trauma like this isn't logical and yelling at her isn't going to help (at least in real life but I'm not a expert) her get through it.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

As team leader, though, his priority shouldn't be "will this help her," as much as "will this prevent her from getting someone killed." I saw it as him essentially asking her, "Can you do this? Because if you can't, everyone's better off if you leave now."

[night4345]

He's the one that brought her onto the team despite knowing what happened so that's just cruel of him to kick her out. His priority should be to get her some help instead of throwing her into another stressful situation (soldiers don't get thrown back into the fight after something like this so why should she have to?) and yell at her when she expectedly has problems dealing.
This is complicated by the fact he wants to date her while simultaneously being team leader and her therapist (which he isn't trained or experienced at) while not being able to relate to her problems because A) He's not a women B) Hasn't been sexually assaulted while held captive (at least I think so).

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

It might be cruel of him, but it's what he would have to do as the leader. Yes, putting her on the team in the first place was a mistake, but she is, as you say, having problems dealing and when you're in a life-or-death situation, it's not a good idea to have a person on your team who shouldn't be there.

Her response to Ben is that she "feels terrible" about almost getting Johnny killed, but she can't promise it won't happen again. At least, she doesn't say anything reassuring him that it won't. The only responsible thing for him to say would be that she can't be an effective member of the time as she is and that she needs counseling for her trauma. To use your comparison with soldiers, she's the one who wants to get back into the fight and seems to think that her trauma won't be a problem. If Ben doesn't tell her that it will be, who will?

[thereddouglas]

The problem is, "Not All Men" often gets brought up as a defensive reaction to women talking about the dangers, and even the actual truama, that have been inflicted on them. Rather than further the conversation regarding the disproportionate aggression women face, it it makes the issue about the 50% of the population who already have the advantage.

And in the case of this particular comic it makes it about Sharon Ventura being a poor member of the team because of her problems with men and not about the fact she's a rape survivor struggling with trauma. Englehart's cack-handed depiction of the character's response to being raped doesn't help either.

[thereddouglas]

Also this pithy cartoon helps to sum it up...

http://www.listen-tome.com/save-me/

[tcampbell1000]

The problem isn't so much the "some men" part of his argument. That's just, like, basic rationality. Certainly, if the Thing is facing a situation where his teammates can't rely on each other, he's got to at least take a hard line about it. Johnny Storm should not be allowed to die because male rapists exist. We're all on the same page there, right?

Not coincidentally, most "not all men" statements are rational on their face: the problem is that they reduce feminist arguments to strawmen by implication. An uncharitable reading of this story would be that it had a similar aim-- to reduce all problems women have ever had with male power to Sharon's fearful, irrational extreme.

But let's be kind and assume this is just meant to deal with post-rape trauma and recovery, certainly a subject worth talking about, even uplifting when handled well.

The problem is that the Thing is occupying at least three roles here-- amateur therapist, team leader, and would-be lover-- and mixing even TWO of those roles would be a recipe for disaster. Mix all three and you might as well start writing the checks now for all the property damage you've made inevitable. "As the only male presence in your life you trust at all, I sure don't want to abandon you, but I will if you can't serve as a member on this team, because Lord knows we couldn't have any sort of friendship outside of it. I need to help you understand there are men or at least males in the world who won't violate your boundaries. Let's kiss."

And while we're at it, even by old-comics standards, that sure was a weird MAD MEN-like gesture for Captain America to make, just to "demonstrate" Sharon's phobia (when you'd think it would've kicked in before they rode cross-country on a motorcycle). Yeah, I know he's from the forties, but he's no Howard Stark. I think Wasp, Scarlet Witch, or She-Hulk would ALSO flinch away from that gesture, though given their long histories with Cap they'd probably follow it up with an arched eyebrow and "Do you FEEL well?"

[tianyulong]

Holy crap that was the real Captain America?! I just assumed it was like the 50s Cap or a Skrull or something. Is any of this still canon? When was this written?

[tcampbell1000]

1987, literally the same year WATCHMEN came out, and Steve Englehart's generally considered one of the best Captain America writers. All I can say is that Marvel seemed to be down in the dumps creatively around this point.

[thereddouglas]

I checked the issues and interestingly enough Jim Shooter is listed as Editor-in-Chief for the #306 and 307 but by #308 it's Tom DeFalco. If anything this might be indicative of the toll his tenure as EiC took on the company.

[thereddouglas]

Good call on the Thing's problematic position in this whole mess. And yeah, I had the same reaction to Captain America's gesture, even in the context of this being an old Marvel comic.

[obsidianwolf]

In the panel after his creepy gesture Cap realizes he screwed up big time and mentions in his thoughts her sitting as far away from him as possible on the bike.

His interactions with her in his own comic in the issue referenced were much better handled.

ETA: It is still a creepy way to introduce a really badly handled plot line for Sharon but then again IMO Englehart's handling of Cap's interactions with women were always a bit off. Like him wanting Sharon to retire or the time Peggy thought Cap was still in love with her and Englehart kept that going way longer than it should have.

[burkeonthesly]

I'm going to preface this with: I'm male, I've never been subjected to this kind of trauma, I'm miles away from being an expert and I will readily defer to someone, anyone, who knows more than me on this point, but my understanding is this: trauma can leave a scar in the psyche of one who endures it, and left untreated, that scar remains, let's say, tender. When that person is, later, exposed to some stimulus that they've come to associate with the original trauma (think a soldier with PTSD in a thunderstorm, or when a truck backfires, for an example), some part of their mind goes back to the memory of that original trauma, and it's like they're there again.

Logically, maybe, they know they aren't there, but part of their brain isn't listening to logic. Part of their brain is living through it, again and again, every time that stimulus comes up. It's kind of like, if you broke your arm one time, and had a scar from it, and every time somebody touched the scar it hurt as much as when you first broke it, then you'd want people to stop touching it, right? It's like that, but the touch on the scar might be anything--a sight, a sound, a smell, an idea, some combination thereof.

Extending that analogy, the Thing's argument is equivalent to your friend telling you, "yeah, it hurts when people poke your scar, but it's not like your arm's breaking again, so get over it." His argument is that A is not equivalently damaging to B, and the flaw is that B, while not equivalent, is still similarly painful.

Does that help?

[tianyulong]

Yeah a bit. Thanks everyone for your explanations

[starwolf_oakley]

There was something similar to this around the same time in UNCANNY X-MEN #235-238 where it was hinted a powerless Rogue was raped by magistrates in Genosha. It was said elsewhere that Rogue wasn't raped, just beaten up.

[espanolbot]

Was this around the time the whole "Ms Marvel was brainwashed by a timetravelling rapist so he could impregnate her with himself" thing? Ick.

[cricharddavies]

About a decade or so later, actually.

[starwolf_oakley]

No, that was in 1980. This is 1987-88.

[skemono]

Wait... do any of the men in the flashback scenes even have a moustache? I think maybe one of them? So why are you equating evil-rapist-men with moustaches? #NotAllMoustaches

[zaqari_waliz]

Have mustache, am not rapist (... I don't think). Thanks, Sharon. I seriously hope she sought some professional help outside of Ben Grimm.

[philippos42]

Oh, wow, I'd forgotten (or never knew) that Shary had terrible androphobia. Pretty clunky, Steve.

I think she calmed down a lot after she mutated.

[beyondthefringe]

Such a great character...
So horribly treated throughout the years.
She's another one of those knock-offs (like War Machine or USAgent) who suffers from various bad storylines and changes and reversions and so on because no one knows what to do with them in a world where their "original" is still around.

Because let's face it, she went from being Ms. Marvel (which was cool except for this ham-handed storyline) to She-Thing, which was... well, once she was defined solely as being a female Thing, it all got worse. She was a monster, she was suicidal, she was evil, she was cured, she was a monster again, she was replaced by Skrulls...

Honestly, the only really successful spin-offs have been Spider-Woman (who's still had a lot of issues, retcons, and direction changes over the years) and She-Hulk (who, despite being defined by being a... well, female Hulk, has almost always retained her identity and personality.)

I'm talking Marvel only for the moment, by the way. And I can't think of any other knock-off/spin-off/replacement who've really thrived and remained consistent. Maybe Bucky as the Winter Soldier, but he's only been back since 2005. Talk to me in another 20 years and we'll see how consistent he remains. :)

[arilou_skiff]

How about Ms. Marvel? It helps that her male counterpart died in an incredibly iconic way and hasn't really been brought back (except via fake-outs) much.

[burkeonthesly]

I can't help but be a little bit tickled that character resurrections are so common that mentioning someone died an iconic death and stayed dead requires not one but two qualifiers. Comics, kids!

[beyondthefringe]

Good call.
Carol's remained rather well-focused.
Except for losing her memories/emotional connections, that whole horrible Marcus/Immortus thing, becoming Binary and leaving the Earth, coming back and becoming Warbird, going through an alcoholic stint, acting as a government agent, and finally graduating to the Captain Marvel name...

But I'd say she's still done a better job of moving from spin-off to better-established character, since the original (Marvel) Captain Marvel has had the good sense to stay mostly dead. :)