Avengers Annual #10 - Today, on a Very Special Jerry Springer....

[perletwo.insanejournal.com]

... Carol Danvers lays the smack down on the Avengers for their handling of the events of Avengers #200, so very recently posted here.

Posting 6 pages of a 38-page annual, not my scans and nothing done to them but resizing, by very popular demand.

We join our heroes by the pool at Xavier's mansion, some time after Rogue's brain-sucking of Carol; Xavier has helped her recover a rough version of her memories. Jessica Drew's there because as Spider-Woman she saved Carol's life when Rogue threw her empty shell off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Remember, Carol at this point has reconstructed her life history, but it's ghostly to her, no real emotions attached. Can you imagine how this'd've played if she were fully herself?

Comments

[starwolf_oakley.insanejournal.com]

Given Carol didn't have any emotional connection to her restored memories... *why* would she be so mad at the Avengers? Unless that whole "no emotions to go with the memories" hadn't been done yet.

Some of what Carol is saying about what it means to be a hero might be why she supported Iron Man's side in CIVIL WAR.

Funny how one thing leads to something else. This tips off my memories of the AVENGERS FINALE from 2004, by Brian Michael Bendis. Carol says she flat-out hates Wanda for her actions in "Disassembled." Referring to both Marcus and Rogue's power-drain, Carol says how she held it together and didn't "rampage." (Well, she didn't have her powers.) As I don't like it when mental illness is seen as a moral failing (which is too common), this REALLY bugged me.

Here's some help from a Blog:
http://cbddossiers.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_archive.html

Of course, Brian Bendis really flubbed when he had Carol saying that she “hated” Wanda Maximoff, as if she really were evil, in Disassembled, when here, Wanda was probably the most devastated of all when she found out about Carol’s being a mind-slave at the hands of Marcus (and as she wondered to her then-husband, the Vision, “what if Marcus had chosen me?”).

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

There was a lot of continuity about Wanda that got seriously flubbed in Disassembled.

And thanks so much, perletwo, for posting this. As one of the comments in the other post said, it's really a lot better to be able to read the "rebuttal", so to speak, after that piece of so very wrong.

[perletwo.insanejournal.com]

Well worth the trouble (even if it's taken me like four tries to get the resized ones posted properly) - some damn fine writing here, tasty art too. An excellent chaser to your post.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Given Carol didn't have any emotional connection to her restored memories... *why* would she be so mad at the Avengers?

For the same reason that the readers are. They're supposed to be heroes, her friends, and they cheerfully condoned her rape. You can thank the lack of emotional connection to those events for the fact that she doesn't crack any skulls here, and instead just quietly tells them they did wrong.

[perletwo.insanejournal.com]

My point precisely - what Marcus did was just that bad that even the dissociated memory of it provoked this kind of rage in Carol.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Well, it's easy to understand. I was in basically the exact same position she's in the first time I saw that story on the old S_D; I didn't know Carol or the Avengers from Adam, really, and just from that one narrative I could happily have punched the whole team senseless. Now that I'm actually familiar with her and invested in her as a character, that story is shaking rage and this - an angry but composed, tightly controlled lecture, which nobody but Wanda even seems to react that guiltily to, and an impersonal mention of Marcus' eventual death - is... not enough.

It was a bad, bad thing.

[perletwo.insanejournal.com]

Yup. I first read #198-199 in my middle teen years, when I'd had the Fear of Unplanned Pregnancy thoroughly drummed into me. I was totally in tune with Carol's horrified reaction to what was happening to her - like, hey, didn't they do actual horror movies with this basic plot setup? - and the other Avengers' reactions were just boggling.

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

If it had been a...I don't want to say normal, but a not so blatantly freakish and depressing pregnancy, their reactions would have made so much more sense. The fact that it wasn't, and had been made clear multiple times that it wasn't through Carol's emotional state and, y'know, the fact that she went into labor after three days of being pregnant, made the entire thing horrifying. It was like there was two entirely different stories being told here, with a horrible attempt to squish them into one.

[perletwo.insanejournal.com]

If she'd been married and planning to have children someday, it'd've made perfect sense at least initially. If she was involved with someone and "whoops!" it would've made a decent amount of sense. If there'd BEEN A POTENTIAL FATHER AT ALL it would've made something at least resembling sense. But THIS is how they react to immaculate conception? Jeez. Mary shoulda had such a support group!

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Even without the awareness of all this, Carol was a dazed mess during her pregnancy, and not one of them seemed to notice that. Not ONE noticed that she didn't seem to be too cool with this. If Marcus had come out of her womb looking like one of the Brood, I think they'd still have been this clueless.

[freezer818.insanejournal.com]

When Carol gets shat on, she doesn't half-step, does she?

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Nor should she. They deserved worse. Consider what they're used to dealing with, and yet this one time they accepted this at face value? Shooter's story, which I can only assume he had no idea was so loathsome, was that bad, and had to be undone somehow.

Shooter has never been in any way an effective writer of women. Or of the issue of rape.

[freezer818.insanejournal.com]

Also, wasn't this around the same time as Wasp's (since retconned) marriage to to the "new hero" Yellowjacket?

Not exactly the Avengers' finest hour...

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

Nope, that was well before. This was around the time that he really starting to lose his marbles.

[perletwo.insanejournal.com]

When checking the Annual to make sure I had the tags right, I noticed Jan and Hank are nowhere to be found in this story, except for Mystique briefly impersonating Jan. Do you know what they were up to around this point?

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

Based on when it came out, the Avengers comic had already started another storyline, so I can only assume this happened in between them leaving for Tokyo for some scientific conference or another and being attacked by another incarnation of Ultron when they got home, even though both instances were in the November issue and this came out in December.

[perletwo.insanejournal.com]

*nods* I ask coz I would dearly have loved to see Wasp called on the carpet for her giggly-poo "Oooo, a BAAY-bee!" behavior. Not quite as bad as Beast's armloads'o sporting goods, but a close second.

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

Carol got her good in the issue that it happened, and I really wish she hadn't taken it back. I love Jan to pieces, but she deserved that rant.

[interrobamf.insanejournal.com]

There was another rant? Any chance that could be posted?

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

It's in the original post, when Carol goes off at her for calling her "lucky". The reason it's not as effective as it should be is because she later apologizes for getting angry, when she really should have been getting angrier at the rest of the team anyway.

[interrobamf.insanejournal.com]

Ah, I misunderstood your post. Apologies!

[requiem2adream.insanejournal.com]

To play devils advocate, Carol forgiving Janet for her behavior actually fits right in with the retcon, if we take as happening after Marcus starts exerting his mindwash on her. So the initial outburst is her actual feelings as the baby Marcus doesn't have the power to control Carol, then later when he's an adult he can start controlling her and the result is of Carol being all 'oops, my bad!'

Obviously I realise it wasn't written that way, and was just EPIC FAIL on behalf of the original writer but still. Taking the retcon into account, it makes sense, of a kind.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Honestly, how responsible can you hold Janet Van Dyne? That would imply she had an intelligence worth respecting in the first place. But that kind of flippy, airheaded stuff is her speciality. Well, was.

No, I don't miss the Wasp, not at all.

[perletwo.insanejournal.com]

I don't miss that Wasp, no - but I first got to know Janet when she was leader of the Avengers, in the...ummm...Roger Stern era, I think? Post-divorce "I Am Woman" Jan. So this kind of airheadedness seems to me like the aberration rather than the other way 'round.

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

Too bad that Wasp vanished well before she actually died. I like to pretend something went wrong around 2004 and we ended up with an alter-universe one.

[thogrim.insanejournal.com]

I just pretend Jan was either replaced or brainwashed by the Zodiac cartel during Geoff Johns run.

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

That's a good theory too. I like that one. Since Hank hadn't yet been Skrull replaced (I think) during the Austen run, we can blame that for his shitty characterization during that as well.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Well-done, Claremont. Three words that have never before issued together from me.

[magus_69.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, the only way that the Avengers could have come off relatively well after this is if they had been mind-controlled as well, except the original scenario makes it pretty clear that that could not have happened.

[thandrak.insanejournal.com]

Motto. It's the only thing that could possibly make sense.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

I will though offer a word of criticism. As much as I like Michael Golden, I have to say, at least here, ever since this first came out I thought, looking at that first page you've got here: there's something weird about the way he draws the female form. Storm's head appears to be too tiny, that could be part of the weirdness, and Jessica's breasts...um, okay, whatever.

Carol, too, looks more butch than I'd ever imagined her, but that's more a matter of taste than anatomy.

Which strikes me as strange. I grew up on MICRONAUTS, and know damn well from Mari that he can draw women.

[halloweenjack.insanejournal.com]

It's also mind-bogglingly inappropriate for Carol to have this sort of conversation with the Avengers while she's wearing a bathing suit with some sort of weird fake-fur robe that doesn't even cover her crotch. You'd think that she would at least go for a more concealing cover-up. And those huge anime eyes are sort of weird, too.

[chthonicspirit.insanejournal.com]

You know, I almost wish Claremont had left it alone and the story had never been mentioned again. This deals with it, but of course it also cements it into continuity. If he was going to deal with it, he could have said that it was all a hallucination, or, like someone else said before, that the Avengers were mind-controlled as well. But instead he said that no, the entire story happened exactly as it was presented to us before. And that doesn't work because it is literally impossible for the Avengers to be so stupid.

[stolisomancer.insanejournal.com]

It's Claremont. In his later years, he'd start building up a lot of plots that didn't wind up going anywhere, but in his prime, the dude was a continuity machine. I don't think the idea of handwaving the events of another comic ever even occurred to him.

Besides, this entire scene isn't so much an attempt to fix things as it's looking at Jim Shooter and saying, "What the fuck are you doing to my character?" He gets attached to superheroines he's written.

[kingrockwell]

Yeah, okay, if anyone was perfectly justified in being Pro-reg, it was Carol.