X-Men/Micronauts #4

[history79]

Warning for Rape

Comments

[icon_uk]

"And you're a good little girl....

Sodding hell, I'd forgotten (or blocked) how awful these scenes were, and them making it past editorial unchanged is frankly unforgivable,

I mean I know Claremont toys with the whole "Bad guy releasing heroes id and hero enjoying it" plot a LOT, but when it's being directed at one of the New Mutants in the context of a rape scene. God almighty...

[mastermahan]

Having never read this before, I thought there were some good moments. The X-Men fighting the Micronauts, only they're the toy-sized ones for a switch. A despairing Wolverine preparing to murder the other X-Men to stop them from being enslaved, only to be talked out of it by Piotr.

On the other hand... holy fuck is there some creepy shit going on here. Evil Xavier just gave a half-naked teenage a brain orgasm, and it was was described in the most sexual, rapeyest way possible. JFC, Claremont.

EDIT: And just to chime in my agreement, this is clearly the sort of thing an editor should have sent back, presumably with notes of "DON'T SEXUALIZE TEENAGE GIRLS" and "DON'T MAKE EVIL XAVIER A RAPEY EPHEBOPHILE, CHRIS, I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS".

[scelestus]

The real pisser is, I had to read this series to find out how Bioship died in the regular series. Prior to this I'd had little to no experience with the X-Men; after this, I stayed away from that title for a good long time, figuring it was WAY too rapey for me.

[icon_uk]

I was about to ask what Bishop had to do with aynthing, then the penny dropped.

[scelestus]

Heh.

Bioship/Biotron was the Jean Gray of the Microverse- originally he was Commander Rann's travelling companion, and as they spent many years exploring the Microverse while Rann was in suspended animation, they had a psychic link.

So it was extra traumatizing when Biotron first got wiped out. He got rebuilt (reincarnated?) into the Bioship sometime later, which then was destroyed in this miniseries.

He was then brought back *again,* but as normal-sized Biotron, for the "new voyages" series, and was once again killed off. As Marvel no longer has the rights to him, I'm assuming this death is permanent.

[icon_uk]

I was a fairly avid Micronauts reader back in the day, but even I got confused about Biotron's status.

[arilou_skiff]

Holy crap, even for Claremont that is pretty bad.

[lizard_of_aus]

So...yeah. Myself, I'm too young to have read Claremont's X-Men back in the day, but the impression I'm getting from here is something like "Good writer, made the X-Men what they are today, but had a skeevy side that needed keeping on the tightest of leashes."

[cygnia]

Has anyone (in the industry) ever called Claremont out on his rape/mind control fetishes -- and has he ever apologized for how fucking creepy it is?

[ozaline]

There is a bit in Marvel Comics the Untold Story where one of the editors complained about the sexual elements in Claremonts' writing (I think it was Nicenti, but I'll have to double check)... Sadly it wasn't over something like this it was about Xavier wanting to cross dress and that got totally nixxed.

If Wecan say anything positive here it's that Chris does portray this stuff as bad... And addressed how horrific it was when it was done to Carol and shown as hunky dorey.

[mastermahan]

Well, not totally nixed:

[katefan]

Now might be a good time to mention the Chris Claremont Mind Control Central blog. Don't want to post a link to it because there is adult content there, but you can do a search for it. And yes, it's every bit as skeevy as you might think.

[arilou_skiff]

I just spent close to an hour just browsing through it.

There's A LOT of that. Even considering Claremont has written a shitload of stuff, there's *still* a lot of that.

[katefan]

Yeah, it's his creepy fetish.

[agharta75]

So, last issue when we saw Kitty her body was being mind controlled by Baron Karza and had been captured by Evil Professor X who was forcing Kitty/Karza to wear a slave girl outfit and ... I can't believe I just typed that.

I suppose she got back to normal in this issue, somehow, without needing therapy.

[zylly]

Yeah, the bit with Dani is creepy as hell. And by all rights should have lead to her never feeling safe in Chuck’s presence again.