It is the mark of misogynists everywhere to want to see two attractive women fight for his attention. In Captain Marvel #4, Carol Danvers is faced with an old enemy: the X-Man Rogue, who once drained Carol’s powers and memories. Now they’re both trapped on Nuclear Man’s apocalyptic island and he wants them to battle for the title of his bride… which frankly sounds like a total nightmare.
Marvel provided The Beat with an exclusive preview of the first five pages of the new issue, on sale Apr. 10. Take a look at the preview below and be sure to pick up a copy of Captain Marvel #4 at your local comic shop on Wednesday.
Writer: Kelly Thompson
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colorist: Tamra Bonvillain
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles
Cover Artists: Amanda Conner & Paul Mounts
Publisher: Marvel
THE KNOCK-DOWN, DRAG-OUT FIGHT YOU CAN’T MISS! Nuclear Man reveals his secret weapon: The X-Man ROGUE! It’s been years since Rogue stole Carol’s powers and memories in a fight that changed Carol forever. Though Carol and Rogue have become somewhat uneasy allies in the years since, a wound like that never fully heals. And now, isolated from her allies and facing her worst nightmare, how far will Carol go to stop history from repeating itself?
Well some super villains do this. It’s not mysoginistic, it’s egotistical. There isn’t much difference here from Wonder Woman 177, 1968. There Klamos kidnapped Wonder Woman and Supergirl (and others) to fight for the honor of being his bride.
Of course Diana and Kara didn’t have the history that Carol and Rogue have. To start with they were both heroines. It’s funny, when Rogue tried to murder Carol she was greatly rewarded. Really. Without Carol’s soul and powers Rogue would just be a C-List villainess. When she stole everything from Carol she got powers, the X-men as friends and a large fan base, thanks in large part to the cartoon series where her attack on Carol was white washed. Carol was just sort of an afterthought for years, a part of Rogue’s back story. Carol had to live with a shattered mind and the fact that she couldn’t even remember loving her mother, while Rogue get’s to pal around with the X-Men. It used to bother me, then marvel made Carol a fascist and now I don’t care as much. Rogue was rewarded for trying to murder Carol, Carol was rewarded for being Tony’s attack dog in Civil War. In my opinion which ever one NM gets they’ll just make him miserable anyway.
“Nuclear Man?” I don’t want to hear anybody reading this stuff as an adult to make fun of the quality of past comics ever again.
Mike
As the Thing said to Tigra when they first met “Fancy names are a dime a dozen in this business.”
Would it be misandrist if you inverted the sex of each character? Or would a Nuclear Woman just be a sassy villainess?
Is it really correct that “It is the mark of misogynists everywhere to want to see two attractive women fight for [their] attention”? That seems like such a weird statement.
It’s not that I’m pro-misogynists or offended by the statement or anything.. it just seems like an odd thing to say. I think it’s the mark of misogynists everywhere that they disrespect/dislike women. But I don’t think that’s right, the whole “they want to see two attractive women fight for their attention” thing. Is it the mark of misanthropes that they want to see two people fight for their attention? And the mark of racists that they want to see two members of ethnic groups they dislike fight for their….
Oh, well. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. But… odd statement.
I actually wrote a review of the first two issues of this series the other week, along with the new Champions, Avengers and GotG runs, and a few others: https://medium.com/@thomas25well/champions-sharkey-no-road-home-comics-review-march-19-8bbaac1cd55c
Basically, I don’t think Carnero’s excellent interior art deserves to be lumbered with Thompson’s story or dialogue. Something I didn’t mention in the review how contrived the plot is: Nuclear man letting only women into his pocket-dimension, sending robots to fight with them but actually wanting to marry one of them — it just doesn’t make sense to me.
I think the phrase fits in the current standard of our time. When I think back on the villains I’ve read and how they’ve treated women, nothing has really changed that much. Ming the Merciless decided to marry Dale Arden, toward that end (in the movie serial, not the comics, sad to say I haven’t read them all) he did some mind control work on her. If you look at his reaction when they first meet
You don’t see a man who hates women, just an egotist looking for a good time. The villains have often been depicted as at least chauvinistic to the extreme, men who see woman not as full living beings but as trophies, toys or annoyances. But in the modern context the word ‘mysoginist’ can mean any man who doesn’t treat women as perfect and complete individuals. Trouble is that a villain would never do that. Even the best of them wouldn’t do that toward anyone, man or woman and they never have or will. They are villains after all.
I’d find it more disturbing when the supposed good guy does the same and skips away from any consequences. The way Tony Stark treated She-Hulk, tricking her into bed, depowering her and leaving her in a torn uniform in New Jersey as part of a plot to capture someone, should have forever broken their friendship but Jen is working with him in Avengers without a problem that I know of. In fact she never did anything to him, legally or otherwise despite vowing to do so. In the modern context Tony’s actions toward Jen constitute mysoginistic behavior, but I doubt he’ll ever be called out on it.
What fails to move me about this storyline is the idea that Nuclear Man is a mediocre menace at best. A cut out stereotype that the female characters can shout at. I feel the writer can do better.
“The way Tony Stark treated She-Hulk, tricking her into bed, depowering her and leaving her in a torn uniform in New Jersey as part of a plot to capture someone”
I grew up reading Marvel and ever so often it’s nice to know that my decision to stop many years ago was wise.
Mike
I remember being at a con on a discussion on women’s issues, the panel had four women on it and it was a discussion among other things about abuse recovery. I laid out the whole plot line -because at that time online I’d been hit with everything from ‘Well she knew it was Tony Stark, what did she expect’ to ‘What should she do, charge him with rape?’ and the panel agreed with me that Jen doing nothing after it was all over wasn’t right for any woman, let alone one who had a solid case like she did. There was also the fact that none of the female characters in marvel ever showed any support for Jen, not one panel in any comic. All it really took for Tony to start getting back on Jen’s good side was a note of apology he handed to her during the storyline when she was disbarred and a bounty hunter.
In this case there has never been anyone in Carol’s life -and we’re talking a pretty big list I think- that has abused her as much as Rogue has. No one ever came as close to absolutely destroying her as Rogue did that night on the bridge. So throwing them together in a plot that will probably having them joining forces against NM (I hardly think they are going to fight it out for him) is a little cliched. I could see someone like Faust or one of the other marvel crazy psychology types throwing them together as part of an experiment, but for NM to pick these two out of all of the other women in the MU (Sue Richards, Janet Van Dyne, Storm…) is more to me plot connivance to fulfill some sort of editorial decree than a truely new story. If I’m wrong I’m sorry. I was disappointed when during X-men V. Avengers the Carol/Rogue fight went no where, but then no one was really trying in that storyline, that was a paint by numbers event, no originality or thought was allowed and the authors in my opinion just took the money, threw some characters together and ran.
I know it all sounds harsh, but we can only judge these stories by the stories themselves, and this one is in my opinion lacking so far.
Mike, I like your analysis in both your posts, and the reasonableness of mentioning the panel’s agreement on She-Hulk and Tony. I really like what you said about Rogue. On Shulkie though, she has been portrayed as a bit of a man-eater herself, with a bit of an appetite (pals around with Hercules, that type of thing). I would say that it is better to look beyond a woman being an automatic victim in sexual daliances. It robs them of their agency. I imagine a buddy-fuck (ooh, did I use that term?) with Tony can be a pretty minor thing for Shulkie, that doesn’t rock any world. There’s no love there.
Otherwise, I thought your analysis was pretty good. Particularly Rogue.
Sorry, I meant to address Mark in my previous post. Typo.
I agree that Jen’s been in and out of a lot of beds, I always thought that worked for the character. She never had a one true love like Jan or Sue and she enjoyed sex. No foul in her pursuing who she wanted. All the men do. What made her the victim in the Tony affair was the fact that she worried about Bruce. Tony and the rest of the Illuminati had shot the Hulk into space and not told anyone. The was just after cw 1 and Jen had been drafted into SHIELD (which Tony ran) to catch old Hulk foes (For Tony and SHIELD to experiment on, something she wasn’t told about and something that a lawyer and officer of the court couldn’t have legally been a part of) and every time she asked about Bruce Tony would come off as very sympathetic and that eased her into the bed with him. He was her boss and he lied to her face. Even putting aside whether he and the rest were right to shoot the Hulk into space and not tell anyone, simple decency should have stopped him from seducing her. He knew that she was vulnerable and worried and he also knew that if Jen knew the truth he’d have no chance of having sex with her. He wanted her, he found a way and he took her and did not feel a bit guilty about it, or if he did it wasn’t shown. Carol at that time was head of Tony’s Avengers and there was never a recorded moment of her calling him out on it, or offering Jen any help at all. No one did, save Ben Grimm who loaned her a place to live. Jen also didn’t follow through on any lawsuits, which made me wonder why not. She had everything she needed, but the next time we see her she’s a disbarred bounty hunter.
So yea, she’s been in a few beds, but this time Jen was a victim of some pretty sleazy moves by Tony, and he suffered not a bit for it. That in my book makes her the victim.
Back to the storyline for a moment, NM could have also dragged in Mystique and that would have opened up a few new interesting avenues for the characters.
It still doesn’t work for me, Mark. She’s known Tony for a very long time, and knows the type of person he is. You have to know who you’re lying with, and Jennifer’s not that stupid. The harm/hurt is pretty minimal, in my opinion.
But, maybe, taking that premise. She Hulk getting pissed over hurt from Tony is not a very good story thread. She’d come off as petty, in my opinion. Do it as a Romance comic? maybe. Bit out of place for CW2, and demeaning for SH to be vindictive over after.
So: I still think she can throw it off.
She knows the type of person he is, at the same time this is a person who’s fought side by side with her. A certain amount of trust has to be there and he used that trust.
But try this, describe the situation to your girlfriend/wife/mother/sister and ask if they think that she should have known better.
On second thought I apologize for that, it assumes you’re male and that’s no position to put you in. On another track there is the complete lack of any sympathy or action for Jen from anyone other woman in the mu. Carol I can understand, she owed her position as head of the Avengers and her SHIELD strike force to Tony. If she rocked the boat too much that could be taken away from her and Carol was riding high after cw, finally becoming the A-list heroine she’d been dreaming of becoming. The way she let Tony walk all over her while she was head of the Avengers shows how much under his thumb she was.
But there was still a lot of others, and considering how much danger Jen was in, no one seemed real interested in her plight. Tony depowered her and Jen doesn’t have a secret identity, she would have been in big trouble if any of her old foes decided to look her up.
Join the Madame Masque sorority today! Get your vengeance on (absent literal Gothic disfiguration, if you don’t have it)! We can occupy the same MO and niche (hell, they could do a Marvel Knights story)! Tony’s balls are ours!
The next crossover: instead of Armor Wars or Secret Wars… Gender Wars! Reed Richards, Logan and Professor X can form their own Cabal where they prefer under the legal-age-of-consent young women…
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