It's kind of complicated.Spam wrote: ↑Wed Jan 23, 2019 2:53 amCan't recall the specifics, but didnt Hawkeye end up breaking up with his wife, Mockingbird, because she failed to save the life of the villian who raped her? A villian whose power was coming back from the dead?Ares wrote: ↑Wed Jan 23, 2019 2:25 am It kind of baffles me how insensitive in general a lot of comic writers are to the topic of rape. The Avengers writer decides to write Carol Danvers out of the story, so they have her become magically pregnant out of nowhere, go from normal to full term in less than a day, give birth to a child who rapidly ages into an adult, and then reveal that the child is actually Marcus, a guy from Limbo. Who brought Carol to Limbo, is SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED TO USE TECHNOLOGY TO ALTER HER MIND TO MAKE HER FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM, has sex with aka rapes her, then sends her back to Earth so he can use this convoluted method of becoming his own dad to escape Limbo.
And the Avengers were COOL with this! It's like, did none of the writers and editors stop to think how messed up that was?
Identity Crisis likewise turned standard super-genius supervillain Dr. Light into this weird, leering rapist solely for drama and as a red herring. Sue Dibney was just a chew toy for that story.
But then you get other things, like Thor, Captain Britain and Northstar all being mind controlled by women into having sex with them, and at no time is that treated as rape. It's especially bad with Northstar, who is GAY and has no attraction for women.
In the same vein, Nightwing is never treated with any sympathy by anyone else, nor does anyone treat Mirage like a monster for impersonating Starfire and raping Dick. They basically laugh it off like it was no big thing, and Starfire is basically as mad at Dick as she is with Mirage.
A similar thing happened in a Devin Grayson-penned Nightwing story, where a traumatized Nightwing is begging Tarantula to stop while she forces herself onto him. Devin later said that it wasn't consensual, but she didn't consider it rape . . . which just boggles my mind.
Long story short kids, unless you've got the skill to give it the gravitas it deserves, rape is probably something most writers shouldn't touch. Death and murder are far more permanent crimes, but rape leaves a traumatized, living victim that has to cope with the horrible thing done to them, making it a much more complex issue.
At the time, the Avengers went through a time travel adventure, one part which took them into the Wild West. While there, the Phantom Rider fell in love with Mockingbird, and kidnapped her right when the time machine was about to take the heroes away. The Avengers couldn't return immediately, and the Phantom Rider used a potion to erase Bobbi (Mockingbird)'s identity and make her fall in love with him. And while under that influence, they had sex. Which is to say, he raped her.
The comic never calls it rape outright, but when Mockingbird regains her memory, she's clearly mad as hell. She confronts the Phantom Rider and flat out states that he "violated her in the way only scum like him can violate a woman". So they fight, and during the fight, the Phantom Rider falls off the side of a cliff. He's clinging to the edge and begs Mockingbird to save him. Instead, she just tells him to "go to Hell", and watches as he loses his grip and falls to his death.
Eventually, the heroes are able to come back for her. She decides not to tell Clint about this, and we get a semi-realistic depiction of a rape survivor dealing with her trauma. Only when they return to the present, the Phantom Rider's ghost appears and begins to haunt Mockingbird. See, the Phantom Rider wasn't originally a ghost or a phantom. He was just a guy who used stage magic to appear to be a ghost. So when Mockingbird let him die, he really did die, only to come back as a vengeful ghost. But due to some rules of the supernatural he couldn't start haunting her until after she'd returned and killed him.
So Mockingbird, already dealing with the guilt of killing someone and lying to her husband, the trauma of being raped, and the torture of being messed with by a ghost, decides to confide in some of her Avengers. And despite the Avengers having a very strict "No Kill Rule" to maintain their government sanction, every Avenger present is supportive of her and tells her that Clint will likewise be understanding.
The Phantom Rider sees this happen, and instead appears to Hawkeye and the other Avengers, informing them of what happened. So when Hawkeye and the other Avengers show up, Clint is PISSED because Mockingbird has not only been lying to him, she lied about killing someone. This would be bad enough as an Avengers leader, but he's also her husband, so he feels doubly betrayed. And because Clint and Bobbi have similar temperaments, him being mad at her makes her equally defensive right back. So both of them dig in their heels and get into a yelling match, and both of them are too stubborn to back down.
So the pair separate, but they never actually get divorced, I believe. Englehart claims that he was suppose to get them back together not long after, but he left the book and John Byrne dragged out the drama even longer. Eventually Clint and Bobbi realized they were both being idiots, Clint especially so, and the two made up. Just in time for Bobbi to get killed fighting demons.
But wait, there's more!
See, it turns out that somewhere between Bobbi taking a leave of absence from the Avengers and getting killed, she was replaced with a Skrull. So when she comes back to Earth, her memories are still of Clint who refused to take her side as if it happened last week. And despite Clint trying to explain that he realizes he was wrong, Bobbi files for divorce, leaving them both single.
But wait, IT. GETS. EVEN. DUMBER!
Chelsea Cain got to write her own Mockingbird series. It was terrible, with Cain basically completely creating a new character from scratch and being one of the forerunners for the issues Marvel has had in recent years. She was the one with the infamous "Ask me about my feminist agenda" shirt, right as the book was canceled. She also recently had her Vision mini-series canceled by Marvel because, shockingly, it took her over two years to produce four issues worth of content for the series, and it wasn't in line with what Marvel wanted. When Marvel asked her to respect their decision and not make a fuss about it, she immediately went to Twitter and blasted:
Truly, the soul of professionalism."Marvel asked me to keep this 'clean and quiet', because apparently they've never met me. HI GUYS! I'M THE ONE WHO'S THE PAIN IN THE ASS. REMEMBER ME NOW?"
In any case, Chelsea Cain decided to revisit the the Mockingbird / Phantom Rider incident. Cain felt that Mockingbird being raped "took away her agency", despite the fact that she got revenge on her abuser and stood by her decision even in the face of what it might cost her, and realistic dealt with the repercussions of such an event.
Instead, Cain decided that Mockingbird had WILLINGLY stayed with the Phantom Rider, and WILLING slept with him. She cheated on her husband because "Clint could never control me", but when she decided she wanted to return home, the Phantom Rider wanted her to stay. They had a fight, and she killed him. So again, instead of avenging herself on her rapist, she killed a guy who at best was somewhat possessive of her, and at worst felt like she had betrayed him and used him, but wanted her to stay so they could work things out.
In the present, Bobbi shows no remorse over killing the Phantom Rider, because "He's a ghost, how could I have killed him", ignoring that the only way for him to have become a ghost was because she killed him. And Clint? Apparently Clint invented the idea of her being raped because that was easier to handle than the idea of her cheating on him, and he divorced her.
And CLINT is the one portrayed as being in the wrong here, refusing to accept Bobbi's decisions, when this whole story turns Bobbi into a monster who cheated on her husband and then murdered her lover because he felt justly pissed that she'd just leave him when she was done with him.
This might surprise you based on that wall of text, but I'm not a fan of the retcon.