codystarbuck ... There should be some accountability for Marvel Comics putting out that historic issue -- to me, any issue like that should put some effort into it and since they did not do that it's upsets many Avengers Fans and I'm speaking of them in my hometown that didn't think highly of it. I understand what you are saying and I wanted to convey the anger of fans of that book; nothing more and nothing less.
I'm all for accountability; but, Shooter was also at the helm when Chris Claremont wrote Avenger Annual #10, addressing the storyline and leveling the criticisms of it. It seems to me, he listened to the criticism from within Marvel, mainly Claremont, and greenlit a story from Claremont, that addressed the problems.
I just re-read Avengers #199 and 200, to see what is on the page, rather than in memory. Towards the end of 199, the Avengers come home to find Wanda and Vision, who had taken a leave of absence, and a very pregnant Carol Danvers. She has no idea how she became 7 months pregnant nor who the father is. the Avengers want to know how she could be pregnant, when they saw her just a few days before, not 7 months pregnant. By the issues end, she is going into labor.
Issue 200 starts out with Dr Donald Blake and Jocasta delivering the baby and studying it, while Carol recovers. Carol is unnerved and can't understand how the others are okay with things and congratulatory. However, the Avengers are questioning things, as the baby grows rapidly and is speaking, within hours. Carol calms down a bit and outside, we see time running amok. Eventually Carol meets her "son," who is a fully grown adult. He's building a machine, which ultimately Hawkeye destroys, when he misinterprets Marcus' (the child) actions, in making his "mother" fall asleep. Marcus then reveals how he was conceived by Immortus and a woman of Earth, plucked from time to Limbo, and placed in a pocket where time flowed, unlike Limbo. The mother ends up thrust back in time and the boy grows in the pocket, until Immortus disappears. He is left alone and conceives his plan; but, needs a very strong woman to bear him and selects Carol. She is brought to Limbo and wooed, while also being "subtly manipulated" by Immortus' machines. The child is conceived and she returns to Earth, where it is born and rapidly grows, which affects the time stream. he must leave; but, Carol, finally feeling drawn to "her child" decides to go with him, so he isn't alone.
The story is a mess, as a result of the number of hands involved (Shooter, Michelinie, George Perez and Bob Layton are all credited on plot). Michelinie has said he originally conceived of a story with the Supreme Intelligence, probably related to the evolutionary dead-end that is the Kree (as seen in the Kree-Skrull War). However, that was changed and we get this mess. There is a definite statement of manipulation of Carol, via the machines, which makes whether the conception is consensual questionable at best and rape at worst. She is also wooed, in an attempt to suggest it was a bit of both. It's still not consensual; but, the focus is more on the idea of Carol as being the surrogate for bringing Marcus to earth, freeing him from Limbo. It doesn't depict and actual rape, though enough things are there that you can justifiably interpret a non-consensual conception.
There is nothing, at the end, to suggest that Carol didn't leave willingly, though.
In Avengers Annual #10, Carol is dumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and rescued by Spider-Woman. She is rushed to hospital; but, is comatose. Spider-Woman and a police detective consult Charles Xavier about tapping into her mind to restore her identity and learn what happened, which leads to the knowledge that she was attacked by Rogue, who stole her power. That leads to a battle with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, which involves both the X-men and Avengers. At the end, Carol is staying at the Xavier mansion, recovering. The Avengers visit and are rebuffed by Carol. They are confused, as to their knowledge, she left willingly. Carol explains otherwise; but,
those elements are not present in the Avengers #200 story. There is pointed criticism from Claremont, via Carol, that it was brought up that she was manipulated by Immortus machines, originally and confused and scared about the pregnancy. She remarks about Jan's congratulations, and Beast's jokes about teddy bears and that the Avengers took everything that Marcus said at face value.
That is not entirely true. They are questioning things throughout the story, though the congratulations and jokes are there. However, by the end, after things have gone pear-shaped, they accept what Marcus says, as they have no reason to doubt it. It is only through examination that you might question whether Carol willingly goes with Marcus to Limbo. There is nothing to suggest otherwise. In the Annual, Carol states he had a child's emotional maturity, in an adult god's body; yet, there is nothing in Avengers 200 to suggest that. He speaks in a mature and adult manner, unlike, say, the Squire of Gothos, in original Star Trek. He constantly spoke like a bratty child and is revealed to be just that, at the end of the episode. Marcus doesn't act like that. In fact, he is shown to be extremely mature, in a child's body, during the early-middle stages of the story. He acts as an adult at the climax.
Claremont interpreted hiss being emotionally immature based on the loneliness of his previous existence in Limbo; but, that is hardly an immature response to the situation. That is in Claremont's mind He projects that further and decides that Carol's change of heart is due to further manipulation, even though Immortus' machines are not present, thereby giving power to Marcus that the previous story didn't. Carol berates the Avengers and sends them packing, giving them something to think about. Quite frankly, it is the only really exceptional component of the story. The rest is a typical Avenergers and/or X-Men plot. The reunion coda elevates it into something more, as Claremont levels his criticisms, filtered through his interpretations of the story.
Now, the fact is that the original story presents the evidence that Carol did not consent to carrying the child. Being a Code book, it is cagey about how Marcus' "essence" is implanted into Carol's body. Perez has a panel that is easily interpreted as sexual intecourse, though it could have easily been an artificial insemination. That's splitting hairs, as consent is not there, either way. The story does present a metaphorical, if not overt rape, without ever making it explicitly stated to happen.
It is troubling that the Avengers never question the consensuality of conception, given Marcus admitting that "subtle manipulations" happened. That is the key phrase in the whole story: "subtle manipulations. We are left to infer what that means. Most people would likely equate that to getting someone drunk, then having sex. As court cases have illustrated, there is not an easy consensus that such things are "rape," though you have to question how anyone under the influence of alcohol can honestly consent to anything. What you end up with is people deciding how much control they had in decisions, when they have been drinking, or whether they believed an accuser who said they did not give consent. Society is still grappling with how much control a person has when they have been drinking and with assigning blame to victims of assault, based on their perceived morals. If society has trouble in a courtroom, are we to expect a comic book from nearly 40 years ago to handle it better?
Also missing from the discussion is the average age of readers of this issue. Comics were still a mass medium and skewed younger than they do now. The 70s saw more of a teen audience for comics; but, the average Marvel book reader, including Avengers, was probably somewhere between 10-14, give or take 2 years. As such, many of these ideas may have gone over their heads. Older readers pick up on this stuff; but, there weren't as many there, then. Comic shops and the direct market made die-hard fandom a bigger thing and ages of readers skewed higher the more the companies catered to that market. The desire to see comics as not kid stuff pushed it away from kids. Those older fans who see this material make judgements based on their maturity, compared to the original audience. That has grown with the internet, as now not only do older people react to a previous story, they write blogs about it and present opinion as fact. They also tend to color memories with current emotions.
I do not recall a cry about this issue, in 1980. The Annual came out in 1981. The key industry mechanisms for criticism and review were The Comics Journal, which criticised everything Marvel did, the Comic Buyer's Guide, which was more middle of the road, and Amazing Heroes, which was relatively new. There were other fanzines; but, these were the more prominent. We'd have to search the old articles of those publications to see if there was even an outcry there. There was certainly no public attack on Marvel, via the media. There was no move to boycott, nor calls for people to be fired. I suspect that Avengers Annual pegged what might have troubled some readers; but that a great many were oblivious and it is only in retrospect we see outrage. That is no different in seeing the racism within Golden Age comics or anti-communist witch hunts in those of the 50s and 60s, or propaganda within stories, or misogyny. Hindsight is 20/20.
I think it shows how little involvement anyone at Cadence had with what went on at Marvel and that includes Stan Lee. By this point, Stan was basically schmoozing with Hollywood, trying to sell Marvel properties for film and television, making public appearances as the face of Marvel, and handling the Spider-man newspaper strip (much of which was ghost written and/or plotted by regular Marvel writers). The buck stopped with Shooter, who okayed and contributed to the story. He also okayed Claremont's rebuttal to it, which suggests he was open to the criticism and let Claremont do something with that criticism. it suggests Shooter recognized, however reluctantly, that there was a definite mistake in how that story was executed and he okayed a correction to it. Now, you can say he exercised poor judgement originally, which called into question his ability to do his job; but, at the same time, he had also made a decision that Jean Grey, under the control of the Phoenix Force or not, could not just casually kill and entire alien race and not face consequences and ordered a story change. Others cried out about it; but, it was the correct decision, as the alternate ending would eventually reveal, when Marvel published it as a Baxter reprint.
I still think the original intent was something different, that got messed up when 4 people tried to get the story together for publication. It suggests to me it was last minute, which is probably why the whole "subtle manipulations" was not twigged until after the issue was released. I suspect if more time had been available, that would have been pinpointed and reworked. To me, it illustrates the problem of comics writers wanting to write more mature stories; but, trying to do so in a restricted environment and for the wrong audience. It also suggest how poor most editors were at their jobs. I doubt Archie Goodwin or Louise simonson would have let this go to publication; but, Jim Salicrup was the editor and the story had the boss' involvement. It does call into question Shooter's judgement; but, he was too close to the story and couldn't provide a more impartial perspective. Should he have been fired for that? I don't necessarily think so, though I don't think an executive has any business taking away creative jobs. That was a major criticism of his writing Secret wars, which, per Sean Howe's book, came only after learning that the first issue would be packaged with the toys, which would mean large sales and royalty payments. If that is remotely true, then Shooter took away a writing job for a fast and sizeable royalty payment, even though he was being paid far better than the creative people and would have had benefits they didn't. If that were true, i would consider that grounds for dismissal, based on a conflict of interests.
I do think Jim Salicrup didn't do his job, though you will find few with the courage to challenge the boss, especially one with Shooter's reputation for temper and who is as physically intimidating. So, in that sense, you could level charges against Shooter for having a conflict of interests in getting the story out, since he contributed to it. Given the track record of the writer-editors out there, I don't think that is necessarily a terminable offense.
Quite frankly, I don't think too many writers in comics were overly sensitive to these kinds of story problems, apart from the few women in the business, who can see the misogyny and a very small selection of writers who might be sensitive to such things. It doesn't take a huge selection of stories from this era to illustrate that comics were (and mostly still are) a boys club and attitudes to women have never been very progressive or sensitive. A lot of well meaning writers perpetuated sexist stereotypes and plot cliches for dramatic reasons, because it was easier to hit a deadline and make a buck, vs something more nuanced.
