Agh, I saw that this morning and couldn't believe it! I definitely hit the right keys, but apparently the T didn't register, and I missed it until it was too late.

As an English teacher, that hurts my soul.



I'm so glad!

So you knew I was going to be sitting here copiously taking notes to comment on this episode. First of all, another excellent and enjoyable podcast. You should go weekly!

Now, to address some issues:

- I hadn't remembered Layton as a co-plotter. Given what we talked about recently on Michelinie and Layton's treatment of Ling McPherson in Iron Man, that adds a new layer to the whole "who to blame" question. I also wouldn't discount George Perez's part in this, as I had heard a long time ago that he was into some very fetishy stuff. And then there's Shooter, who Jeff says has a checkered history with female characters. If anything, I think you could chalk this up to the attitude of men in general and comic book creators in specific back then. Whoever was responsible, I doubt any of the others would have voiced strenuous objections. Ultimately though, as Shooter said in that statement, he was the guy in charge so the responsibility falls on him (conveniently, however, he doesn't know why he had a co-plotter credit and doesn't remember any contributions he made to the story LOL).

- You were spot on in saying this was written for a 13-year-old, that's exactly how old I was (or possibly just turned 14) when this came out. It was one of the last comics I bought in my youth. At that age I don't remember thinking of the story in terms of how it treated women or anything like that. I do remember finding the pregnancy aspect kind of weird. Honestly, in 1980, I don't know that many adult male readers were that upset by it, either. Different era.

- Yes, the reactions of most of the Avengers all seemed bizarre. And they weren't as insistent on trying to stop her from leaving with Marcus as George implied. The only one who objects is Iron Man, who says, "What? Ms. Marvel, are you sure you know what you're doing?" And she actually answers "Not entirely" but says she'll give it a shot anyway and Iron Man is like, okay, I'll say goodbye to everyone for you. Yeah, that just doesn't hold water.

- When you were talking about the abuse of female characters, you left out out the 2nd Ms. Marvel, who, if I recall correctly, it was implied was gang raped in The Thing's solo comic. Apparently, the writers had it out for anyone named Ms. Marvel.

- I'm going to take the unpopular viewpoint here and say I'm not convinced this was "rape" at least not on the level of what you were talking about with Valiant's Harbinger. Marcus says specifically that, even though Immortus's machines could have mind controlled Ms. Marvel, he didn't want to have her that way and set about winning her the old fashioned way (by plucking Shakespeare out of time and having him write sonnets for her, which I'm sure we've all done to win over women at some point). He says this went on for weeks and then he won her over "admittedly, with a subtle boost from Immortus' machines..." Now with present day sensibilities, I guess a lot of people would call that rape. But what they're describing there is basically the equivalent of the classic love potion, something that's been used throughout literature - on both men and women - dating back to ancient times and which, until recently, was never equated with rape. I can see the argument that this was still, somehow, against her true will, and therefore rape. But let's be honest here, if you met the girl or guy of your dreams and you had access to a love potion that would make them just slightly more favorable to your advances, wouldn't you at least consider using it? Also, she was there for weeks being wooed and, if Marcus's version, as told here, is accurate, she didn't complain or try to fight her way free so the attraction must have been somewhat mutual. The problematic part of this is Marcus impregnating her with himself, which he doesn't tell her about. That's the weird and pervy part that you can hang all the creators for.

- Ultimately, I didn't care for this story at all as a kid though not for it's treatment of Ms. Marvel, which, like I said, I didn't really think about as a 13-year-old. It was just a bad Avengers story. It lacked everything I wanted from Avengers. The fights with a bunch of random faceless foes was not the kind of epic battle you expect from an Avengers comic. And, of course, none of the plot made sense. Jeff comments that this set off a series of bad issues for some time in Avengers but I'd contend Avengers went downhill after Shooter finished the Korvac saga. Michelinie took over in issue 181 and wrote all but three issues between that and 200. Then he did five more issues after 200. I didn't particularly like any of them. I say this having liked his run on Iron Man. But, for whatever reason, he seemed ill-suited to write Avengers and 200 was just the culmination of that.

- Listening to Jeff criticize later Shooter projects for their treatment of women, I wondered did Shooter ever come up with a really memorable female hero in any of his independent projects, one who had her own book? But I will defend him when Jeff said the Avengers didn't have strong female characters until much later on. I think Shooter actually did do a decent job with female characters during his first run on the comic. He made the Scarlet Witch very formidable and he introduced Ms. Marvel to the team depicting her as a strong, independent female character. How he dealt with women in the real world, I don't know. I still would like to know where Jeff got the story of Shooter trying to give Ann Nocenti a negligee as I can't find any reference to this online and she seems to speak relatively well of him.

That’s a reasonable assumption.