Jonathan Last sees nothing wrong with Scarlet Witch turned crazy
While discussing a trailer for the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie, the pretentious columnist for the Weekly Standard strongly hints he has no problems with Brian Bendis' awful ideas for how to "entertain". First, he says:
Quite intriguing how Last is less subtle here, unlike the times he'd stealthily inject Identity Crisis into a few of his columns about DC's output. Maybe it's because he thinks the audience will be more accepting of a story that doesn't involve sexual assault per se, where a girl simply goes "crazy" than one where a co-star is raped by a costumed supervillain who suffers no convincing consequences for his sick crime, while the former wife of a superhero is made out to look "crazy" herself, and the superheroes of the JLA whom I thought we were supposed to be rooting for are made out to look like baddies themselves. Even Green Lantern Hal Jordan, lest we forget, making it difficult to appreciate the supposed effort to redeem him a decade after Emerald Twilight. Then again, what effort was there, exactly, to redeem Hal if they were going to make him look like he was involved in a coverup scam, and acting like a childish scaredy-cat?
To make matters worse, Last goes on to say:
Once more, Last's demonstrated why he's a bad spokesperson for comicdom, because he doesn't care about the characters and lacks an understanding why there's certain topics you can't present trivially.
* I understand that this isn’t based, completely, on Age of Ultron. Yet there are clearly some echos and Age of Ultron is the only Marvel event mini-series of the last 10 years that was any good. And it’s not just any good, it’s really good.No it was not, and I wouldn't recommend Bendis' work on Daredevil either. It was just an excuse for tasteless renditions of nostalgia with various cast members put through some pretty ugly experiences for just for the sake of bleakness. The following is more eyebrow raising though:
* I take it you’ve read the House of M mini-series? Now that would be a sensational movie, but the problem is that it requires putting both Avengers and X-Men charaters on the screen together. Which Marvel can’t do. Yet. And it’s all motivated by Wanda Maximoff going crazy and altering reality on a global scale.Well, well, well. Now this is certainly a lot more telling of how Last's mind operates, or doesn't. What does he see in a crossover mini whose whole purpose was to serve as some kind of What If? story expanded into a bloated "event", and in the end, another purpose it served was simply to declare "no more mutants", and then proceed to remove the powers from several cast members of X-Men, including Dani Moonstar? And what does he see in a writer who's made a career out of padded scriptwriting? He's not clear on the issue, but Bendis actually first rendered Wanda Maximoff crazy in Avengers: Disassembled the year before House of M was published. And he fails to mention at least a few other very troubling moments in that awful tale, like a nasty crack Hawkeye makes, telling Hank Pym, "don't you got a wife to beat?", which only enforces the exaggerated narrative that Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Yellowjacket is a spousal abuser, and compounded the damage ever further. Also galling was the moment when Carol Danvers said she "hates" Wanda, compounding the impression Scarlet Witch was always long a nutcase, and never actually a troubled teen who along with her twin brother reluctantly joined Magneto but then bolted to join the Avengers and reformed remarkably well under Capt. America's wing. So Last agrees with his leftist counterparts at Comics Alliance that Wanda is a "monster"? Tsk tsk.
Quite intriguing how Last is less subtle here, unlike the times he'd stealthily inject Identity Crisis into a few of his columns about DC's output. Maybe it's because he thinks the audience will be more accepting of a story that doesn't involve sexual assault per se, where a girl simply goes "crazy" than one where a co-star is raped by a costumed supervillain who suffers no convincing consequences for his sick crime, while the former wife of a superhero is made out to look "crazy" herself, and the superheroes of the JLA whom I thought we were supposed to be rooting for are made out to look like baddies themselves. Even Green Lantern Hal Jordan, lest we forget, making it difficult to appreciate the supposed effort to redeem him a decade after Emerald Twilight. Then again, what effort was there, exactly, to redeem Hal if they were going to make him look like he was involved in a coverup scam, and acting like a childish scaredy-cat?
To make matters worse, Last goes on to say:
* By the by, I’d bet that , for a hot five minutes, Whedon seriously toyed with using the Ultimate universe versions of Wanda and Pietro–which had them as (vaguely?) incestuous siblings who were on the verge of getting it on in just about every panel, creeping out all the characters around them. And I’d bet that it kind of killed Whedon to realize that this just couldn’t be done in the big-screen version.As dismayed as I was by Whedon's leftist tirade against capitalism, I don't think Last should be toying with the idea Whedon might've wished he could mimic Mark Millar's insulting setup in the Ultimates. But oh my, what a load of hypocrisy on display we have here - Last supposedly disapproves of incest, yet is okay with turning Wanda into a psycho? His accepting take on the idea echos Joe Quesada's own hypocrisy, that marriage between Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson is bad, yet jarring violence - including Millar's darker take on Hank Pym's 1981 rendition - and incest between Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver in the Ultimates is okay. For somebody who calls himself a conservative, Last sure is quite a poseur. What next, will he advocate turning Scarlett from GI Joe into a literal crackpot? At least we can guess where he stands on Mary Jane Watson, Pepper Potts, Lois Lane, Betty Brant, Lynn Stewart-Pierce, Lana Lang, Sapphire Stagg, and Karen Page.
Once more, Last's demonstrated why he's a bad spokesperson for comicdom, because he doesn't care about the characters and lacks an understanding why there's certain topics you can't present trivially.
Labels: Avengers, bad editors, crossoverloading, dreadful writers, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, violence, women of marvel
Whoever wrote that comment is going too far. (Say, I wonder if it's Dan Slott himself?) Blanket smearing all American women is ludicrous, and aside from that, you're spamming and using my comments section as your blog. Cut that out. It doesn't even relate to the topic at hand.
Posted by
Avi Green |
8:37 AM