Issue(s): Avengers #200
Published Date: Oct 80
Title: "The child is father to...?"
Credits:
David Michelinie - Script
Bob Layton, David Michelinie, George Perez, & Jim Shooter - Writer
George Perez - Penciler
Dan Green - Inker

Review/plot:
It probably took Avengers annual #10 to raise awareness of how bad this issue was, but this is indeed a notorious issue in Marvel's publishing history. We've seen over the past few issues that Ms. Marvel has become supernaturally pregnant, there being no father and the pregnancy coming to term over just a few days. The baby is born this issue...

...and he quickly matures to manhood. Ms. Marvel then falls in love with him.

He turns out to be Marcus, the son of Immortus, and he impregnated Ms. Marvel from limbo so that he could arrive on Earth to woo her.

His presence on Earth causes all sort of chronic distortions, so most of the issue is the Avengers fighting dinosaurs and knights and the like.

Despite admitting that he used a "subtle boost from Immortus' machines" to make Ms. Marvel love him, none of the Avengers stop him when he takes her back to limbo.

It's pretty hard to not see this as two types of rape, between the forced pregnancy and the brainwashing, with the Avengers stupidly going along with it. The problem is that we're sort of on the cusp of comics dealing with things a little more realistically. In the Silver Age, something like this would have passed unnoticed, and having read through all of that stuff, your mind sort of gets a little numb to these sorts of logical gaps and rushed characterization and quick explanations. But Michelinie's writing has generally been better than that. Indeed, in this issue, he writes a number of nice character moments.

So you're sort of not sure if you're supposed to think there's something wrong here or not.

This issue seemingly having been plotted by committee may have compounded the problem. But surely Chris Claremont, who wrote Ms. Marvel's book before it was canceled and in general has been doing quite a bit to advance the representation of women in comics, knew that this was wrong, hence Avengers annual #10 (here's a review by Carol Strickland, published in a fanzine at time, that was an influence on Claremont).

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 6 - first Marcus, the infamous Rape of Ms. Marvel story

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Thor recently fought Immortus in Thor #282
  
• Immortus seemingly died in Avengers #143. I'm not sure how that squares with the Thor appearance.
  
• Ms. Marvel was wooed by Marcus and impregnated in between panels of Avengers #197.

Cross-over: N/A

Continuity Implant? N

Reprinted In: N/A

"Avengers Forever" changed a number of details about this story.

This may have been another attempt to get rid of another "disposable character"--Ms. Marvel-- since her book got cancelled and Captain Marvel didn't get much traction out of Marvel Spotlight.

Beside the charges of rape, nobody seems to point out that Ms. Marvel ends the story in a de facto incest relationship.

Perez later stated that he was disappointed with this issue because "It seemed like a story that didn't go anywhere".

Considering the issue was crap and made everyone looked bad, I don't understand why Claremont's "response" In Annual #10 made the Avengers look like schmucks. Since there was mind-control involved with Ms Marvel, why couldn't it also be affecting the minds of the other Avengers as well? That would have been a good "out" to not make the other characters look like chumps.

I think Claremont was upset and also channeling the outrage of some fans, so the Avengers in this case are a stand-in for the writers. I am surprised the editors allowed it instead of forcing a compromise fix along the lines you suggest.

It's bizarre that Claremont's "fix" involves hurting Carol far more than this story did (Rogue sucking out all of her memories) and turning the character who did it into an X-Man.

I'm far more squicked out by the incest aspect of the plot and the original rape than by the Avengers letting Carol go with Marcus at the end; she seems to be in her right mind, having reconciled what happened in Limbo and making her own decision. (To date her son/rapist. I'm not saying it's a good decision, just that it's hers, Claremont's retcon aside.)

Claremont is also not too far from having Colossus bone a 15-year-old Kitty Pryde because "we're about to die!" (except they don't), so his own ground for sexual morality issues isn't the greatest, either. At least he did let Carol get in one REALLY good punch on Rogue, though. (UXM 171, IIRC.)

On reading the linked Carol Strickland piece (with scans from Annual 10), I'm even more annoyed at Claremont. He conflates the actual rape with this final scene, just so that Carol can blame and "hate" the Avengers for letting her go. Never mind that Iron Man is like "wtf?" immediately and none of the three Avengers present voices approval.

I wonder what the Avengers were supposed to do? Punch out Carol and keep her from going? Yeah, as if that wouldn't have generated screams of "patriarchy!"

Carol makes an incredibly stupid and incomprehensible decision, and Claremont is right to blame Michelinie for that. But having Carol castigate the Avengers as his proxies is just cheap. Write a story where Limbo is invading Earth (Marcus can't leave Limbo, but if he merges the dimensions he can ruuuuuule the world, blahblahblah), the Avengers fight him, he reveals that he mind-controlled everybody in #200 to get what he wanted and Carol leaves the team because of bad memories or whatever, as Chris suggested, above.

Whatever, Claremont.

I think Claremont is arguing that since Marcus admitted to using mind-control on Carol earlier, the Avengers should have restrained Carol until someone like Xavier or Strange could have determined whether she was acting of her own volition. That's a perfectly legitimate position to take in a universe with mind-control.
What I thought was stupid was that Wanda felt guilty. Why? Yes, she could have been more supportive of Carol during Avengers 200 but she didn't hear the "subtle boost" line until Avengers Annual 10, at which point she was understandably more concerned about whether Carol would recover from Rogue's assault then whether she was raped months ago.

Colossus never does, I believe, quite "hook up" with Kitty, and the Peter brings up the age issue rather often as a reason he's reluctant to go forward. This despite the fact that she's 14 or 15 and he's 18 or 19 - and she's depicted as a super genius after her initial appearances, besides. I think Claremont is in the clear on that one. There's no sexual morality problem.

"(To date her son/rapist. I'm not saying it's a good decision, just that it's hers, Claremont's retcon aside.)"

But, no it's not. In-story, it's not. In the real world, it's not. It was a writer's horrible decision, which a better writer later came along and did his best to fix. And it was not a neutral fix, it was a righteous fix - it was a correction 'with extreme prejudice', and given the case, justifiably so. Yes, he could've given a neutral fix and let everyone off the hook, but that was not what was called for here. The writer in question, and his editors, and eventually the characters, had sinned - it would not have done to have simply absolved everyone involved of responsibility.