impressions after reading Inferno - a rant.

[salinea]

Like with other issues of sexism in comics, the problematic narratives revolving around female characters becoming dangerous and insane / evil (the insane=evil thing in itself would be very much worth the examination and could be easily seen as worse than gender issues, but I’m not sure I’m up to it) as a result of their power was something I’d heard of before I started reading comics; mostly revolving around Jean Grey, and a little bit around the Scarlet Witch with Disassembled and Decimation. Now that I’ve just read the X-Men storyline Inferno, I found it interesting to see how many characters are present in it which plays in various ways along those lines, and how really fucking bad it looks.

Now most of the characters in Inferno have more to do with a theme of corruption by evil than by insanity (though again, the two are too often seen as nearly equivalent), but power, though in not an obvious way, definitely plays a role in each one of those.

Those characters are Madelyne / Goblin Queen, Illyana / Magik, Lorna / Polaris & Warren / Angel. Two of those, Madelyne & Illyana, are placed right in the center of the story; whereas Polaris and Warren are more peripheral but still make an interesting counterpoint.

Madelyne is especially the character on whom the narrative revolve especially. Now, I suppose once they decided to bring Jean back, there was no real helping having to make do with her as a character long term wise. How they did it, on the other hand, is hardly helpful. To be honest, I have mixed feeling because I can’t say I disliked it. I love a good tragedy, and I love a good villain - and on those points this plays well. Madelyne has good reason to be hateful, and they make a big deal of her hatred in a way that is epic and cool. Even the fact that so much revolves around threatening her own baby kid isn’t something I disliked, because it’s epic and tragic in an awesome Medea way. I love that sort of shit. OTOH she goes down like a chump, which is annoying; and it reeks of getting rid of the bothsome character by making her as villainous as possible, including by playing on misogynist tones (BAD MOTHER! one of the most powerful trope that can be used to police what women do).

Power here plays in an interesting way, since Madelyne wasn’t really a superhero. However, she was an ally of the X-Men by then, even having gone as far as sacrificing her life with them to save the world not so long ago. In a way it is easy to think that if she had been a superhero - one with powers - there could have been more done to rescue the character as a positive one. But since she’s a civilian, she doesn’t matter as much to be that; even though she’d done genuinely heroic things previously. So in this case, she is only given power for the sake of being a threatening enough villain. (Obviously that’s a wide range issue with superhero stories, you’ve got to have a superpowered fight, so villains sometimes must be given a superpower regardless of how well it fits thematics or their characterisations). The narrative of Power Corrupts, though, is usually a pretty interesting one, and in this case feels introduced in a natural enough way. Again, perhaps it is only because it reminds me of Medea (a badass character if there ever was one), but the whole Goblin Queen thing is, in its way, pretty damn cool and epic (we could definitely have done without the stripperific costumes though, that… really doesn’t add anything good theme-wise). So in itself, while there are various issues with Madelyne’s handling, I could have rolled with it easily if not for the rest of the characters.

Which brings us to Illyana. Now, of course she’s a character I especially favour, so I’m going to be biased. The themes of Power Corrupts, and struggling for one’s own soul has been the very basis of her character from the beginning. But because it’s what the character’s always been based upon as a super-heroic character, up until then it was always about triumphing from those issues in a positive way. Which was awesome. Thematically, the idea that a character had undergone so much trauma can survive it, gains power from it and becomes a heroic character is something I find very powerful. And I find the way she is handled in Inferno to pretty much erase and undermine completely that narrative. Arguably this is meant to be still a positive role for her - she sacrifices herself to save the day. Arguably, this isn’t an actual death. She gets to become again her innocent self.

Arguably — I think it makes it very much worse. I’d prefer a genuine death by sacrifice to this re-youthenification bullshit, honestly. Yikes. The problem is that it conveys the idea that Illyana who did all those things, the Illyana who undergone all that trauma - is irremediably tainted and corrupted by it. That self of her does not deserve being saved, only the innocent self (in the sense of innocent of having suffered this yet) is worthy of it. She does not get to own her redemption, because her redemption is the condemnation of what she was. Metaphorically, what it means to people who could enjoy and relate to the character because they might have suffered from some trauma and struggled with them, is really fucking depressing.

Of course it also ties to power in ways that are problematic too. Innocent!child!Illyana is of course without the sorcerous powers of Magik (though I’d assume she’d eventually had her teleportation abilities), and usually so young a character isn’t given any agency in the story, she’d be merely an object for the sake of the stories of other characters - in particular, I presume, her brother (iow, a male character).

So that makes it two female characters at the centers of the story for whom holding power is irremediably a source of negative result.

Malice-possessed-Polaris only makes an appearance in the story, and her narrative isn’t done yet, which makes it harder to judge overall (for me, at least, until I read it the outcome ). Since I know in current days comics she’s still around, obviously she eventually goes back from it as a heroic character.The ties to power is also a bit more flimsy - it is suggested that the reason Malice bonded with her permanently is because of the interaction with her magnetic superpowers - but are still there. It’s mostly problematic in that it makes it a third female character who has been corrupted by evil in the middle of the story. Gee, thanks.

Which is all the more riling when you contrast it with Warren. At this point of his story, Warren has gone through most of the corruption effect already, and mostly in a positive way. Oh, he’s still a bit alienated from the other characters and acts all angsty and gloom because of it, but in Inferno he is unreservedly a heroic character. He even receives his new superhero name “Archangel” through the course of the story, as a validation that even after having undergone the influence of a corruptive power - one which made him a much more dangerous, and badass character as well as compensating with the previous loss of his native superpower (which lasted - what, five issues?) - he is still very much a positive one.

More than twenty years from then, I know there is an ungoing storyline which makes use of this as a starting point which appears much more radical (I would see very little potential for redemption from the story Rememder is telling, but perhaps I should not underestimate comics); and perhaps there has been other stories in the between that did things in a more nuanced way as well.

But as of Inferno, as it stands in this story, Power Corrupts narrative is an opportunity for female characters to be villains, to be righteously (if tragically) killed, or close enough to - whereas for male characters it is an opportunity for them to be more bad-ass and angsty characters. Joy.