Stock up on the brain bleach
Jul. 15th, 2010 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailySo, um. Here's a thing.
As near as I can figure, this is from what started out as a magazine called Rampaging Hulk, later shortened to The Hulk!, that Marvel published in the late Seventies. This particular selection is from a story called "A Very Personal Hell," from issue #23, published in 1980, and was written by Jim Shooter and drawn by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala.
In it, Bruce is on the run following a botched attempt to steal some information that might give him a clue how to reverse his transformations into the Hulk. He checks into a YMCA to spend the night, and, uh...
Perhaps a word of explanation here. This was right around the time of the smash success of the Incredible Hulk TV series, the whole reason for the Rampaging Hulk magazine's existence in the first place, as Marvel tried to use the series' popularity to capture an upscale market. In that vein, then-editor Shooter apparently decided the magazine would be a good showcase for more "grim-n-gritty" storytelling; less Silver Surfer, more Starsky and Hutch. In that vein, he decided to make his first story for the magazine especially hard-hitting and realistic.
So. Bruce at the Y.
It caused quite a commotion at the time: Comic Book Resources reports that the story "lit comics fans on fire...It was all over The Comics Journal for months." Shooter's reported reaction? "If I offended rapists, I'm GLAD." Yeah. Another one for the "no lessons were learned" file.
As near as I can figure, this is from what started out as a magazine called Rampaging Hulk, later shortened to The Hulk!, that Marvel published in the late Seventies. This particular selection is from a story called "A Very Personal Hell," from issue #23, published in 1980, and was written by Jim Shooter and drawn by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala.
In it, Bruce is on the run following a botched attempt to steal some information that might give him a clue how to reverse his transformations into the Hulk. He checks into a YMCA to spend the night, and, uh...
Perhaps a word of explanation here. This was right around the time of the smash success of the Incredible Hulk TV series, the whole reason for the Rampaging Hulk magazine's existence in the first place, as Marvel tried to use the series' popularity to capture an upscale market. In that vein, then-editor Shooter apparently decided the magazine would be a good showcase for more "grim-n-gritty" storytelling; less Silver Surfer, more Starsky and Hutch. In that vein, he decided to make his first story for the magazine especially hard-hitting and realistic.
So. Bruce at the Y.
It caused quite a commotion at the time: Comic Book Resources reports that the story "lit comics fans on fire...It was all over The Comics Journal for months." Shooter's reported reaction? "If I offended rapists, I'm GLAD." Yeah. Another one for the "no lessons were learned" file.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-18 09:03 am (UTC)They're rapists, but they're also explicitly coded as "gay" in Shooter's ham-handed dialogue. Dewey addresses Bruce as "sweetie", "sweetums", and "sweet cheeks." Gay men who are intimate with one another may -- may -- address each other this way privately, but grown men who don't know each other do not use these faux-endearments except as an emasculation tactic conjured up by clueless heterosexual writers who presume gay men indulge in this as a habit. Dewey also says "oh, pith!" (when Bruce isn't present to hear it) -- yet another stereotype of gay males having speech impediments. There is no reason for Dewey to say this except as a (stereotypical) indicator that he is homosexual. (And if he had said "Bozhe moi!" or "Well I reckon!" you can bet there would have been objections from readers in Russia or the American South being characterized as rapists.)
It's precisely because Dewey and Luellen are not shown as "ordinary" is why this leaves me with a bad taste. If Shooter had wanted to portray them as (just) rapists, all he needed to do was make them one-dimensional characters intent on imposing power over another human being -- by definition, that's what rapists do. Yet he went the extra step to add explicit code that they were "also" gay and I have to question why. It makes as much sense as having them exhibit specifically Russian or American Southern traits, which would no doubt have pissed off those particular readers.