Update on “my baby mama is a supervillain”
So I mentioned to Graeme MacMillan and Ian Brill about the whole “supervillains rape male superheroes and then have their babies” trope in comics. And Graeme pointed out that in fact, Green Arrow’s sidekick Speedy also fathered a child by a supervillain, Cheshire. (Thanks to Titans Tower for more info and the image to the right.) But Cheshire didn’t rape Roy Harper. She just hooked up with him when he was a smack-addicted secret agent in Asia. A totally understandable mistake, really.
But still, this means both Green Arrow and his sidekick have fathered children by supervillains. This demands some sort of weird processing conversation between the two of them. One that Devin Grayson would be uniquely qualified to write, I suspect. I almost phoned up Devin to ask if Tarantula had gotten pregnant after raping Nightwing. Presumably she’s the only one who knows, because I doubt the comics will ever tell us.
So why so many pregnant supervillains? It’s a well-known trope of soap operas that the more ill-advised the hook-up, the more likely it is to result in conception. And comics are, at their heart, soap operas with zappy eye-bolts. And the story of “my child is being raised by a monster” is good for endless amounts of angst. But also, I can’t help wondering if some of these male comics writers have lost custody of their kids in an acrimonious divorce or something. (This isn’t an invitation for someone to blab about some poor comic writer’s private life in the comments. Any such comments will be deleted.) The whole “I can’t see my kids, and their mother is evil” thing just seems like a weirdly specific trauma. I’m trying to remember if any female superheroes have ever lost their kids to an evil ex.
Oh, and I’ve got one more, besides Nexus, Green Arrow, Speedy and Starman. I can’t believe I almost forgot that Batman had fathered a child by Talia Al Ghul! And also, didn’t Metamorpho father a baby? Who was then stolen by his wife’s evil father? Little hazy on the details there. (Evil father-in-law is a bit different from evil baby mama. But it’s at least close.) Also, there’s Peter Parker’s baby, but I can’t actually remember who stole her, and it definitely wasn’t an evil Mary Jane.
I think my favorite of these has to be Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, who married Rose, of Rose and Thorn, not knowing she was an MPD whose other half was a supervillain. She skipped out on him, and later gave birth to the kids who’d become the heroes Jade and Obsidian (the former dead, the latter periodically crazy, and understandably so.)
Naturally, Scott went on to marry a different supervillain, The Harlequin. But he seems to have known that going in this time.
To be fair, I don’t think Thorn is a supervillain. She’s a superhero who uses exxtreme methods, isn’t she? I’ve only read some of the backups in old Supergirl comics, plus Gail Simone’s mini.
I wonder if it isn’t an attempt to portray long-lasting psychological effects of rape. Like it’s not just in the moment it happens, but for YEARS these guys have to think about being stripped of power every time they interact with their offspring.
You have a point on Thorn, although it’s been sort of back-and-forth between “hero that uses extreme methods” and “one side’s good, the other evil.” In her original, Golden Age appearances, she was a Flash (Jay Garrick) villain.
i’m sorry, i’m still a little fuzzy on the mechanics of raping a man using vaginal penetration. um … isn’t there a really simple way he can resist?
or were the victorians right and men are just animals who can’t help themselves?
Charlie — Different Thorns. The first Rose/Thorn was a Flash Villainess who posed as a secretary and married Alan Scott (because the Rose personality was in love with him), then bolted on the wedding night as the Thorn personality emerged and expressed a desire to kill Alan. She had twins and gave them up for adoption so the Thorn personality wouldn’t kill them, then years later committed suicide to avoid that.
The Rose/Thorn in Metropolis is a legacy character.
Claire — The Sexual Assault Response Coordinator when I was in the USAF covered that one in a briefing actually. She said that ejaculation, erections and orgasms were involuntary biological reactions, and that if you have one it doesn’t mean you weren’t actually raped.
So, theoretically, provided the villain got the involuntary reaction (one of the things Jack said when he woke up after being raped by the Mist was “I’m sticky” so he had the reaction in his sleep; Ollie probably had the same problem since he was drugged too) it could happen.
Ragnell, thanks for clearing up my Rose/Thorn confusion! Gawd, DCU continuity is an endless tangle.
Claire, I knew a woman in college who claimed she could get any man to have an erection and ejaculate against his will. No idea whether she had ever tested this theory. I do know that you can use injections to cause an involuntary erection in people with nerve damage. Plus, of course, we’re talking about a universe where people can fly unaided — through interstellar space, even — and move planets with their bare hands. But I’ve never read any of the issues where these assaults took place, so I don’t know what was involved.
I don’t think Harper was still on the smack when he hooked up w/Chesh. Well clean by that point, I’m fairly sure…
Tom Strong got raped by a Nazi who had his super-nazi kid.
The title that springs to my mind concerning a female superhero whose is being raised by a monster is The Sandman, in which Lyta Hall goes on a quest to retrieve her son from Dream. And she’s the one painted as a monster in the process!
I’m still back on you being able to *phone up* Devin Grayson. Oh *please* tell her that I love her!
Claire – Several people have pointed out that an erection is a physical response. I’ll add that Oliver Queen was so drugged up that he thought Shado was Dinah (called her Dinah, talked to her like she was Dinah), and if he were inebriated to that extent, legally he would have been incapable of giving consent.
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