Satan Aborts Spider-Man's Baby

This is written with a fairly serious comics fan in mind, so those of you who are behind on your reading, have a Wikipedia tab open on your browser.

Those of you who are comics-savvy will recognize the title as a reference to One More Day, a completely awful Spider-Man story, which I hope will be forever remembered as Satan aborting Spider-Man’s baby. There’s already been reams of analysis of how absolutely terrible and ill-planned this story was by people much more talented and articulate than I, so I’ll just boil down a few of my objections to it:

• Peter is portrayed as an immature character, but from the very first comics he was thinking of marriage, money and taking care of his aunt. The idea that he would abandon a future, a child, and his wife of many years that he truly loved in favor of moving back in with his elderly aunt who constantly has one foot in the grave is so out of character that it blows my mind.
• This is a trend with Marvel. Look at Johnny Storm. Almost every new author gives him a “coming of age” story (aka a terrible, lazy, clichéd excuse for character development that I will rant about in more detail at a future date), completely forgetting that he was married and expecting a child at one point. Guess what happened? Lyja the Skrull conveniently disappeared (yes, she was a Skrull, but he loved her even after that revelation) and their child was retconned out of existence. Johnny was a grownup. Now his own sister calls him Paris Hilton. They got away with it with a B-list character and now they got away with it with an A-list character. And now it will never stop. Kiss your character growth goodbye, people.
• THIS IS WHY PEOPLE DON’T TAKE COMICS SERIOUSLY. Every time you spit on characterization, TWENTY YEARS of continuity and any conventions of good storytelling in favor of the almighty status quo, you demean all comics. I know comics fans. We’re prone to a bit of exaggeration. But Joe Quesada is literally and without hyperbole dragging the entire medium down to the level of children’s stories solely to pursue an irrational personal agenda.
• My father and mother are middle-aged comics fans. Comics are a constant presence in my life. I don’t even know what it’s like to not read comics. Whenever I talk about them with a non-fan, I have to stop for a moment to try and figure out if they’d recognize a certain character or plot. I buy issues and then I buy trades. I easily become obsessed with characters (as the second part of this article will reveal), authors (ask me about Brian K. Vaughan!) and artists (I would probably buy a Wolverine comic with a Jo Chen cover JO CHEN I LOVE YOU). One More Day (and Civil War and Secret Invasion and almost all post-Alias Bendis… I could go on) makes me want to give up superheroes forever.

But as I said, ranting about One More Day isn’t new. Ranting about Cassie Lang is.

After a brief field trip to Wikipedia, I can tell you where she originated. In 1979, Scott Lang was introduced. He’d spent three years in jail for theft and was released for good behavior. He was totally devoted to his daughter, Cassie Lang. Unfortunately, she got sick with a heart condition. Scott stole the Ant-Man equipment to rescue a kidnapped doctor who could save her life. Scott then got into the Avengers and had an obscure career where he fought the Taskmaster repeatedly.

Cassie spent lots of this time getting kidnapped or hanging out with superheroes. At one point, she apparently had some kind of adolescent romance with Kristoff, some kid who thought he was Doctor Doom or something. It was some weird Fantastic Four thing—not my area of expertise. Eventually, Cassie’s mom and her stepdad got full custody. Cassie snuck away to visit her dad until Scarlet Witch sicced Exploding Zombie Jack of Hearts on him after Bendis drove her crazy. Scott Lang died in a pointless, tragic death and Cassie apparently had to spend some time stalking Iron Man to get an explanation of what exactly happened.

This is where Young Avengers comes in.

Cassie had a screaming fight with her mom and stepdad and ran away from home. She ended up seeing the original Young Avengers team (Iron Lad/Young Kang, Billy, Teddy and Iron Lad) on the news, where they spectacularly failed to resolve a hostage crisis at a posh wedding. They had to be rescued by a bridesmaid, Kate, stabbing a guy with one of Eli’s random shuriken (seriously, the hell? Beginner’s luck doesn’t apply to ninja stars). Cassie goes to talk to Kate at the hospital where the wedding guests were taken. The two go to the burnt-out hull of Avenger’s mansion to get Cassie’s dad’s gear. Turns out that hanging around Pym particles has mutated Cassie to the point where she can shrink or grow at will.

Some other stuff happens that I won’t get into here, but Cassie and Young Kang kiss a couple times after knowing each other for a few hours in the middle of a crisis. Oh, teenagers. Cassie joins the team and they have adventures for a few issues. In case you’re wondering, I’m not going to continue reviewing Young Avengers—it was just taking too long and I didn’t have the motivation. This is the last article that’ll be about them unless something about them catches my attention.

Anyway, Civil War happens. Basically, some supervillain blew up an entire town including an elementary school. The government asks superheroes to register. Half of the superheroes decide to slavishly obey the government, put those who disagree in a hellish Negative Zone gulag after having them hunted down by brain-chipped supervillains (Bullseye once killed a church full of nuns) and create a murderous clone of Thor whose brains they scoop out and replace with robot parts. The rest decide to go into hiding and randomly pounce on supervillains and raid the Negative Zone gulag once. They make one attempt to get an interview with a reporter (Sally Floyd, dumbest bitch in the Marvel Universe, who refuses the interview on moral principles because she’s an awful, awful reporter), but otherwise don’t try to sway public opinion at all.

At first, the Young Avengers are all anti-registration. Then there’s a huge pro-reg ambush and Bill Foster, the other anti-reg giant, gets an enormous hole blown into his chest by Clone Thor. The anti-regs are about to be killed en masse and only avoid death because Sue Richards is awesome. They had to leave Bill’s body. He couldn’t be shrunk down, so he was buried in a tarp and chains and a huge hole in the ground. For some reason, Cassie defects that night.

When the rebel Avengers invade the Negative Zone gulag, Cassie fights on the pro-reg side. By the way, one of the main arguments for pro-regs is that they would keep inexperienced, vulnerable, younger heroes out of danger. No comment.

After Civil War finally ends, Avengers: The Initiative begins. This is a huge boot camp for newby supers in the same town where the supervillain supernova that started Civil War happened (Stamford). Some of the other Young Avengers are there, but there’s really no rhyme, reason or explanation for who ends up there and why. In the first issue of A:I, a recruit is accidentally killed and his death is covered up. An ex-Nazi hired by pro-regs decides to clone him. One of the clones merges with a piece of alien technology and rampages through the camp, killing and maiming many. Stamford: Where Children Go To Die.

But before that happens, two or three incidents involving Cassie occur.

In Ms. Marvel, the Puppetmaster started abducting women and selling them as slaves out of a compound in South America. The normal women were obviously being sold as sex slaves, but he was also selling superheroes for unnamed purposes. Cassie was one of them. She spent days, if not weeks, serving the Puppetmaster and being shown off in front of potential buyers. When Ms. Marvel’s sidekick got kidnapped and Ms. Marvel went to investigate, Cassie was sent to fight her as a giant. During this fight, Cassie got a car thrown at her face. It didn’t faze her. Eventually, she was knocked out and rescued with the other women. There is absolutely no mention of anyone missing her or wondering where she went. I guess the Puppetmaster’s only mistake was kidnapping a girl people actually cared about.

In an issue of A:I, Eric O’Grady, the awesomely amoral new Ant-Man, is sent to Stamford and trained by Taskmaster—remember, I mentioned that he fought Scott Lang? Taskmaster remembered too, because he asked O’Grady if he’s Scott Lang. O’Grady quickly says no and makes up some entertaining lies about Lang to get on Tasky’s good side (namely, that he wasn’t a real Avenger and would spy on women in the shower with his powers). Cassie hears this (by the way, she recognized Taskmaster and seems surprised that there were supervillains at the camp, so I guess that was the first she’d heard about the pro-reg’s questionable hiring practices).

She reacts by yelling, “STOP TELLING LIES ABOUT MY DAD!” and trying to STOMP HIM TO DEATH. Okay, what he said about her dead father was horrible, but… she tries to KILL HIM. She’s unsuccessful, of course, and a giant fight ensues. O’Grady distracts her by yelling “Oh, the humanity! You just stepped on Stingray!” and clobbers her in the face with a bus. I would say Vehicles 2, Cassie 0, but the fact that she doesn’t have a nose like a boxer and shrapnel scars makes me think it’s more of a tie. Anyway, Hank Pym steps in, but before we can have a three-way giant fight (and Cassie can get a hit in) Taskmaster incapacitates all three of them.

Vision’s issue of the Young Avengers miniseries involves him sneaking Cassie out of the camp by posing as Tony Stark and taking her on a date. Young Vision has nothing in common with Old Vision besides appearance, name and operating system. He’s based off of Young Kang’s brainwaves and made out of his armor. He takes the name Jonas to assert his independence. Since he’s based off of Young Kang, he has a crush on Cassie and successfully achieves boyfriend/girlfriend status in this issue. Cassie is still very pro-reg in this issue and apparently returns to the camp.

In Cassie’s issue of the Young Avengers miniseries, she’s back in New York with her mom and stepdad, so I would place it after the disaster with the clone at the camp. Tensions are high. She has another screaming fight, storms out, and promptly gets into a giant fight with the Growing Man, who falls onto her stepdad. She goes… somewhere, I think back to her house, and calls Kate in tears without explaining the situation. Kate gets there and Cassie is totally catatonic and steadily shrinking. When Kate has to get a microscope to see her, she calls Eli and Billy. Since Kate hasn’t been able to snap her out of it, Billy shrinks Eli down. Cassie tells Eli about the fight. He manages to snap her out of it (by yelling, of course—what, did you expect something original?) and she goes and talks to her mom. Cassie’s stepdad is in a coma and might be paralyzed when he wakes up. Cassie and her mom hug and make up and agree to work on their relationship more.

In Kate’s issue of the Young Avengers miniseries, it’s mentioned in passing that Kate and Cassie are back to being confidants and Cassie has been regularly spending time with Jonas. In summary:

• A large portion of her childhood was spent with her dad in jail or in the hospital, dying.
• She had several doomed romances with future supervillains.
• She was forcibly separated from her beloved superhero dad.
• Her dad died pointlessly. She had to stalk Tony Stark to find out why.
• She had regular screaming fights with her mom and stepdad.
• She tried to run away from home
• She dropped out of school to become a fugitive from the law
• She joined up with the law and was conscripted into the army (a generous estimation of her age is FIFTEEN) and had to fight her best friends (also, her mom hates superheroes, so she basically had nowhere to go for sympathy or understanding)
• She was kidnapped and enslaved by Puppetmaster and almost got sold, POSSIBLY AS A SEX SLAVE
• She heard two guys laughing about how her dead dad sucked, TRIED TO KILL A MAN, and was humiliatingly beaten down by him and a supervillain who’d fought her dad
• She was at the camp when a clone went on a rampage and killed or maimed dozens of people
• She had even more screaming fights with her mom and stepdad
• She accidentally crippled her stepdad

Even accounting for the fact that she apparently made up with her friends offscreen, is getting regular robo-makeouts and has a better relationship with her mom, Cassie should be one huge ball of neuroses. Her life was degenerating into a horrible, sucking black hole of pain and misery. To the credit of the man who wrote her issue of the miniseries, her “epiphany therapy” isn’t portrayed as a cure-all… she and her mom don’t immediately have a perfect relationship, they just understand each other better, and her stepdad is still seriously injured.

However. If Young Avengers ever rises from the grave and has another ongoing series, I will bet you one million Internet dollars that over half the issues with her life that I listed will be dropped forever. The original series had her stepdad bringing up Scott’s time in jail, but the problems with having an ex-con father will never be explored. Her running away from home (okay, it was for a day, but still) was only mentioned in passing and will never be mentioned again. Her GOING TO BOOT CAMP AT FIFTEEN WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU MARVEL will only be mentioned as part of issues with her leaving the team for pro-regs, if at all, and the full mental and emotional implications of her GOING TO BOOT CAMP AT FIFTEEN YEARS OLD will be dropped. Her being kidnapped and enslaved by Puppetmaster will never be mentioned. The fact that she TRIED TO KILL A STRANGER, albeit one who insulted her dad, will never be mentioned. The continuity issues—when was she at the camp? When did she make up with her friends? How mad were they at her? Did she go home after the Puppetmaster thing or after the clone rampage thing? Did anyone care that she went missing for god knows how long?

Before she and Jonas started going out (which I’m okay with) I was hoping that she and Young Kang would have this awesomely messed up, totally unhealthy relationship where they would drag each other down into immaturity and immorality. I mean, I knew it would never happen, but a geek can dream, right? I’m overcritical of every fictional relationship ever, so intentionally horrible relationships of mutual destruction make me happy. I also had this idea, based off of her trying to kill that guy that one time, that she couldn't vent her stress with her friends or family because of her issues with them so she was resorting to violence and picking fights. Whatever, neither of those ideas were going to happen anyway.

But pipe dreams aside, let’s face it: the only issue anyone will ever remember is “Didn’t she have a dead dad? Okay, that’s her characterization, let’s call it a day.” Maybe, if we’re very lucky, they’ll remember that she turned pro-reg before any of her teammates (some of whom are still anti-reg, though fucking Marvel has never made it clear which ones). Because the minor characters get no love. Because Marvel only cares about constantly having A-list characters making drama, only to forget it for the next big event. Isaac Asimov once had a theory that short-term change gives the illusion of long-term permanence—spring follows winter follows fall follows summer, and so it must’ve always been that way. Marvel is doing the opposite of this. They’re using short-term change to give the illusion of long-term change, when really nothing ever changes at all. Meanwhile, minor characters like Cassie are put through the wringer and have their lives uprooted, only for it to be forgotten because they don’t have a home title and the people who want to use them as a guest-star can’t be bothered to figure out where they’re supposed to be and if they ever do get a title… seriously, are you expecting someone at Marvel to read some back issues? Really?

Her teammate, Tommy, is similarly mischaracterized. He’s supposed to be mentally unstable. Did you miss the part where he had to be stopped from murdering his scientist captors and exploded some Skrulls into a fine mist before knowing they’d regenerate? Apparently Bendis did, because Secret Invasion wouldn’t exist without a Skrull dying from being STABBED IN THE CHEST.

But there’s still a spot of optimism. Notable exceptions: Robert Kirkman loves to create his own little playgrounds, where each character is lovingly crafted, given a logical arc of growth, and continuity makes perfect sense. Loners, a miniseries by Cebulski, digs into the backstories of a handful of D- and Z-listers to carry on plot points from years ago and preserve their characterization. There are others.

Still, the heartbreak of One More Day and Johnny Storm and Cassie and Tommy lingers on.