She Hulk and Date Rape
byPicked up my new issue of She Hulk #7 and was extremely pleased to have something to glee about concerning comics, but still angry at fan remarks.
For those of you not familiar with She Hulk, she's also a lawyer and her real name is Jen Walters. She prefers to be in hulk form and the Scarlet Witch joked about how Jen was the only woman who wanted to be bigger than she was. (Yep, I was hooked right there.) And when in human form, Jen's less confident and a little mousey. Though in hulk form, she can get a little out of control when excited or with the general hulk rage trappings. Jen can change forms at will, but sometimes needs help from technology due to psychological solutions.
In Slott's two runs of She Hulk (the first was cancelled due to low sales, but brought back due to high trade sales), Jen has joined a law firm that represents superheroes and supervillains, which leads to lots of hilarity and an interesting look at superheroes and the outcomes of their battles. Villains get to sue heroes for personal injury, and cities sue superbeings for damages.
In recent issues, Jen's been complaining that her company's been representing too many villains and that doesn't sit right. And #6 and #7 are definitely a be careful what you wish for.
When Starfox (Eros of the Titans) needs help, Jen jumps at the chance to represent a former Avenger and superhero. However, Starfox is charged with sexual assault and date rape similar to Kobe Bryant and charged that he used his powers of charm to seduce women into his bed. The scene between Christina Garvey, the victim, and Starfox shows Starfox getting dressed and leaving post-coital and Christina being frightened, crying, and huddled up with the sheets, saying that she'd never do this or cheat on her husband. Starfox brushes this off and later cannot even recall if he slept with her.
Before they get to court, Jen is fighting with her boyfriend, astronaut and depowered, John Jameson. He doesn't like it when Jen's in hulk form. (I think I saw that Buffy episode.) They get into a fight about it and it looks like Jen's going to dump John. This fight continues in front of Starfox, while not very professional on Jen's part, Starfox is someone that Jen considers her friend, first, and client, second.
In addition to Starfox being able to charm people to him, he can also have Cupid-like effects on other people and puts John and Jen back together, along with hooking up Mallory (another lawyer) and Awesome Andy (office aide and reformed android). Starfox is not doing this because he wants his friends to be happy together, but to distract Jen, who we see changing from hulk to Jen every time John appears and filling her briefcase with middle school love doodles about John.
By the end of #6 and the middle of #7, both Pug (fellow lawyer with crush on Jen) and Janet Van Dyne (aka Wasp and former Avenger) notice that Jen's acting really weird around John. Pug is also used to contrast against John in that John wants Jen to change into a submissive more traditional woman and Pug brings her her favorite movie, Pretty in Pink, and ice cream. Perhaps a little heavy-handed, but the ice cream/movie scene is set up as an opener to see the changes in Jen's behavior.
When the prosecutor calls female witnesses on the stand who've claimed to have also been date raped by Starfox, Starfox charms them and the prosecutor tries to get them charged with perjury. A male former Hydra agent witness tells his story about Starfox's whammy and how it affected his life, including being so obsessed with Starfox (much like Superstar!Jonathan of BtVS fame) that his wife ends up divorcing him. Slott does an interesting gender twist here to show the consequences of Starfox's full powers and how celebrity fame influences fans. I believe this turn better supports the "date" in date rape side of Christina's charge.
The prosecutor makes a case that Starfox is charming everyone, jury, judge, and witness and needs to be away from the courtroom. Starfox is then only allowed to participate in his trial via videoconferencing from a secure location. It's worth noting that Starfox only uses his charm on those that directly affect the outcome of his trial, since he does not use them on the Two-Gun Kid or the other guard until he needs to escape.
In a mid-trial break-for-lunch chat with Janet, Jen recalls her own sexual encounter with Starfox. It plants a seed of doubt in her mind over the legitimacy of the encounter. When she gets back to the courtroom and cross-examines Christina, Jen has a flashback where it becomes clearer that while she too was interested, to some degree, in Starfox and that interest was taken advantage of.
In clear Jen-style, she takes a break to question Starfox about his seduction of her. Starfox avoids her questions and then closes down the video connection to skedaddle when it's clear that Jen is not going to like his answers. The hulk rage takes over Jen and she overloads her gamma-changer while going to kick Starfox's ass. At the end of her smack down, Jen ends up kicking Starfox in the crotch while saying, "Never again."
I applaud Slott for writing about date rape. One in six women reports that she's been raped and most all rapes involve someone she knew. What makes what Starfox did rape, was that he assumed that because the woman was into him or into him, he could use his powers on her to make her want him even more and to bring her to bed. But just because a woman went on a date with him doesn't mean that she said yes to sex. And while I don't believe that every woman in Starfox's bed was date raped, several of them were and a lot more probably fell into an ambiguous consent. Date rape is often harder to convict because, like Christina, the victim may have liked/had a crush/gone on a date with her rapist. It is a very common type of rape, is often justified in the victim's mind, and is not talked about in our society.
I hope that this plot doesn't dry up in the wake of the Civil War one as Starfox's Ruler of Titian daddy has whisked him away and I hope that Jen recuses herself from trial and testifies against him. It seems that Pug will be involved in keeping this case alive and I believe that it will be a tricky balance to make Pug the investigator as Jen needs to save herself.