a she-wolf after the war

Chris Claremont and John Bolton's sword and sorcery property, "Marada the She-Wolf," was originally envisioned as a Red Sonja epic, but the then-forthcoming movie (featuring future reality show queen Brigitte Nielsen) put the kibosh on that plan, causing the writer/artist team to repurpose the concept as an original character. Heroic fantasy is pretty much a drag 'n' drop genre to start -- the names may change but the clichés remain the same.

I've previously mentioned my simultaneous attraction and repulsion to heroic fantasy, a genre that largely caters to adolescent power fantasies, hormonal angst, and the love of archaic bladed weaponry. It's a strangely nostalgic place to visit on occasion, but hardly a fit place to linger as it's only a matter of time before the reactionary solipsism starts to take its toll on one's psyche. Even attempts to upend the status quo are more likely than not to either involve simply "flipping" stock clichés (Xena) or unintentionally adding new ones for lesser talents to imitate (Moorcock).

Still, one can't live on Proust or Sterne alone (or at least I can't) and some hungers can only be sated by junk food's blatant palate-pandering, which is why I decided to give the 1985 Marada, The She Wolf graphic novel a shot. In retrospect, I shouldn't have bothered.

It's not as if I set my expectations especially high, though John Bolton is an excellent illustrator and Chris Claremont was only just coming off the peak of his storytelling powers when the book was released. The cover even took the rare step of having the protagonist wear an actually functional suit of armor -- a bold move in a genre where chainmail bikinis are norm for the she-barbarian set.


What's inside the cover is a entirely different matter. The story begins with the confident woman depicted (in flashback) here...


... having been transformed into the docile, broken thing shown here:


Any guesses on what could effect such a change on a headstrong, confident, independent woman? Anyone? Anyone?

I'll give a hint. It begins with the letter "R" and rhymes with "cape."


...and because it's a fantasy story, it's demonic rape, to boot. Just to be sure all the noxious cliché bases are covered, Claremont even makes use of the rape seduction myth with Marada's confession that "when that endless night came to an end [Wait, what?!?] and he returned to his maggot-ridden realm, I begged him to stay."

Sweet fucking Providence on an import motorbike, what fresh hell is this?

The strange thing is that Claremont garnered for himself quite a rep for being "the writer for women in comics," despite an odd predeliction for using metaphoric rape as a recurring motif. Jean Grey/Phoenix, Carol Danvers, Storm, Rachel Summers -- all incorporated "violations" of their being, spirit, soul, mind, or whatever into their characterizations during Claremont's tenure as writer. The Marada (each time I type her name I hear "The 2008 Nissan Marada: A different kind of SUV. Fully loaded at $26,999" in my head) bit differs only by being explicit in its depiction rather than relying on thinly-veiled analogy.

Mechanically, the rape provides the basis for Marada's heroic transformation, the process by which an action hero loses his or her confidence so as to eventually regain it and emerge stronger from the experience. Think Clint Eastwood's character in Fistful of Dollars, making a near-fatal mistake in sizing up the opposition then slinking off to re-arm, re-train, and re-gain his mojo. In that sense, the use of rape as a character-buliding obstacle capitalizes upon an extremely horrible real-world event by turning it into just another piece of genre shorthand, one exclusively used for female protagonists. (There have been instances of male rape/revenge scenarios in comics, but swift and violent revenge is the operating principle on those rare occasions -- Kid Miracleman turning London into a bloody ruin or Apollo going for talion-plus on the faux Avengers in The Authority. Never, ever would the act of violation be couched in terms of "he grew to like it" or "he's a broken, simpering shell of his previous self.")

The horribleness of the act gives it shock value which makes it a preferred option for off-the-rack gravitas by (male) writers which leads to overuse which trivializes and distorts a highly problematic and complex problem. (Well, simple as in "rape = bad," but complex in terms of the host of related issues involved.) It's nothing that hasn't already been addressed (better and in much richer detail) across the comics internet scores of times already, but it bears repeating.

So, having been reduced to a submissive state, Marada is taken in by a mystical society of not-elves-but-humans-who-come-damn-close where her Potential Love Interest^TM keeps trying (by needling and provoking her) to bring back the ferocious Marada of old. At first, Marada responds by simpering and whining and taking group baths with the other women in the community, but when Potential Love Interest^TM gets offed by an agent of the wizard who orchestrated the demon rape, she realizes that she actually did love the Potential Love Interest^TM and takes up sword and shield again to deliver some payback and rescue Potential Love Interest's^TM kidnapped daughter.

At this point you may find yourself thinking, as I did, that the story's initial grottiness is over, and that some straightforward she-barbarian ass-kicking is in store. Well, you'd be wrong, just like I was, because when Marada confronts the sorceror and his rape-demon in their lair...


Okay, I can accept the concept of tailoring the story details for the gender of the protagonist. That's a given in good writing, but still, can you imagine Conan or King Kull or Bloodphisto thinking those lines while making an "O-face"? This isn't a case of writing for gender as it is writing for a gender. Or, more specifically, "writing for horny fanboys."

At least the story ends on an empowering note...

..which comes off as stilted and poorly concieved as anything else found within its pages.

This was actually only the first half of a two-part arc included in the graphic novel. The second part, which I could only bring myself to skim, involves Marada and Potential Love Interest's^TM rescued daughter participating in a full-contact foot race with a scheming African queen. Honestly, I'd rather just watch Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell again where the crapulence on display doesn't aspire to be anything more that what it plainly is.

In closing, I'd just like to state that the Wikipedia entry on Marada says, and I quote, "she fights against evil demons, wizards, witches and other fantastic creatures, but also against the threats a woman could expect from a world ruled by males" in a story written by males for males. Also, "Marada is also more sensual than Red Sonja, perhaps due to Bolton's drawings." If you're going to make such a claim, Mr. Wikipedia Contributor, the least you could do is provide a citation linking to the raw data.

The Creatures - Exterminating Angel (from Anima Animus, 1999) - The Creatures, because the Banshees didn't give Siouxsie Sioux the creative freedom to sing about "menstrual streams."

1919 - Cry Wolf (from The Complete Collection, 2001) - One bit of gothica deserves another, from the early 80's heyday of the scene and minus "menstrual stream" references. (Not that I have anything against that particular bodily process, but a little goes a long way.)