New Ultimate Marvel Universe Project

If she's a minor that's statutory rape, consent be damned. But that's not the point. The point is that when he was body swapped with Spider-Man, the first thing Wolverine did was try to get a fifteen year old Mary-Jane to have sex with him. Based on her comments to Peter afterwards, she did in fact agree to something that she doesn't want to do again until they're older. Since MJ was under the impression that this was her long term boyfriend, and not, you know, a creepy older man wearing his face, that makes it rape, period, end of discussion.

You missed the point. You are saying there's nothing wrong with the Ultimate Universe. I say "Giant-Man, wife beater" is a serious problem with the Ultimate Universe. I say it's a horrid character derailment of Pym, and that even if it wasn't, there are issues no comic book is equipped to address.

It's also a historical fact that in the 1940s the French were portrayed as brutalized victims of the Nazi regime, not as cowards who'd surrendered. That stereotype is a postwar one—and therefore not one that Cap should have.

None of this, of course, is touching on Pietro and Wanda being into incest. Or Iron Man hitting on a teenage Storm (who Wolverine also made out with because, of course). Or Xavier having had a relationship with one former student, Emma Frost, and admitting to being interested in another, Jean (because every adult man in this 'verse apparently wants to have sex with Jean. And with teenage girls in general). Seriously, the Ultimate Universe reads like some perv's fanfiction—with a dose of pointless edge on top (Wolverine tries to murder Cyclops so he can get with Jean! Hank Pym is a wife beating monster! Reed Richards turns into an Evil Overlord!). It's all so very juvenile.

edited 12th Oct '17 10:48:30 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Ultimate Spiderman was more or less enjoyable, and produced a great video game. Ultimate Fantastic 4 also had a few good stories...

"The point is that when he was body swapped with Spider-Man, the first thing Wolverine did was try to get a fifteen year old Mary-Jane to have sex with him. Based on her comments to Peter afterwards, she did in fact agree to something that she doesn't want to do again until they're older. Since MJ was under the impression that this was her long term boyfriend, and not, you know, a creepy older man wearing his face, that makes it rape, period, end of discussion." - Actually, no, no 'end of discussion'. You may take it to the courts: the mind of the adult James Howlett has somehow been temporarily displaced into the body of teenager Peter Parker, and then had sex with his teenager girlfriend Mary Jane. That would be a helluva case to discuss, perhaps even material for a film. For starters, it's wouldn't be just an issue of Wolverine: he would have to be in the case as well as Parker, Mary Jane, and Jean Grey. Far from a clear answer, there would be loads and loads of grey legal areas and potential disputes. Such as:

• First of all, which is the age of Peter Parker and Mary Jane? The legal context will heavily depend on that. In any case, let's assume that the intercourse did take place, that it was proved that it took place, and that both Peter and Mary Jane are under the age of consent.
• Can it be legally proved that such mind replacement actually took place? No? Then, the case would focus on the Parker-Watson relation. As both are under the age of consent, then they would be both charged with sexual assault. There are some "Romeo and Juliet" laws that reduce the severity of the crime in some states, other states lack them, I'm not sure about the laws of New York in that specific matter.
• Let's say that the mind replacement is proved. That may be a good defense for Parker, who can claim that he was a victim of duress, but the case may still deal with it as a Parker-Watson relation. A mind exchange is not a situation that the laws have ever considered. Beyond the specific case of the sexual assault, it should be defined if the responsability before the law is exchanged as well, which would be a controversy of its own.
• Is Wolverine dammed? Not yet. He can exploit the legal void, claim that he was a teenager at the time, and ask for Romeo and Juliet laws, if applicable for New York. As he was also a victim of the mind exchange, he can also claim duress. He can claim that his perceptions were altered by the experience, and that he did not fully understand what he was doing. And even yet, he can claim that Jean Grey telepathically forced him to do it!
• And that last one leads to yet another problem: can Jean Grey prove that, although Parker and Wolverine had their minds exchanged, they retained free will? That she was not controlling his actions, as it is well proved in-universe that telepaths like her can do? In normal circumstances, it would be up to Wolverine to try to prove it, but in this case, it would be already proved that he was under the effect of Grey's power (else, we would still be talking about the Parker-Watson case).
• And, to close it, once the main case for sexual assault is over, both Parker and Wolverine may also accuse Jean Grey of criminal battery. And here's it's Grey's age the one that would matter, as we should clarify if it should be trialed as juvenile delinquency, or as a crime commited by an adult.

edited 13th Oct '17 6:59:14 AM by GrigorII

How to recognize rape apologia—when confronted with a case of a character committing what is morally a rape, they promptly start resorting to legal arguments. Stupid legal arguments at that, since while the legal system ain't built to handle this case, it isn't built to handle at least 90 percent of the other things that happen in a superhero universe.

Wolverine committed rape. Pure and simple. The only reason Mary-Jane consented to have sex with him was because she thought he was Peter. Since he isn't Peter, her consent is null and void, and he's guilty of rape, regardless of questions of age etc. Whether he can be convicted is a moot point—most real life rapists are never charged, let alone convicted, but that doesn't change the reality that they've committed rape. Ultimate!Wolverine is a rapist—and no sleazy legal argument you care to level will change that. In a better world, he'd be in jail; since he's in the Ultimate Universe they instead try to play this off for laughs, thus demonstrating everything that's wrong with that particular 'verse.

It's also fairly telling how you attempted to shift the blame for the incident to a female character, namely Jean. That Ultimate!Jean is a hypocritical bitch (and just a terribly written character) is not in dispute. Neither is the fact that she committed a criminal act when she mind swapped Peter and Logan—and an immoral act as well, because while Logan (already a statutory rapist and murderer) might deserve to suffer, Peter does not, and he's the one who ended up paying the most in that storyline. But her criminal responsibility for her own actions does not for one second detract from Logan's responsibility for his own. Jean may have placed Logan in Peter's body, but it was Logan who decided that the appropriate response to this problem was to rape a teenager.

Seriously, invoking Romeo & Juliet laws that don't matter in this context, insisting he can't be convicted as though that were morally exonerating, trying to shift the blame to female characters...what's next, "she was asking for it?"

edited 13th Oct '17 7:53:36 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Wolverine taking advantage of being in Peter's body to get intimate with Peter's girlfriend Mary Jane was rape by deception. She thought she was merely getting a bit kinky with her boyfriend. She had no idea a sexual predator was taking advantage of her by pretending to be him.

To try to claim otherwise, to try to deflect blame on others...that's rape apologia.

I've seen a lot of questionable things on these threads. But this is the first time I've seen a case of rape apologia. <sigh>

edited 13th Oct '17 7:58:57 AM by M84

Whatever. The point is, you talk as if things were clear and straight, but they are dubious at worst, and just a mere Alternative Character Interpretation if we get strict, because all this is merely the result of over-reading too much on the fine print of the comics, rather that reacting to the comic books for their actual main contents.

As for the legal discussion, it was based on the style of the posts of Law and the Multiverse site, which deals with the legality that fantastic events may have. You may check Mind Control and Sexual Assault, Mind Control Made Me Do It and Defending Kilgrave.

edited 13th Oct '17 8:11:23 AM by GrigorII

Exactly.

Also, you've got to love the above () attempt at claiming that oh, Logan got confused somehow being in Peter's body. The Ultimate version of Wolverine is well-established as a sexual predator. He had sex with a teenage Jean and excused it on the basis that she was "an old soul" (a classic line deployed by older men who prey on underage women). He tried to murder Cyclops so he could have another chance with Jean. He came onto Storm, who is even younger than Jean and recovering from the death of her boyfriend, an act that he himself admits ain't right because, and I quote, "I've got boxers older than you, kid". So when he found himself in Peter's body, is decision to rape MJ is entirely in character with what we'd seen so far.

Being a sexual predator was, in point of fact, the trait that defined Ultimate!Wolverine's personality. That this was held up to be more or less acceptable (with other characters being consistently shanghaied into forgiving him) sums up the problems with the Ultimate Universe, and demonstrates why a) Marvel was entirely right to shut the whole thing down and b) why the OP of the thread is entirely right suggest a reboot that bears no resemblance to the initial Ultimate line.

No. It's not dubious. Wolverine tried to have sex with a girl while pretending to be her boyfriend. That's attempted rape if he failed, rape if he succeeded, sexual assault regardless. That's a fact. That the comic tries to play it for laughs doesn't change the fact that it happened and it's not over-reading to be disgusted by it. That you think we should just brush off one of the "heroes" being a rapist, is frankly disturbing.

EDIT: And I see you've edited in further legal nonsense. Once again, whether Ultimate!Wolverine can be convicted of rape, does not change the fact that he is a rapist. It's who he is, and what he does, and the Ultimate Universe's attempt at positioning him as any sort of heroic, or even tolerable character, is vile.

edited 13th Oct '17 8:21:12 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

In any case, it's the same thing than with Pym: when Wolverine does questionable things, he's not forgiven so easily: he is frequently called on it, he is kicked out of the group, he runs away from the group on his own, he has his quota of angst, etc. And yet, in the end he always get a second chance and accepted back in the team. That's because it's the X-Men we are talking about. They have always been ready to give second chances, even when hardly justified, both in the Ultimate and the Mainstream universes.

Translation: Ultimate!Wolverine suffers no permanent consequences for what he's done but that's okay because even a serial sexual predator deserves a second chance.

That's the message the Ultimate Universe sent with that excuse for a character. That's why the Ultimate Universe deserved to be thrown on the trash heap of history.

By the way, as I initially said, Wolverine is not an "heroic" or even "tolerable" character. Not in the Ultimate Universe, and not elsewhere. Let's say that you are correct, that he had really commited rape on Mary Jane. That would be a very horrible thing from him, but it's not as if Ultimate marvel took a paragon of virtue and turned him into a depicable jerkass. He has always been a depicable jerkass. See here.

No. There's no "let's say" about it. He tried to have sex with a girl by pretending to be her boyfriend. That is rape, period. There is no scenario where it isn't.

So congratulations on undermining your own argument there. Most of the worst things on that list you linked? From the Ultimate Universe. It even includes his rape of MJ, the very thing we are discussing—and in contrast to your position, it flat out calls it what it is, namely, a rape.

Horrible as rape may be, I think that killing children is even worse (and if they are your sons, extra-worse). But well, that's just me.

And if we were talking about the execution of innocent children who could not fight back you would have something approaching a point. However you (and the article you listed) are trying to conflate 616!Logan killing Daken who, son or not was a murderous psychopath out to kill Logan and everyone else he encountered, with Ultimate!Logan making the deliberate choice to rape a teenage girl. World of difference there.

And just for the hell of it, I went through that list and counted the examples and yeah, even based on it, Ultimate!Wolverine comes out as the worst version of Wolverine.

Wat? What does one have to do with the other? Rape is bad. Child murder is bad. I don't want my heroes performing either.

Then don't read comics with Wolverine in it, period. The problem is not the Ultimate universe, it's Wolverine. He's a living Moral Event Horizon breach, that's his basic character premise. Ultimate Marvel simply continued the trend.

No, the problem is with the Ultimate Universe. 616!Wolverine is a jackass who hits on other men's wives, has a bloody past he regrets, and is overly trigger happy. Ultimate!Wolverine, on the other hand, is a serial rapist of teenage girls who tries to murder his own teammates and has no regrets about any of it. World of difference.

You'd approach having a point, by the way, if the Ultimate Universe treated Ultimate!Wolverine as the monster he is, but it doesn't. It portrays his actions as, at worst, minor mistakes that everyone around him is required to forgive and forget. The arc where he flat out tried to murder Cyclops by dropping him off a cliff concludes with Cyclops realizing he has to get over it and welcome Wolverine back to the team. His rape of MJ is played for laughs, with the whole thing built on the "joke" of Peter being too big a loser to get to have sex with his girlfriend, but Logan wearing his body totally can. Etc, etc, etc. The Ultimate Universe is entirely forgiving of Logan's inexcusable behaviour, and characters and audience alike are expected to shrug it off at best, endorse it at worst.

This is, of course, the same universe, I might note, that had Iron Man hit on a teenager. That turned Xavier into a serial seducer of barely legal students. That made Pym a wife beater. That made Wanda and Pietro an incestuous couple. That randomly killed off characters for the sake of the edge. That repeatedly turned violence against women and sexually predatory behaviour by men into minor problems or character flaws.

The problem, in short, is with the Ultimate Universe. Which brings us back to the OP's question of how to fix it. The answer to that's pretty simple—don't make your heroes sexual predators. That'd be a good start.

edited 13th Oct '17 9:32:51 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Well, there is a point I mentioned earlier that you skipped. If Ultimate Wolverine's relation with Mary Jane can be considered statutory rape, the same thing can be said about mainstream Wolverine's relation with Squirrel Girl. As for the rest...

• Tony Stark was being all nice to Storm, yes... and you forgot the next part. He asked if she's above 18, she confirmed that she is, and then he was relived that he was not wasting his time. So that is definitely not an example of the things you are saying. And, for the same matter, neither is Storm's relation with Wolverine, as it had been already stated that she was an adult.
• Xavier confessed that he loved Jean, but you forgot a part: that he never tried to act upon that feeling in any noticeable way. It was always something buried deep within his mind. His relation with her had always been strictly a teacher-student relation. Even after confessing it to Scott (and us readers).
• Yes, Wanda and Pietro were incestuous siblings. So what? It's a relation between two consenting adults, and there is no abuse or victim anywhere. In the real world, such relations have growing acceptance, for the same reasons gay couples are not so controversial now as they used to be a couple of centuries ago.
• "randomly killed off characters for the sake of the edge"? Seriously? Of course that they do that, but that's not a problem of the Ultimate universe, that's a problem of the whole superhero genre. When was the last crossover event that did not kill anyone?

Just a quick thing, not meaning to undermine you or anything, as what Wolverine did was skeevy regardless, but I was under the impression that Wolve-Pete only attempted to rape MJ, but she fended him off, which is why when she meets up with real-Pete later she says "Lets save that for when we're older".

So shouldn't it be "attempted rape" of MJ (which is still creepy as hell, and very illegal)?

Here's a hint—if you have to ask if she's of age, she's probably too young. And writing a "hero" who has to do that is disgusting.

Also "wasting his time"? So what, if it had turned out that having sex with her was illegal, then talking to her would be a waste of time? That's gross.

Yeah it is. On account of she's an emotionally vulnerable teenager and he's a guy in his fifties. Doesn't have to be illegal to be sexually predatory, and even Logan admits as much, then pulls back.

And...? Still disgusting, particularly in light of this version of Xavier's prior involvement with previous students, like Emma Frost. I mean what do you want me to do, give him a medal because this time he managed to keep it in his pants?

The writers chose to portray Xavier as a predator, just as they portrayed Wolverine as a predator, just as they portrayed Iron Man as a predator. They chose to sanitize the actions of men whose interactions with women are defined almost solely by trying to exploit them for sex. And yet here you are, defending it.

Comparing being gay to incest. You trying to go down the MRA checklist or something? Seriously, this is an argument that's normally deployed by homophobes in order to make being gay out to be wrong. "It's like incest".

No, it's not. Being gay is a part of who you are. Being incestuous is not, and is usually a sign that something has gone seriously wrong with the family unit or the familial relationship in question. And it's not like Ultimate Marvel did anything with that relationship. No, they just put it there for shock value and edge factor.

Yeah, the Ultimate Universe did it outside of cross over events, did it offscreen at times, and did it with as much disrespect to each character as it could manage. World of difference once again.

She says, "let's not do that again until we're older". Which would imply it actually happened. Not that it ultimately matters, because Wolverine's intent is clear either way, and he's still rapist trash—rapist trash who left someone else to take the fall for his actions at that.

edited 13th Oct '17 10:47:51 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

...Pretty sure sibling incest is still taboo in most of the world. Also, way to equate incest with homosexuality.

edited 13th Oct '17 10:53:25 AM by M84

If Daken actually tried to kill Wolverine and his loved ones, then Wolverine killed in defense of others (and maybe himself if Daken can kill him).

And in a way, killing in comic book isn't that big of a deal, because death isn't that big of a deal.

Oh, don't get me wrong, it's still bad. It's just that Annual 3 seems to imply that both MJ and Peter are still virgins, and are saving themselves for when they turn 18 (maybe marriage too? it was a bit vague on whether they meant that in the "lets get married at 18" sense or not), which would imply that while Logan did try something, he must have not gotten very far. Which, kudos to MJ if she managed to blow off a horny Wolverine; not many women can say they've done that without getting a claw shoved in their face.

Or it could just be Bendis forgetting his own plot points again. Either way.

edited 13th Oct '17 10:55:11 AM by Eldritcho

Or it just means that he "only" forced her to blow him. Or some other "not quite vaginal sex" act that lets the writers snicker to themselves about how she's technically a virgin. Regardless, it's gross, it's sexual assault, and Ultimate!Wolverine should be strung up by his testicles for it.

Ok, now i think you're projecting a little. If Logan, in Pete's body, had forced MJ to give head, I don't think she'd be coming by later that day to hang out. Heck, I don't think she'd be hanging out with him at all afterwards. She lives in an abusive household, and her relationship with Pete is based on trust; she loves him, partially because she knows that he will never try to hurt her or take advantage of her. If anything penetrative of any kind had occurred (and yes, oral sex does count), she'd have left him right there and probably have shut herself away from the world for days. She'd be an emotional wreck.

So Im gonna stand by that while Logan "attempted" to coerce her into sex (which is still illegal, and makes him a pedophile), it didn't get to that level before MJ brushed him off.

What I think most likely happened is that he probably started making out with her, saw his chance and started feeling her up, which probably lead to him attempting to take her clothes off, at which point she (firmly) stopped him and left for school (she was coming by to walk with him to school, remember?)

...You realize that your above assumptions are all based on the notion that the people who made Wolverine into a rapist are capable of writing their female characters coherently and believably, right?

Wolverine's behaviour is treated as a joke by the narrative. MJ's line about not doing it again until they're older is the punchline to the story. The "gag", such as it is, is that something happened between her and Logan-as-Peter and that Peter didn't get to experience it himself and will never know what it was.

For the "joke" to work, something has to have happened, and something that's notably beyond the make-out behaviour we've seen Peter and MJ partake in up to this point. And while yes, MJ is an abuse victim, and yes she should react badly to someone trying to coerce her into sex, this is a story that plays Wolverine trying to rape her as a joke, which means all bets are off.

Of course in the end, it's irrelevant, because Logan's still rapist garbage. And frankly this whole conversation where we speculate on what happened is starting to feel uncomfortably voyeuristic. What happened is irrelevant. What matters is what Wolverine tried to do, and that the narrative treats it as no big deal.