Otherwise I've got nothing to contribute to the conversation...

I can think of lots of ways to render a woman infertile without rape, or any form of sexual assault or contact with genitalia at all. Blunt abdominal trauma, electrical currents run through the body causing internal burns in the uterus or ovaries, various drugs and poisons, even opportunistic secondary systemic infections as a result of general body trauma. And that's with all of thirty seconds of thought.

And, well, not all genital contact is necessarily sexual. Clipping one of a pair of electrodes to a man's scrotum and running current is not particularly sexual; it seems a push to claim that changes if it's done to the homologous structure in women, the outer labia.

That's essentially what I was trying to say way back in Post #37, 13 June 2006. Despite the lack of Comics Code approval, and the presence of a "Mature Readers" warning, the fact that Canary and Arrow were two decidedly mainstream super--heroes to the extent of being Justice League members meant that DC put limits on what Mike could do with them (a decision similar to one I reported about the disappearance of nudity from Marvel's Code--less b/w mag SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN on CBUL #95's thread, Post #49).

As for the "Warlord" scan, this is not at all what I remember the last page of #2 looking like; I would have sworn there was a panel with Morgan and Tara in a running--like pose, holding their swords out. Are you sure this isn't from #3? Besides, something quite recently occurred to me that puts the lie to Grell's story anyway. His words above: "I picked up the third bi--monthly issue of THE WARLORD and read "THE END" on the last page. That's how I found out it had been cancelled. No phone call, nothing." R---I---G---H---T! This guy is writing, penciling and inking (maybe lettering, too, for all I know) 19 pages of this every two months (counting the covers; DC cut back their story page count per comic from 18 to 17 during this title's hiatus), and the company cancels it without telling him to stop producing the material? No way, but that's exactly what Grell is asking us to believe! Even if he means he "picked up" the stats/proofs/whatever in DC's office just before they were to be sent to the printers, rather than a printed copy at a retailer, the standard lag time of comics/magazine production would have required him to have completed at least the pencils of the next one, especially if he was NOT lettering them himself (mandating additional transport time for the pages). [By the way, does anybody know just how many issues---and which numbers---of "Warlord" DC put out without a writing credit before Cary Burkett's name appeared there? The GCD doesn't list any such occurrence (the last time I checked those indexes, which was a few weeks ago), but I know for a fact it happened (I had copies until early '05, and reread them in '04), and it needs to be reflected there. If somebody else wants to tell them him/herself, that's fair enough, of course.]

But, this made me wonder. I also thought that Barbara Gordon was raped in "The Killing Joke." Do you know anything about that?

Theno

How can you watch Raiders and not remember the scene with Toht waving the White Hot Fireplace Poker in Marion's face while hyperventilating?!? That was one of the creepiest things I'd seen in my life up until then.

That's also a case of a situtation where a man would have tortured a woman without raping her. I'm sure Toht would have gained all kinds of sexual gratification from it but I really doubt it would have involved any part of his body penetrating hers.

I got the same exact feeling from reading Longbow Hunters. The torturer had been using ALL KINDS of torture methods but hadn't made it to actually raping her yet. The conversation with his flunkies all but confirm that as well.

And for another answer, here's a scan of the last page of Warlord #2. It's as Mike said, just "The End." No exposition or any other words. But on the other hand, there's not even a mention of anything in the letter column about it either way.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v171/The_Unnamed_One/Various/Warlord2LastPage.jpg

This by FAR has had the most responses from the readers.. naturally im compelled to make my own as well

When I read LBH, i too assumed she's been raped. With all this discussion, i took out my copy and browsed thru it again..

Many have already pointed out how the art was suggestive, so i turned to the script instead.

Here, the bad guys had the ff exchange:

"Finished with your new TOY yet"?
"Naw, it's better if you make em last"
"Cripes what a waste. Good looking broad"
"If you like.. maybe I'll save you a piece or two"

and then later, talking to Dinah:

"Hello sweetheart..did you miss me?"
"I'm gonna give you one more chance BEFORE I get Nasty"

(BEFORE he gets nasty might mean Rape MIGHT be next..)

"So.. want a little of this while she still has a face? After I'm done, she's gonna make you want to puke"

(again, sexual assault of some kind seems to be suggested).

As far as her injuries, the doctor treating her later said that "she lost a lot of blood, but except for cracked ribs and a concussion, most of it is superficial".

No mention of sexual assault..i can imagine the hopital doing a standard Rape Assualt Kit on her (got that from watching CSI!!) but then again no mention of damage to the ovary or any such injuries that would make her infertile.

So i guess it is ambigous enough..could have gone either way. However I do find it curious that when a poster commented Grell's work usually has sexual intonations of this nature, Mike Grell did not deny this, but instead defended his work as reflecting the Real World.

It seems to me however, that in THIS World, Really Bad Guys in that position.. hot young woman being interoggated.. shirt ripped, no pants.. well its' easy to figure out where it would lead.

And while we're talking about Torture.. reminds me of JJ Abram's work (this guy seems to have a torture fetish or something, since his works Alias, Lost, MI3 all have torture scenes in them. Dont know about Felicity though.. makes me shudder to think what he'll do with Star Trek..but i digress). Alias characters always find themselves being tortured.. sometimes in inventive manners (teeth pulling, "special" needles maximized for pain, etc) Yet it struck me they never used any form of sexual torture (Rape, electrodes to the genetalia, etc). Not that im a perverted sicko mind you, but I've read enough Mack Bolan and other spybooks to "pick up" a trick or two in torture. One just assumes that super-evil torture guys would be tempted if their victim looked like Jennifer Garner. All those seasons of Alias and not one rape related case I can recall, shows like CSI have them as regular fare. (sorry just rambling now about how this subject is handled by mass media. I'll stop now)

P.S. What's up with Mike Grell's post in ALL CAPS? Hasnt he heard of netiquette?

UL: The only feature in DC's "1st Issue Special" to directly advance beyond that appearance was Mike Grell's "The Warlord."

Status: False.

The last issue of 1IS featured a revival of one of Jack Kirby's most popular (if mostly in retrospect) DC creations, "The Return of the New Gods." It was awarded its own comic, picking up the numbering of Kirby's original, despite the altered title (an observation only, I've no problem whatsoever with that being done). It was a victim of the infamous DC Implosion, despite having prepared a finale, that was published over two issues of the "Dollar Comics" format run of "Adventure Comics." A reader complained in the letter column there that the title seemed to have become a repository for stuff left homeless by the Implosion, which the editor denied by giving a short list of what he claimed was the only material that fit that description, but he did not include the "Gods" resolution on it. Wonder why? This brings to mind another mystery that includes what to all (admittedly long--distance) appearances was a bald--faced lie from a DC editor via a letter column. In the 1980s, Tony Isabella wrote "The Shadow War of Hawkman," which started in a mini--series, then bounced around various titles through the Crisis (despite Ostrander's strong and repeated implication in "Hawkworld" letter columns, the Silver Age version of Hawkman survived the big event intact, but that's another debate), eventually being the first storyline in an ongoing "Hawkman" series. During this, a plot point was that Midway City police commisioner (and longtime Hawk confidante) Emmett was immune to the Thanagarian absorbacon. Isabella promised he would explain that eventually. However, with neiher the Shadow War nor this side mystery resolved, Tony abruptly left the book, with the editor claiming in an announcement of the departure on the letters page that the writer felt he had done all he wanted to with the character (His successors never explained Emmett's immunity either, by the way). THAT was such blatant garbage, yet never challenged in the news or letter columns of "Amazing Heroes" (my choice of comics info source at the time), that I wonder if ORGANIZED fandom (in those pre--internet days, that was mostly in the northeast and California) knew the truth but more or less agreed not to say anything publicly?

Some people like to stretch the definition of rape into a more broader concept that would encompass almost any instance in which a female has been violently assaulted. But from a technical, legal and historical point of view, rape is something specific - villain penetrates victim and in that process the villain is supposed to be sexually gratified. Torture on the other hand does not require any sexual gratification to be involved. Someone can easily torture the vagina (or the penis) without involving sex. Throw boiling water over the region. Use pliers to pinch, hammers to crush, scissors to cut. There are a lot of ways that a woman can become infertile through torture but I do not think it likely that a woman would become infertile through ordinary rape.

Of course, it is entirely possible for the two concepts to intersect and they can do so in a number of different ways but these are more subtle, nuanced matters. The point is that people do see things that are not actually there and they do so from expectation, fear, desire or a number of other possible reasons. In this case, people have indeed been conditioned to think rape when we mix sex and violence - from tradition, from the media, from antiporn feminists and so forth. We make this connection from expectation, from a general unfamiliarity with other ways in which sex and violence can meet outside the context of rape, from a stereotypical depiction of rape wherein we expect to see a female with torn clothings struggling violently against a stranger - even though many incidents of rape incidents actually involve little violent struggle but an abuse of authority, trust and power (eg. father and daughter, husband and wife). How often do we encounter the former stereotype in the media and how seldom do we encounter the latter? I'm sure you can all think of films and television shows where we see rape reduced to a simple depiction of violent struggle - partly because the censors would not allow anything else.

Therein lies an explanation of how many here are quite correct in that it is entirely reasonable for them to interpret the comic book as depicting rape - but also why Mike Grell and others are quite correct in that they are reading and seeing things that are not really there.

Well, you chose the wrong vocabulary the first time around. Not only do we have the visual accent on Dinah's nearly-naked breasts and the torturer threatening her with his phallic knife, but we have three separate visual elements that draw one's mind to Dinah's vagina - a) the absence of pants, b) the rip in her shirt down to her vagina, and c) the way the long trickles of blood play on closure to accentuate the place where they are visually absent - i.e., the thin strip of shirt covering the vagina. Plus, if it's so unthinkable that anyone would draw the obvious from the illustrations, then why is Dinah given a line later on specifically denying it? Why would that be necessary if this were only a few nutballs supposedly reading too much into things?

("She was raped" isn't an exclusively male conclusion, by the way. I'm female, and that's the probability that immediately came to mind.)

As for the suggestion of clitoris torture - so, instead of being raped with a penis, she was raped with a knife or blunt instrument. Yeah, that makes me feel a *whole* lot better.