Transmyscira: PATSY WALKER AKA HELLCAT #8

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PATSY WALKER AKA HELLCAT #8
Written by Kate Leth
Art by Brittney Williams and Rachelle Rosenberg
Published by Marvel Comics
Release Date: July 20, 2016

 

“There’s a war goin’ on outside we ain’t safe from.”

– Kanye West, Murder to Excellence

Civil War 2 has finally reached the shores of Hellcat’s idyllic little corner of the Marvel Universe, providing the first major stress test for the plucky little series’ ability to stay positive and uplifting in an increasingly dark world both on and off the page. Unsurprisingly, it’s a test that the creative team passes with flying colors, but that doesn’t make the journey from cover to cover any easier.

The issue opens with Patsy sitting bolt upright in bed, woken up by the unshakable feeling that something’s happened to Jen. As it’s been a cloud hanging over the series since prior to the Coney Island issue, there’s no real mystery to be had here. Instead Patsy’s premonition beings tying together a powerful thread across the issue that establishes to depth and intimacy of her friendship with Jen as it’s evolved since Charles Soule and Javier Pulido’s She-Hulk run.

Fittingly, it’s America Chavez who arrives to deliver the news and reluctantly ferry Patsy into the Ultimates’ headquarters to see her. In a great display of verisimilitude Rachelle Rosenberg mimics the eerie red glow of the medical facility that Justin Ponsor used in Civil War II #1. Why the Ultimates would want such ghastly illumination there is anybody’s guess, but it certainly does capture the direness of Jen’s situation in all its urgency.

Jen is hanging in limbo, just another piece of human carnage to be wrung out for emotional grist in the main title, much like War Machine’s death was, but Leth, Williams, and Rosenberg are clearly determined to draw whatever they can out of it irrespective of what happens elsewhere.

As the 68 Jay Street tenants — yes, even Howard — come together later to try to process what’s happened Patsy drifts away into a recollection of a friendship whose depth and intimacy never fully existed on the page until now. But to the creative team’s credit, it’s easy to view these moments as existing in the space between issues. Up until now, Jen existed as an anchor in Patsy’s life, giving her the space and time she needed to get back on her feet, more or less the unspoken inspiration for Patsy to found the placement agency.

What really makes the sequence unique in contemporary comics is the physical and emotional intimacy that Leth and Williams portray between Patsy and Jen that range from the obvious foregrounding of Patsy putting her hand in Jen’s as she lays comatose to the subtler things like Patsy playing with Jen’s hair during a lull in their combat training or putting a hand on hers to answer Jen’s offer to be a shoulder to lean on while they’re out for pizza. This just plain is not a kind of casual intimacy that exists between women in mainstream comics outside of Harley Quinn and its satellites.

To wit, Betty & Veronica and Birds of Prey debuted new titles this week and both focus on acrimonious interpretations of their relationships, falling back on the same old dull notions of women (and girls) being nothing but catty to each other. Startlingly, women can in fact be friends, and perhaps even more shockingly, they also touch each other while doing so.

This issue captures Patsy as an outsider in the superhero world looking in on the vague yet catastrophically violent events of Civil War II, which effectively serves as a mirror for much of the book’s readership, given that Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat is very much a fringe book meant to appeal to an audience traditionally left behind by mainstream superhero comics. As such, it’s refreshing to see that there’s no attempt at rationalization or justification for either what happened to Jen or Civil War II in general.

America doesn’t have much to offer beyond the fact that things are hazy and people are dying, and truthfully speaking, there isn’t much more to say about the event. At a couple different points in the issue, Patsy’s asked why she isn’t involved, and her response that she’s more or less done all she wants to in that sphere and is more focused on getting her life together is all that’s really needed. Civil War II doesn’t carry with it any of the moral or political weight of its predecessor. It’s needless and ugly strife within an isolated elite that has so far only harmed those who have stepped into it.

Despite that, the creative team pulls what they can out of it to paint a deeply affecting portrait of a community in mourning. That takes on a special significance considering the predominantly queer cast and setting of the comic, as the same gender couples in the background at The Nicer Dive Bar remind us. The timeliness of dealing with grief in a fairly specifically queer environment is further enhanced by the inclusion of America Chavez, Jubilee, and Bailey, making it an incredibly rare mainstream comic to feature gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender characters all on panel in a single issue.

Although Jen isn’t portrayed explicitly as queer or trans (despite the appeal to trans aesthetics I’ve explored in previous issues), it still presents an opportunity to look at how (possible) death and grieving can work in the context of post Clexa Pledge popular narratives. The pledge more or less asks writers not to kill off LBGTQIA characters with particular emphasis on doing so for the advancement of a straight character, which Leth has more or less endorsed as a goal for her own work. The limitations of that in a work for hire scenario come into sharp focus this issue as Jen’s final fate will be determined far away from the pages of Hellcat. If she dies, she dies, to mangle a Rocky quote.

Jen’s current predicament is a fridging in the most classical sense, having been put in peril for the sole purpose of driving the drama between Tony Stark and Carol Danvers, but what Leth and Williams achieve in this issue exposes the much deeper ambivalence that LBGTQIA audiences have with death and grieving than what the discourse around the Clexa Pledge has managed to convey.

This issue certainly proves how important and powerful the catharsis of portraying a found family navigating grief together can be, an idea being mirrored simultaneously in Steven Universe’s exploration of Rose Quartz’s death. Which is why conversations around portrayals of death and grieving, particularly in queer oriented narratives, need to progress beyond the invocation of tropes and hashtags.

One of the most powerful and important aspects of what Leth and Williams undertake here is the recognition that life cannot and will not be suspended in the wake of tragedy. As Hellcat has been, since the very first issue, a title dedicated to critiquing the capitalist hustle and how it victimizes marginalized groups both real and fantastical, the monetary implications of Jen’s injury and possible death enter the story in a big way almost immediately.

More than just Patsy’s emotional rock, Jen was also the sole serious breadwinner in the building, forcing Sharon to take Patsy aside and figure out how they’re going to survive without her for the foreseeable future. For the time being, that means Patsy taking over Jen’s office, pushing her legal practice to the side and expand the placement agency.

The most bittersweet moment of all is that this shuffle has also prompted Sharon to get Patsy an assistant in the form of everyone’s favourite bisexual mutant vampire, Jubilee, who is somehow even more charming than usual under Williams’ pen. In the context of both bleak events like Civil War II and the seemingly constant episodes of massive violence that have marked this year, the importance of creating softer, more lighthearted spaces like Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat is crystal clear, but this issue also proves that it’s frequently the stories with the most heart that are the best equipped to navigate the worst of what life can throw at us.

The Verdict: 9.0/10

 

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