This Blog Wiggles it's Hips.

I'm sadly not shocked to read that this "What If...?" fails again at the "Madelyne Pryor is actually a compelling character to write" sweepstakes that even Stephanie Phillips fell into, recently.

I don't think it's wise to see Marvel as a monolith with one opinion on Pryor. I do think it's true, though, that the people in Marvel who oversee and decision works, fail here.

I think creatives of my generation, people who grew up with Clairemont, see the potential. It's why she came back, why she was given leads in books, why Krakoa-era Maddie was allowed to be both hot mess and oddly endearing. These creative see the Goblin Queen not as a plain villian, not even as a "edgy" Anti-Villain/Anti-Hero, but as a person who carries a weight of emotionally-charged events few other fictional characters in comics have had.

Indeed: The Goblin Queen is Marvel's Lilith, right down to the demon consorting and baby-sacrificing. I kind of get the problem, as a result: it's easy to fall into hyper-Christianist modes of thinking, when confronted with someone fictional who matches that well.

But Madelyne is not a demon. She is a woman who went thru unimaginable horrors -- we forget she was among the X-Men who 1st encountered Genosha, the literal Mutant Enslavement country. If she broke, she did so for well-explained reasons that many future "bad girl" iterations fail to flesh out. Pryor didn't have One Bad Day, or even the typical "bad upbringing". She had a great life, and then in the course of a few years, it was shown to be a lie, and event after event tore her to pieces.

So when I read this about this What If? I get the sense the writer of this tale doesn't grasp this:

That’s where my problems with the story’s construction begin, because that emotional weight here is meat left on the bone. It’s not just Scott’s guilt, but it’s also Maddie’s rage at the betrayal, and presumably her own sense of guilt or shame post-”Inferno” — how do you wake up the morning after something like that? How do you go about your day? Do you make yourself some coffee? Stand on the front porch, wave to the newspaper boy? How do you process the incongruity of being willing and able to burn the entire world and then simply living in it? We won’t find out, at least not in this issue.

Maddie works for us because of the emotional weight she, and the other people involved, are carrying into and even after Inferno. It's why her tale has stuck with this specific Cis Het Black Boy all these many years, why I don't see The Goblin Queen's outfit as objectifying in and of itself, why her journey to ruling Limbo really matters.

That, in this tale, the rage is mostly displaced to Jean -- what? Why can't they both be angry? Can you imagine a Marvel 'verse where both live, and both live thru and act out their fury to come to terms with how to live in a world both see as broken? How Scott might actually have to grow and change and (gasp!) evolve to meet the two women he loves where they are?

Because, and I'll not say to avoid spoilers, but Scott does get to get angry here, too. And that tell you something.

That tells you that Madelyne Pryor, the Cunt-serving, queer-as-fuck character, does not get to be angry this Pride. Jean -- her tightly-controlled version who's never allowed to serve cunt, does. Her so-hetero-it hurts Hubby, also deficient in cunt, does.

I'm reading into this review, yes. But it's a reading I'll stand by, because we need more stories like the Goblin Queen, and fewer stories where only the Straights, like me, get to get angry at an unjust world.