Dictionary Definition from Oxford Languages via Google

mit·i·ga·tor
/ˈmidəˌɡādər/
noun
noun: mitigator; plural noun: mitigators

a person or thing that makes something bad less severe, serious, or painful.
“we’re holding bonds as a mitigator of risk”
something that lessens the gravity of an offense or mistake.
“the law lists a dozen mitigators, such as mental problems the defendant was suffering”

Tell that to Marvel’s latest supervillain, the Mitigator. Look, I stay out of the culture war so long as it stays out of my stories, which is happening less and less. Case in point: a story from the upcoming anthology Women Of Marvel 2024 written by Gail Simone entitled “The Women Stolen From Marvel” if I understand the trailer correctly. It features this.

So a planet of gay dudes until the population dies out? That IS evil to straight men. This is the Mitigator, who we learn in a series of panels posted by Bleeding Cool (alt link through Internet Archive for those of you who hate the site–I want us all on the same page) saw the internet and concluded people didn’t want women in their comics. It’s the usual comment by creators who don’t like their use of women in comics questioned. Longtime readers of this site know I love my superheroines as much as their male counterparts because women act differently from men and thus solve problems differently, but I grew up when they stood alongside their male counterparts, not trying to make them look like chumps or taking on dudes three times their size like they’re mannequins to feel superior. Apparently “equity” isn’t about being equal but having equal time at being sexist idiots who keep the other gender down. That’s the culture war discourse, and why I don’t have time for the nonsense.

I can’t speak for the whole internet because I’m barely on Twitter more than hour a day, and most of that is promoting my stuff and occasionally seeing a trend that looks so incredibly stupid I have to check it out. Going by the circles I travel both right and left of the political middle that is not what superhero fans, both dude and dudette, want to see. They love superheroes the way they were before comics gained a lower sense of self esteem than I have, and decided to kiss up to the “cool kids” who still hate geeks and superheroes. The actual comic readers and superhero lovers want well written superheroines, not extreme feminist depictions of them. I see actresses getting sick of seeing “girl boss” in the description of movies they’re applying for because they’re boring to play without an obstacle to overcome besides “the patriarchy keeping you from realizing you were actually the awesomest ever the whole time”. When you struggle less than Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando, you’re not going to be interesting. And that was a movie about a “girl dad” throwing a pipe through Ransik’s body before he could pull a bone sword out of his leg. I may be mixing stories. Point is the Migitagor is an idiot, and we’re going to go over the posted panels to see WHY he’s an idiot.

Here’s the page in question.

The Mitigator (I’m disappointed he doesn’t look more like a gator because I’m weird) in this page, and obviously I can’t speak for the rest of the story that probably wasn’t made for me…while attacking people like me, calls out five particular characters: Kitty Pryde (at one time going by Shadowcat), Jean Grey, Wanda “Scarlet Witch” Maximoff, Gwen Stacy, and Mary Jane Watson-Parker no I’m not dropping that! Each argument, if Mitigator DID get it from the internet, is so very wrong. Must be using the same internet from Disney+’s She-Hulk show. Let’s go down the line, shall we?

“Kitty Pryde never exists, so the world is hit by a planet-sized bullet!”

Yes, this actually did happen in the comics. Kitty used her phasing power to save the Earth, and I forget which one she phased. I’m not a big X-reader, so take this discussion and the next one below as you will. And the takeaway should be…

THAT WAS @#$@#%#$ AWESOME!

That’s why we like comics, crazy things like phasing a giant bullet through a planet, or vice versa! That’s cool stuff. We want to see more cool stuff. While I’ve heard she’s been written with more of a…shall we say “bad attitude”, people used to love Kitty Pryde. It’s why she was chosen in the original X-Men cartoon pilot as well as the same reason Jubilee was for the actual show we got as our intro to the continuity, but Kitty was back for the next show, X-Men: Evolution. The former Shadowcat was always a beloved member of the team…especially for young boys starting puberty, but that’s another commentary. They celebrated her relationship with Colossus and were sad to see it end. They cheered when she grew up and became a teacher at the Xavier School, at least from what I saw.

Nobody in my circles wants to see Kitty go away. They just want her to be awesome again. As far as Rich Johnson’s claim that we don’t want to see women in charge, Storm’s time as X-leader is celebrated as is times Kitty was in charge of a mission or the new students. When she wasn’t being a bitch, anyway. She grew, matured, and is a beloved Marvel character by the primary male audience of Marvel superhero stories as well as females who enjoy superheroes. And if you think it isn’t mostly guys into superheroes, check out the gender balance of who went to see The Marvels in theaters. It wasn’t the girls that they were targeting, but the boys they were trashing.

“Dark Phoenix never exists, so a planet of broccoli people survive.”

Who’s calling for the death of broccoli people? Unless they invade, in which case we sick the Powerpuff Girls on them. (How many obscure and unrelated references am I allowed in one article?) If anything, getting rid of Jean Grey is a mercy to Jean Grey. The whole Phoenix Force bit is one of maybe three things everyone knows about her. The other two are dying and marrying Cyclops. Jean has a habit of dying, coming back, getting possessed by the Phoenix, destroying the universe…heck, TWO X-Films in a row was about retelling the Phoenix Saga, and so far only the 1990s show came close to doing it right.

Unfortunately for Jean she also happens to be ground zero for the culture war when it comes to LGBT without being LGBT herself (yet). First there’s the infamous “reveal” that Bobby “Iceman” Drake is suddenly gay despite being seen pursuing women for years. Also, it’s a time-displaced teen version of Jean telling a time-displaced teen version of Bobby he was gay in one of the dumbest comic pages in history. That’s not even me complaining about the “reveal” itself, but the presentation. Numerous panels going back and forth with Jean shrugging and Bobby going “what?” for like eight or nine panels before Jean finally spits out “Bobby, you’re gay”. You couldn’t even write it well, nevermind make sense to the character’s history. Now in the “Krakoa era”, which is a rant on its own better suited to people who care about the X-Men, she’s suddenly in a three way relationship with both Cyclops and  his former rival Wolverine (a man with a worse redhead fetish than I do because I don’t go after married women and teenage girls), even when Jean isn’t in the bed with them. Considering all the memes that Jean used her psychic powers (which even in the good story years were determined to be the most powerful even without the Phoenix Force and nobody complained) to turn Bobby gay, I bet they’re saying the same for Scott and Logan.

Still, “I took you out of spacetime and saved lives” is not making your villain look like the villain. Case in point…

“Wanda isn’t there to say ‘no more mutants’ so we get lots more mutants!”

You want a character more put-upon than Jean? Check out her former enemy and recurring Avenger, the Scarlet Witch. What they’ve done to her in the 21st century is a narrative crime! Wipe out her kids, drive her crazy, and have her destroy her friends, rewrite the universe, or in the MCU have her go insane on the multiverse and wipe out a bunch of nostalgia cameos. That’s ignoring what the original Ultimate universe did to her.

Originally, Wanda’s journey along with her brother’s was to learn their retcon father was evil, seek redemption, find love, and become a hero. Now her legacy is going insane, being taken advantage of by her retcon father who wasn’t her father again because Disney didn’t own 20th Century Fox at the time and the MCU really wanted to use Wanda, and it all involving kids she somehow had with her robot husband because comics. Again, the circles I travel want her to be written well again. That was something Jean never got to have in all the years of her creation, but Wanda did. That’s a farther fall in my book. Guys do like her…in the 20th century comics. In the 21st, we just pity her. The whole “no more mutants” thing was on Marvel (as bad stories are as well as the good ones) because they thought there were too many mutant characters in the Marvel universe. I guess Krakoa wasn’t heavily populated recently when it became the mutant segregation paradise of never-death? Speaking of never death and I didn’t plan to have one character lead into the other…

“Spider-Man loses no one from a fall…”

Full disclosure again: I really don’t care about Gwen Frickin’ Stacy. I’m so pro-MJ that I really don’t care, but I’ve only grown to hate the character mostly because SPIDER-WRITERS AND EXTENDED MEDIA REFUSE TO LET HER STAY DEAD! I’m not even talking about all the times she’s been cloned in this “totally relatable” story of a man who once turned into a spider-creature to give birth to himself with organic webbing and took over a company from the supervillain who tried to swap minds with him to keep from dying, and somewhere in there sold his marriage to save a woman who spent more time in the hospital than the staff.

I mean Gwen’s the most active dead person this side of DC’s Deadman! The Spider-Man Unlimited tie-in comic had a Gwen counterpart on Counter-Earth, which wasn’t how the show treated the planet. Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man had her as one of Peter’s classmates and teen Emma tried to use her to separate Peter and Chat because she was jealous her bestie was dating a superhero. I’m pretty sure that’s irony. The Ultimate universe made her a clone who was also Carnage or something. The Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon and the Amazing Spider-Man movies both geeked her up as the only type of woman Peter could date because geeks don’t get the hot girlfriend.

Now we have “Spider-Gwen”, a refugee from a cover month gimmick of Gwen in various roles along with Gwenpool (who at least was made into a not-Stacy) from a universe where she got bit by the radioactive spider that’s apparently also mystical now, despite not knowing Peter back then, and Peter was her Uncle Ben. Oh yeah, Gwen didn’t need to die because Peter already has Uncle Ben as motivation. She only died because fans wanted Peter with MJ (yes, we’ll get there) and it was felt to be the only way to get rid of her. Gwen in post-comics media that wants to put a teen version of her in a universe with Peter had to create some best friend named Kevin who died, or in the preschool version just ignored it altogether. We don’t have a rash of Uncle Ben coming back and I don’t think Peter’s parents ever come back outside of that one comic story where they were actually robots, but Gwen Stacy is unkillable. I can’t speak for anyone else, but taking her away would be doing ME a favor, Mitty. Go for it! There’s someone else I want Peter with.

“…and neither does he hit the Jackpot, tiger!”

WHAT #$^%$^# DIFFERENCE DOES THAT MAKE ANYMORE? Joe Quesada and modern Spider-Writers rigged the slot machine years ago because they think Peter’s only relatable when he’s a total loser going from love interest to love interest like a bee in a fake flower bed desperate for something to bring home. Originally created to put some drama in Gwen and Peter’s growing romance (a role Gwen would do to Peter and Chat in the aforementioned Marvel Adventures comic), fans gravitated to Mary Jane, and that was before the crazed fanshipping community came to be. This was the 1980s. Nobody even had to go gay or change genders to make the new ship happen (hi, Tim Drake and Connor Kent), though Gwen did have to die…so admittedly not a better solution. This is also back when comic companies at least listened to fans rather than calling them insults for not “fawning over my genius and stereotyping we’re pretending is good representation while calling you the bigots”. So Peter and Mary Jane got together in a huge event that included actors in a stadium with Stan Lee playing priest, though first MJ had to get over her issues with her father and was ready to be happy. As we’ve gone over before, Mary Jane was perfect for Peter, able to help him out of situations that threatened his secret identity, being a voice of reason for him, a shoulder to cry on, and while still pushing into her own success as a model/actress, helped keep Peter grounded while still accepting his life as Spider-Man in a way no other love interest would have done. Even Black Cat only accepted Spider-Man by rejecting Peter.

Then the 1990s happened, and new writers wanted Peter as a loser, so they kept trying to get rid of her or the marriage. The fans rebelled and they pulled back, wanting to keep the fans happy while clearly still wanting to go back to Peter in high school, as evidenced by every new take on Peter until the current neo-Ultimate universe or Renew Your Vows or anything else believing they can placate the pro Spider-Marriage crowd by sending them away.

Then Joe Quesada happened, and he couldn’t give a @#%^ what the fans wanted. Rather than write the couple well, they opted to use the devil…

You know what I mean! Shove off!

…aka Mephisto, to not just undo the marriage because “divorce will age the character”. No, he made Quesada’s dream come true by erasing it from continuity, meaning for any of the stories to work they had to be living in sin despite Peter missing their wedding. There were times when Mary Jane’s presence in his life was important to the story. It’s why he got rid of the black suit, got drawn into the “Eighth Day” storyline, among other times she was a necessary element as Peter’s romance partner.

Mitigator is reading the wrong internet comments if he thinks we want to get rid of Mary Jane. If anything, we want Peter and Mary Jane back together…which Marvel will never do! They’ll tease us with it, shove it into another universe and be surprised it gets praised so long as it isn’t about making Peter look like a chump (MJ is great without superpowers or a costume), make her Tony’s new assistant, shove her into another universe without Peter–even the 90s cartoon did that, now that I think about it, AND made her a water clone to screw up that version of the Spider-Marriage…and that also had an AU Gwen! Point is, Mitigator (and thus the writer) is wrong about what “the internet” wants.

That’s the issue with just this page alone, and I’m betting the story isn’t going to be so much “here’s what people actually want” and more “they’re evil people and we’re going to do what we want”. Culture war or not, that’s been the issue for awhile. Ending the Spider-Marriage wasn’t “woke”, it was a desecration of MJ’s character when she turns out to be the one who convinces Peter to go through with it rather than the two of them telling Mephisto to pound sand and let Aunt May be with Uncle Ben LIKE SHE TOLD HIM! Gwen wasn’t “woke” when they did Sins Past, one of the other stories Spider-Fans hate because it ruined her character. What happened to the mutant ladies were also things MALE fans rejected because they loved the characters, but Marvel stopped writing them as great heroes who just happened to have an extra X chromosome (and an X-gene in three cases). Instead they write terrible characters in terrible stories that fans of both genders don’t want in a superhero story. That’s not woke or anti-woke, pro or anti-woman, that’s loving good stories.

There ARE women who love superhero stories, and they’re abandoning ship along with the guys because both genders liked them fine the way they were.