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Jan's betraying her husband? Her abusive wacked out husband who she's now separated from? Golly, I see now why Jan is evil.
i think the adultery thing is a non-issue, considering the horrific abuse - no, let's go one step further and say torture - that Hank inflicted on her. it's possible that this is just "rough play that's gotten out of hand," but if so, than man, Jan has issues.
I think the thing that has to be understood here is that Jan's reaction is, IIRC (and feel free to flame my ass if I'm wrong here), a common one within abusive relationships. If the abusive partner goes through violent cycles (Hank really seems to be a manic-depressive, almost) with long breaks between bouts of intense abuse, the abused partner may well stick around because, as Jan said, "the good times outweighed the bad". It can be an incredibly hard cycle to break out of; some people do, some people don't. Some people get out before it goes to the extreme...and some people, like Jan, stay in it until they're nearly killed.
However, I completly agree that what Hank did to her was nothing short of torture. Shit, the guy attacked her with creatures several times her size, with poisonous bites, in large numbers, after essentially blasting her with mustard gas. She shrunk down, he blasted her with RAID and then sicked a small legion of ants on her. As stated, she was only alive because growing back to human size is a reflex for her when she goes unconcious (or something in that regard). Hank is, honestly I think, not fit for being a super-hero. The guy should be on some serious medication (well, ok, that describes about half the Ultimates anyway).
It's not really surprising, then, that she'd go to Cap. Cap, first off, beat the living shit out of Hank (when the bastard was 30 feet tall, no less), out of some weird sense of chivalry. He was also pretty charming with her, has that 1940s naievete going...not to mention the fact that he's gorgeous. He's also a strong figure who doesn't show the same degree of instability that Hank had in his private relationships with Jan. What's going to be interesting to see is if Jan will rationalize what happened with Hank and go back to him, or if she'll never want anything to do with him again.
Now, I haven't read much past the end of the second TPB, so I can't really speak for whats going on in the new issues. As I said above, feel free to flame me around if I'm wrong about what I said above. But that's how I see things on this issue in the book. While its disturbing, I think Millar handled it well (better than he handled stuff in the Authority, that's for sure). I find the Ultimates to be a well written book where Millar is able to express his views towards more modern and "realistic" interpretations of superheroes. It comes off a lot better than his run on the Authority, which was heavy handed and clumsy at times, and diverged quite a bit from what Ellis had established in his run (though Frank Quitely's artwork didn't help). |
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because that post was well snidey. soz.