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obscuremarvelmuses · 2 years ago

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Hey guys! Welcome back to the annotated Darkstar reread! Tonight it’s Champions #13-15, in which Laynia is a mean lesbian to Bobby and there’s a lot of BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!

Champions #13: In the narrative box of the first page, all the members of the Champions and something about them—”The incomparable Iceman!” for instance—are listed. Except Darkstar lol. Even though her face is there. Nice. Nah, I get it, no one would have known who the fuck she was, though actually given she was brand new I’d think she’d be pushed more? Anyway–Luke Cage gets very literally sucked in a battle (via portal) to a battle between the Champions vs a sorcerer type dude named Kamo Tharn who is super mad that Hercules stole The Stranger’s staff, which actually does seem to be the case. The sorcerer is sending monsters at them and, bless her, Darkstar does think “Lenin’s ghost!” and I’m so embarrassed I ever said she doesn’t do that like Colossus. She somehow picks up that the portal that brought them there is still there, it’s just REALLY small and shrinking by the second, so she uses her Darkforce to force it open, which, is a pretty neat move. She goes into it, Iceman thinks something got her and follows in order to rescue her. Aaaand now he’s falling through the vacuum of space with no Laynia in sight. Whoops.

He realizes she IS there, she’s just sealed in this globe of darkness, and she doesn’t realize he’s there. This is what’s enabling her to survive in space. That’s…REALLY AWESOME, I had TOTALLY forgotten that Darkstar could FUCKING SURVIVE AND TRAVEL IN SPACE via a Darkstar cocoon! Oh, and Iceman is able to be alive in space long enough to cocoon himself in ice/snow because he was in solid ice form, which slows down his bodily functions, as he explains to us helpfully via thought balloon. Remember thought balloons? I miss those things. They suddenly appear spilling out of a Darkforce portal in front of the Stranger. Laynia is ready to fight, but Iceman is FUCKED because he made that ice-cocoon from the water in his own body so he’s severely dehydrated. Laynia. . .doesn’t really seem to notice.

Ok, this is really mean of her and I feel bad for Bobby, but also out of context, I’m sorry, the images are just super funny to me. Also she genuinely had no idea he was there. Anyway, this is a good refresher because I tend to think of Laynia as The Nice One but to be honest, that’s more the case when she’s on one of the Russian squads because she’s nice BY COMPARISON to her teammates. But, as shown here, she’ll ignore a teammate in distress because she’s got shit to handle. It’s understandable, granted, but it’s not NICE.

Anyway, the Stranger says he’ll hear her out, and she speaks, and we are told approximately NOTHING of what she said. He listens to her though, and opens a portal to the staff that this whole fuss has been over. Turns out it was left sitting in the hospital broom closet after it was used to resurrect Jane Foster. Oh man, don’t you just hate it when that happens? Laynia reaches through the portal, grabs the staff, and the Stranger tells her she must use it. She’s understandably shocked, but he says “There is no other! You have proven able to wield to madman’s staff!” She. . .did? When? Because she can pick it up, I guess? Anyway he guides her on its use, she becomes this solid black being surrounded by solar fire (kinda reminds me of Binary) and saves the day! Then there’s this panel which also cracks me up, as she CONTINUES TO IGNORE BOBBY BUT IS HYPED NATASHA TALKS TO HER OMFG

I wonder if she even realized he was there the entire time because she did not even look at him through the whole ordeal. I’m so sorry Bobby fans I know thats horrible but IM LAUGHING mean lesbian Laynia for life! Oh, and as a bonus, here’s the image from Champions #11 where he offers her an ice-slide-ride and she’s like LOL NOOOOOPE

LIKE. HER POSE. IT’S SO FUNNY. SHE REALLY JUST TRULY YEETED HERSELF FUCKIN BACKWARDS ASS-FIRST INTO THE SKY RATHER THAN HOLD HIS HAND I CANNOT Also this panel from earlier in #11 is also sending me. He’s literally positioned between them as they stare into each other’s eyes, Laynia’s expression dreamy as she thanks Nat

Like come on this is hilarious. Even if you don’t interpret Laynia as gay (which is valid, not being into Bobby does not a lesbian make, and I’m sure loads of straight women would girlcrush on Nat) it’s just so funny to me how they’re arranged. Bobbo, you never had a chance. Okay, on to Champions #14! OH, IT’S THE BEE ISSUE! I TALKED ABOUT THIS! We first see Laynia in this issue seeing off her trainer, Ivan Petrovitch, the same man who helped train Natasha. He’s going back to Russia. If you’ll remember, his son Yuri was Darkstar’s boyfriend, and she asks if he finds him, will he tell him that “Darkstar still thinks of him?” and Ivan assures her he will, that there must be good in him if a girl like her loved him once. Don’t think that’s how that works but okay. Laynia lesbian headcanons or not she does still think of Yuri, at least at this point. Oh, and Ghost Rider is there too. Ivan gets on the plane, his thought balloons revealing the real reason he’s going back is that he got a call from Nick Fury. But the moment he walks into his cabin, there’s men with guns waiting for him. Meanwhile a crate on the pier explodes. AND IT’S BEEES! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES! Giant bees at that! Darkstar, Black Widow, and Ghost Rider see the GIANT BEES attacking a nearby dude who cries out THE BEES! THEYVE FOUND ME! Which I just find hilarious for some reason. Obviously, they fight the bees! Darkstar of course tries to aid her comrade Ghost Rider, who angrily says he doesn’t WANT her help. Darkstar asks why he hates her so, and his thought balloons say that it’s because the Champions accepted her from the start but still fear him. Okay, I was wondering if they were going to come back to him suspecting her defection was fake. Turns out there’s a more emotional base to it than just the logical suspicion. While they’re having this out, a man MADE OF BEES approaches the dude who was initially attacked. He kills the man WITH BEES and tries to take the briefcase he was holding, but, finding it “coated with some manner of repellant” his bee-arms (“my arm-units”) cannot touch it. He departs, and so too do the giant bees that th Champions were fighting. Laynia somehow knows that they’re not fleeing, they’re following something. I really don’t know why it’s always Laynia who gets flashes of convenient comic-book insight. Maybe she’s meant to have really good intuition, not a real psychic power but just enough to make her seem kinda mystical-ish? I dunno. But she’s right. They find the body, and it turns out the guy was an Interpol agent. They conclude he was killed for his briefcase. When the trio arrive back at the base, they’re just in time to see a GIANT SWARM OF BEES coming towards the tower. The story ends here. Champions #15 picks right up with several pages of them fighting the bees in various ways til Swarm himself shows up. One of the giant bees grabs Darkstar, who the narrative box refers to as the “non-Champion” and EXCUSE ME?! How is she not a Champion?! Bullshit! Anyway, as always when Darkstar is in real or imagined danger, Bobby freaks and attempts to rescue her, and, like last time, just ends up got got too and they are both carried away unconscious by GIANT BEES You are not going to see me ease up on the capslock around the bees, fyi. Oh and Swarm got the briefcase. Iceman and Laynia come to in Swarm’s clutches and Bobby chooses NOW of all times to call Laynia “honey” Like Really? Swarm explains his backstory. He’s a Nazi who got turned into bees. He killed the Interpol agent because the dude stole the Queen Bee and encased her in a chunk of amber (cue Jurassic Park theme music in my head!) but she’s still alive. He holds the chunk up, and Laynia deduces he’s been unable to figure out a way to free her without harming her, and, as Bobby notes, he needs the Queen to keep the bees under control that make up his body, and he needs their powers. Laynia actually wants to help, much to Bobby’s shock. Laynia explains she doesn’t want to help Swarm, she wants to help the Queen, claiming “She is…TRAPPED, Bobby! You can’t know what it is to be. . .apart! But I–I can! Mind to mind, she cries out to me–to the Darkforce! And we shall be free!” I find Laynia’s phrasing REALLY interesting here. Not just the bit where she apparently has bee telepathy, but what does she mean by being apart? For the Queen, that would of course mean being apart from her hive, but what relation does Laynia have to that? My first thought was her tie to the Darkforce, the relationship between then, but then I remembered that Laynia is a Soviet character and how Soviet characters were often portrayed in this era. Comparisons to wasps, ants, and bees don’t seem far off. She’s a collectivist who is separated from her collective, like the Queen. And with that proclamation, her Darkforce bursts the amber apart! Darkstar is knocked unconscious by what Swarm explains as “the intrusion of an alien mind-force into her consciousness, in shall we say, an outpouring of gratitude from the swarm for having freed their queen!” Okay so yeah, the bee is telepathic. Ok. I find that less weird than if Darkstar was the one specifically telepathic with bees. Like, a psychic bee is not far-fetched in comics, but totally incongruous powers in one person like Darkforce control and bee-telepathy just breaks my suspension of disbelief, unless the character is introduced like that from the star (ex: Nightcrawler’s mutant physiology + teleporting). Funny how that works. Anyway, the freed queen is now growing bigger and bigger and Swarm is yammering about how through her he’ll control the planet. Laynia awakes, Bobby orders Natasha to get her out of here (ok, I know it’s hopeless but it is kinda sweet how hung up on her welfare he is), while Laynia mutters “Trapped. . no life…hope…nothing!” and I wonder if she’s talking about herself, the situation, or what the Queen was feeling? Also Nat tells Bobby that Laynia is a big girl and not to tell her what to do. While fighting giant bees.Since the Queen controls all the bees, and the bees make up Swarm’s body, Hercules has the brilliant and also visually hilarious idea to THROW THE QUEEN OUT THE WINDOW and as far as he physically can, which, being Hercules, is REALLY DAMNED FAR. All the little bees that make up Swarm’s body follow her, leaving him a skeleton that collapses. Freaky visual. And I guess the bees are just...out there doing their thing now wherever. Okay, that’s all for tonight! I gotta note, Laynia’s desire to free the trapped Queen was something that really stuck out to me when I first read this, and I kept the idea that she’ll compulsively free ANYTHING that’s trapped, even an insect, even the tool of an enemy, out of empathy for that. But rereading it, it seems that’s less what moves her and more the Queen specifically being “apart” and separate from her hive, her people. This reread was really worthwhile.

#darkstar reread

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