#Lyja The Lazerfist

[heckcareoxytwit]

Rick Jones and Marlo Chandler prepare for their wedding by going on their night outs on separate parties. Marlo Chandler, along with her mother and Betty Ross, go for a girls night out on a Bachelorette Party with She-Hulk, Invisible Woman, Lyja the Skrull, Scarlet Witch and Crystal. Whereas Rick Jones has a bachelor night with Hulk, Captain America, Vision, Quicksilver, Doc Samson, Silver Surfer, Ben Grimm, Iron Man, War Machine, Namor and his old friends from the Teen Brigade.

In the veterans hall, Rick's bachelor party is in full swing. As the Hulk's allies and superheroes converse with each other, members of the Teen Brigade spike the punch. Suddenly, the party is crashed by a costumed woman calling herself the Ecdysiast, hired for the party. Captain America thinks he hired a magician, but is quickly horrified to discover that she is actually a stripper when she shows herself off to Rick. Hulk tells Captain America not to tell Betty about this, wondering what she would think about such objectification of the human body. However, the ladies have all gone to a male strip club where they are having a wild time. Suddenly, the party is crashed by some armed gunmen who have come to rob the patrons. Their mistake, however, is in choosing the night the club is full of female superheroes. Later that night, Rick's party quiets down for the screening of an adult film. After the Vision uses his powers to fix the projector, they are all in for a surprise when the woman in the film turns out to be Rick's bride-to-be.

Incredible Hulk v1 #417, 1994

Click on Keep Reading for the bonus picture which is the cover of this comic...

[sebeth]

Lyja the Lazerfist

[johnnywait]

Fantastic Four #32 (2018)

[waitingforthet]

This comic is, as is usual for Wednesday’s comics, chosen by my Patrons. Speaking of…

Check my Patreon out if you’d like to support the comic, even a little bit helps. Or just to check out the reward tiers, there’s some neat bonus stuff and I tried to make them fun: https://www.patreon.com/waitingforthet

[kylereadscomics]

@comfortfoodcontent did it first, but here are my Top 10 Marvel Comics runs, in no particular order.

Thunderbolts 1-75 by Busiek, Bagley, Nicieza, et al. - indisputably the best, wouldn't still be reading comics without it.

Defenders vol 4 1-12 by Fraction, Dodson, McKelvie, etc. - the shortest run on this list but one of my all-time fave comics that I re-read more often than most.

Amazing Spider-Man by Lee, Romita, etc. (issues 39-122) - while the Lee/Ditko run is great and features the introductions of so many iconic villains and characters, the soap opera elements of this era, culminating in the Death of Gwen Stacy, with Romita drawing both MJ and Gwen, makes it the best to me.

Spider-Man comics from Revelations to The Final Chapter - possibly the most overlooked era, this stretch of 20+ issues each of 4 different ongoing Spidey series, from the end of the Clone Saga/Ben Reilly era to the Byrne relaunch, are the comics that were coming out when I started reading as a young lad, and will always be my favourites, especially with Wieringo and JR Jr. and Steve Skroce doing much of the art.

Ultimate Spider-Man 1-160 by Bendis, Bagley, Immonen, Lafuente, etc. - The best attempt to make Spider-Man relevant to teens again without just sticking Peter in a perpetual loser cycle.

Daredevil by Nocenti and Romita Jr. (250-282) - I don't think there's a bad DD comic between 168 and 300, but these ones are the best.

Daredevil by Waid, Rivera, Samnee, etc. (vol 3 1-36, vol 4 1-18) - After a period of time where I wasn't buying comics at all, this brought me back and got me collecting like never before.

Fantastic Four by Defalco, Ryan, etc. (356-416) - I know in my heart that there are better FF runs, but this one has Lyja Lazerfist and Psi-Lord Franklin Richards and Sue Storm's ridiculous swimsuit costume and it is my favourite.

Post-Onslaught X-Men (specifically Uncanny 341-350, X-Men 62-71) - Again, these issues are intrinsically linked to childhood memories but also the Joe Madureira and Carlos Pacheco art is amazing and the stories are fun.

Captain Marvel by Peter David, ChrisCross, etc. (volumes 4 and 5) - IDK I just love these comics. They're very fun.

[yetanothercomicbook]

The Flame, This Fury

Fantastic Four #371

"This is even more entertaining than I imagined!"

Johnny is ambushed by Devos the Devastator, Paibok the Power Skrull, and Lyja the Lazerfist!

Two excellent stories here. Ben and Reed working with Sharon Ventura to rescue Alicia Masters from Aron the Rogue Watcher. The question is, can they trust her?

While this is going on, Johnny is alone in battle in a plotline that's been building for a little while. And what they heck is up with little Franklin? Or Susan for that matter. It's a comic that positively zips along, every page delivering something exciting and fun. Especially that last page...

On Sale Date: October 27, 1992.

Total Paid Circulation: 217,625 (average #371-382).

Wizard Top 100: #27.

Tom DeFalco (16 of 66).

Paul Ryan (16 of 60).

10/10

[divinamour]

"Call your 'friends', Lazerfist."

The princess reached down to her waist then, pulling her needlessly expensive cell phone free before holding it out to Lyja before her. It was Face ID locked. The fact that that was a security measure on this planet was often the source of a good chuckle to The Goddess' youngest.

"Should we perhaps have this conversation atop The Baxter Building so you'll feel more confident about spitting in my face? Tell me how else I might facilitate you feeling at peace here. After all, one of us, still cares deeply for the betterment of all our kind."

The phone in Ana'Hira's hand is released. Tossed, softly, to @arxchnoverture, without concern for if she caught it or not. The princess could afford another one.

"Would allowing LOVE in be so awful? If you were possessed of my affections, would yours truly be to suffer?" No, she was not going to take Lyja's autonomy. She didn't want her name nor her shadow. Ana'Hira wanted for Lyja what she wanted for all of her children. "Then, we absolve you of your crimes. We return you to the Empire to be born again... and then you're free to return to whatever amazing fantasy you'd like."

[cartoonus-maximus]

For the comics meme: 2 & 10!

✨ comics meme ✨

2. top five ships (canon or not)

❤️️ Peter Parker/Spider-Man x Mary Jane Watson (my favorite canon ship right now)

❤️️ Peter Parker/Spider-Man x Johnny Storm/the Human Torch (my favorite non-canon ship right now)

❤️️ Rogue x Remy LeBeau/Gambit (my original otp)

❤️️ Billy Kaplan/Wiccan x Teddy Altman/Hulkling (the sweetest couple Marvel has to offer)

❤️️ Gwen Poole/Gwenpool x Quentin Quire/Kid Omega (the canon crackship I didn't expect to like, but I think they're hilarious together)

10. a character who deserved better from the text

Unpopular opinion, but I'm gonna say Lyja Lazerfist.

For those who don't know her, Lyja is probably best known as the Skrull spy ex-wife of the Human Torch, and she's in and out of the "Fantastic Four" comics too frequently for me to keep up with. Since then, she's also had brief appearances in "Guardians of the Galaxy" and other titles. She was originally introduced as a plot device more than a character (one writer had Johnny and Alicia get married, but another writer decided to retcon the pairing, suddenly revealing that "Alicia" was really a Skrull woman in disguise, sent to spy on the FF), and her personality and character motivations are different every time she shows up in a story.

Originally, Lyja was written as a star-crossed spy who genuinely fell in love with Johnny while infiltrating his family. She's portrayed as genuinely feeling bad about tricking him and lying to him, but doesn't know how to stop because she also fears her people. Ultimately she dies protecting Johnny. In this genre or storytelling, these actions would normally warrant her a position as a hero, or at least a good person.

Despite this, Lyja (who returns from the dead, because that's how the superhero genre rolls) has never really been written reliably as a hero. Each writer has a new take on her, and their takes are often wildly different: sometimes she loves Johnny and wants to marry and have kids with him, and sometimes she hates Johnny and wants to kill him. Sometimes she lives in the Baxter Building and considers the FF her family, sometimes she blows up the Baxter Building and abandons the FF to participate in the Skrull invasion. Sometimes she protects the Future Foundation kids from another villain. Sometimes she takes Alicia's place (again!). Sometimes she's sweet and loving, and other times she's a cold and heartless bitch… Most of the writers don't seem to know what to do with her.

Personally, I wish that when she died and came back the first time, the writer/s had made it clear that her new personality was a product of her "coming back wrong." At least then they'd have some excuse for why they changed her so heavily, and then for why they've continued to change her.

I'd just like to see her used as a character (hero or villain) instead of a plot device for once.

[comicwaren]

From Immortal Hulk #048, “Hiding Places”

Art by Joe Bennett, Ruy José, Belardino Brabo and Paul Mounts

Written by Al Ewing

[why-i-love-comics]

Future Foundations #5 (2019)

written by Jeremy Whitley art by Alti Firmansyah & Triona Farrell

[fyeahfantasticfour]

Congratulations, Alicia! I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have as a sister-in-law!

Fantastic Four Vol 1 298: “Closer Than Brothers!”

[marvelheroperil]

Thing, Johnny Storm, Lyja the Skrull and Invisible Woman are trapped in the dungeon of the Skrull Throneworld and there’s a cave-in. 

- Fantastic Four v1 #383, 1993

[evilhorse]

Tell the, that Lyja the Lazerfist sent you.

[johnnywait]

Fantastic Four #32 (2018)

[traincat]

So something just occurred to me. We know that Johnny and Lyja had sex before he knew that she was a Skrull, so he fully believed that he was having sex with Alicia. So, doesn't that mean that Lyja raped Johnny? We see a similar thing with Deadpool and Typhoid Mary play out, and Marvel canonically admits that it was a rape. With Johnny it's never really addressed, even though it's basically the exact same situation.

Yeah, that’s a big thing for me with the Lyja plotline especially in that Marvel has refused to address it for, what, over 20 years now: Johnny can’t have consented to sex with Lyja, because he thought he was consenting to sex with Alicia. 

(Fantastic Four #275) I’ve always found this scene, which is the aftermath and all we see of the first Johnny&Alicia/Lyja sexual encounter, very oddly staged whether you look at it with the original intent with which it was written – Byrne wrote and drew this scene as being between Johnny and Alicia – or whether you look at it with the retcon in place, which is the now canon fact that that’s not Alicia, it’s Lyja. But even before the retcon, the whole scene is vaguely uncomfortable. Johnny’s stiff, awkward. He’s left the bedroom and put space between himself and “Alicia.” He denies regretting the sexual encounter happened, but he looks uncomfortable. And it’s easy to say he just feels guilty over the Ben angle, but when you add in the retcon I think one of Johnny’s lines is very interesting: “I can’t help but feel I … took advantage” – it’s interesting to think about this as Johnny subconsciously realizing something’s wrong, but not having the tools to realize what, so he’s contextualized it the only way he currently had the tools to. But yeah, make no mistake, post-retcon this is the aftermath of a rape scene where Johnny’s explicitly being used to further Lyja’s mission:

(Fantastic Four #357)

The retcon makes it messy, because there’s a lot of canon that originally involved Alicia but now is about Lyja, but Marvel’s continual push to label Johnny and Lyja as a romantic pairing in light of what actually goes down on the page leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Johnny never consented and never had the ability to consent to a relationship, sex, or marriage with Lyja, because he thought he was consenting to it with Alicia, and so with the Lyja retcon in place, the narrative has to change: Johnny was manipulated, raped, gaslit, and emotionally abused first to further Lyja’s mission and then because Lyja – without Johnny’s knowledge or consent – wanted to continue a relationship with him. Marvel’s refusal to acknowledge Johnny as the victim of that story – and the fact that a lot of readers don’t seem to get that, either – is deeply uncomfortable to me.

Thank you for bringing up the Deadpool story as a comparison – I’m not familiar with that one, but there is a Namor issue I think about often when discussing how dishonestly the Johnny and Lyja narrative is presented, partly because of the similarities between the stories and partly because Johnny and Lyja are both in said issue. In Namor the Sub-Mariner #50, Namor is seduced by a woman he believes at the time to be Sue Storm. When he heads to Four Freedoms Plaza the next day and it becomes clear that the real Sue has no memory of the encounter, Namor realizes that he was raped by a shapeshifter in her image. Both the book and Namor himself are very clear on the fact that the narrative believes that a shapeshifter taking the form of someone else to trick a character into sexual acts is rape:

“There is a word for what she did to me Susan.” – Namor the Submariner #50.

At least, the narrative is clear on that when the victim is Namor. But this issue’s story very clearly mirrors the Johnny and “Alicia” story: a character (Namor/Johnny) engages in what they think is consensual sex with someone they’re close with (Sue/Alicia) but who turns out to have been a shapeshifter (Llyra/Lyja) who used that guise to seduce them. With Namor, the book is clear that it’s nonconsensual; Namor consented to sex with Sue, not with Llyra. With Johnny? Johnny absolutely doesn’t get that treatment. If anything, the issue is more sympathetic to Lyja. There’s absolutely no reflection within Namor the Submariner #50 that Johnny’s been living in the same scenario as the one Namor bluntly identifies as rape. 

The editor’s note at the beginning of Namor the Submariner #50 identifies the issue as taking place before Fantastic Four #387, so just after Lyja’s “delivery” of the egg she claims is Johnny’s child (it’s not). Though it’s revealed later in the issue that Namor’s rapist was a character named Llyra, upon discovering that it must have been a shapeshifter and not Sue, he initially assumes Lyja was his rapist and attacks her in that belief. This attack sends Lyja sprawling into “the egg’s” incubation chamber, where she tearfully begs for her fake baby’s life. I don’t exactly blame the writers of this issue for that part; it was written before the egg was revealed to house a monster designed to kill the Fantastic Four. But that’s the problem with a retcon; you have to apply things that happened after the fact to previous scenes, and by the time this Namor issue happens, Lyja definitely knows the truth about the egg. Tearfully begging for its life, regardless of the original authorial intent, retroactively becomes another point of deception because that’s how retcons work; Lyja knows it’s a monster, she knows it’s designed to kill the Fantastic Four, but rather than be honest about that she chooses to continue to perpetuate the deception in order to retain a position close to Johnny. She’d rather risk his life than risk that placement, so she lies to him in a bid to continue to violate his space.

(Fantastic Four #390) “After months of bitterness, you and I had finally found some warmth. Was it so wrong to crave that?” I mean, in a word? Yeah.

Lyja – and the narrative – also repeatedly puts down Johnny’s emotional reaction. In the above scene, Johnny’s just found the egg is not his child and is understandably pretty upset about that, but Lyja first takes him to task for being rude to a visitor. After the “delivery” of the egg, she insults him for not being sensitive enough to her (we never see this incident on page, only Lyja commenting on it). As Laura Green, her second disguise used to get close to Johnny after that of Alicia, she’d call him “trite and simple-minded” and his tastes “pedestrian.” Much later, disguised as Sue during the Secret Invasion, she first tries to separate him from Ben by trying to convince Ben’s a Skrull and then she’d mock Johnny when he says he’s thinking, saying that’s not his forte. Combined with the other characters’ lack of reaction to Johnny’s anger about the egg baby monster lie and the narrative’s refusal to call a spade a spade, it all adds up to a long history of Johnny’s emotional reactions being downplayed and minimized by Lyja, which is a common emotional abuse tactic on top of everything else. But Marvel’s never recognized Johnny as the victim of any of this, despite writing all of it. 

Additionally, while I would say Lyja is both the longest, most complicated story-wise (I have a very long post here detailing the Lyja storyline because there’s just. so much to discuss.), and most egregious case of Johnny being raped, he has a long history of both being the victim of aggressive and nonconsensual advances (there are scenes of him being kissed against his will by fans dating back in his history to when he was 16 via Fantastic Four: First Family) and a few cases that are at the least very heavy rape metaphors. 

In Fantastic Four #337, Johnny encounters a blue woman calling herself Nebula (really Ravonna Renslayer and I’m sure this plot would make more sense to me if I read some Avengers, but that’s not important for this post) in a dream. In the dream, he saves her from a monster; she then makes advances on him.

(His body language here – leaning backwards, seemingly not reciprocating – is not uncommon for Johnny when advances are being made on him by women, which is interesting for a character who has such a womanizer reputation in and out of universe.) Johnny later encountered another vision of Nebula as the Fantastic Four set off through time. This time she hijacked his mind and body in a way shown to be both frightening and physically excruciating for him:

(Fantastic Four #337-338) Nebula would go on to use Johnny’s body and powers to commit murder, and also to make her advances on Gladiator. 

(Fantastic Four #339 – Walt Simonson, I just want to talk.)

Afterwards, no longer possessed by Nebula, Johnny’s portrayed for the next few issues as tired and withdrawn. His possession by Nebula is compared in Fantastic Four #342 to an incident where he briefly lost control of his powers:

Control here is an interesting concept – Johnny being under Nebula’s control compared to he himself briefly losing control of his powers. I think there’s an interesting exploration lurking under the text’s surface in Johnny valuing control over his powers above almost all else because it’s something he can control, unlike his mental and physical violation. The story behind Johnny’s brief lapse in control is told in Fantastic Four #342, and it also features an incident where Johnny’s nonconsensually kissed:

(Big content warning in this one for suicide – the story is centered around a teenager who commits suicide by immolation in Johnny’s image, and contains some pretty blatant suicidal ideation on Johnny’s part.)

Additionally, there’s Johnny and Daken’s highly hinted at sexual relationship. While I don’t believe Daken had to use his pheromone powers to get Johnny to engage in a sexual relationship with him, there is the fact that with Dark Wolverine #75-77 and Daken #3-4, Daken emotionally manipulates Johnny in order to gain access to the Fantastic Four and the Baxter Building; if they were involved in a sexual relationship (and Marjorie Liu has tweeted that that was the intent) then that relationship would have been part of Daken’s manipulation. (Daken also, unbeknownst to Johnny, starts off the whole affair by shooting Johnny through the thigh from afar with an arrow, which is, well. There’s a penetration metaphor in that for sure.)

Finally, there’s a miniseries called Dark Reign: Zodiac. In Dark Reign: Zodiac #1, the titular Zodiac lures Johnny out of the Baxter Building, taunts him with homophobic rhetoric, calling Johnny a “flaming joke” and calling the girls Johnny’s spotted with beards, speculating Johnny hires them for the paparazzi, and saying that Johnny makes him “sick.” He then proceeds to brutally beat Johnny with a piece of metal pipe. The next issue finds Johnny lying unconscious and bloody in the hospital, where it’s remarked upon that he was “shown no mercy”:

More disturbingly, the scene begins to cut between Zodiac and Johnny, with Zodiac in bed about to initiate sex with his girlfriend who tells him “not to hold back” and that she “likes it rough” – the very next panel shows Johnny in his hospital bed, mirroring the woman’s position:

This miniseries is uncomfortable for a lot of reasons: the blatant metaphor, the gay bashing element to Zodiac’s attack on Johnny (despite Johnny not being, at the time of writing this, canonically gay – there’s a long history of subtext, but subtext does explicitly canon make). I don’t recommend this series – for one thing, that’s uh, where this tale pretty much ends – Johnny recovers and that’s that – but in the interest of this discussion I do think it’s very relevant. 

So while the Lyja incident is the longest running and the one I feel really needs to be addressed within an actual comic for what it is rather than it being portrayed as a consensual romantic relationship, Johnny has a long and complicated history as the victim of both outright and implied nonconsensual attacks.

[girlsofcomics]

Lyja

-Real name: Lyja

-A.k.a.: Lyja The Lazerfist, The Lazerfist, Laura Green, Alicia Masters, Miss Fantastic, Bridget O´Neil

-Publisher: Marvel

-Type: Skrull/ Alien

-Afilliations: Dard´van, Fantastic Five, Fantastic Four, Skrulls, Super-Skrulls, The Bio-Predators

-Powers: Shape shifter, agility, blast power, chameleon, elasticity, fire control, flight, gadgets, healing, intellect, longevity, stamina, stealth, sub-mariner, super strength, unarmed combat