Many women attaracted to jerks, even smart women with good men. Not too many attacked the surface world though.

Definitely a lot of sexism in early Marvel comics. Particularly with Sue. And its notice in the letters pages even-lots of comments about how weak her powers and personality are. and she whines a lot. and there is a lot of comments in the early marvel about weak females or you wouldn't understand your a female.  Heck, Avengers 1 didn't even mention the Wasp as a member on the cover. and this continues in the Avengers under Roy Thomas, some of those comments.  Definitely, like ther anti-commie stuff, a product of its time, and somewhat uncomfortable to read.  Not too surprising for men of that time, born in the 20s.  Maybe even a bit behind the time.   Of course attitudes change (heck Stan did do Stripperella ;) )  Mark Gruenwald had an article about that. His conclusion was Marvel Girl was the female character that young girls would have identified best with. 

The Bendis thing looks like a joke, of poor taste no doubt, that he put in a script to get the point across to the artist of how he wanted Namor and Reed to look at each other:

Q: What was up with that really creepy smile Namor gave?

BB: And here comes the thing I get the most ____ for. Here is the script to that scene.

2- Iron Man's had enough of Namor all together. He's just exhausted from him.

IRON MAN

Yes, we get it!

You don't trust our teammates. We understand.

3- Low looking up, Namor doesn't take his eyes off of Reed.

NAMOR

No family, no girlfriends [can know about the Illuminati-RH].

4- Reed looks up and glares at him. Reed's pretty sure Namor ____ed his girlfriend Sue - I don't care what Tom thinks.

5- Same as 3.

NAMOR

No one.

If one of you shared a secret of my Atlantis that came back to harm anyone in my kingdom the hell I would bring to this surface world...

6- Iron-Man stands up. Trying to calm Namor down with the physical act of meeting his face to face.

IRON MAN

Why are you always ready to attack us?-

Is that really from a Bendis script?  I'm no artist, but am I the only one who thinks that outline ranges from frustratingly vague to confiningly specific in just one page?

Mike

Maybe these are too obvious to ask, but...

Questions for JB:

Given your druthers, would you have kept the X-Men as teens?

Kitty at 13?

Any exceptions to the age-freeze rule?

Is that really from a Bendis script?  I'm no artist, but am I the only one who thinks that outline ranges from frustratingly vague to confiningly specific in just one page?

Mike

****

Bendis posted it and said it was.

One thing to remember, although there were a couple of time periods and settings, when they were in that setting the backgriound and setting and characters and the way they looked were the same for pages. So little description is needed-it was probably set up before that page.  They are all sitting (or combination sitting and standing) around a table.

Rob wrote: ...One thing to remember, although there were a couple of time periods and settings, when they were in that setting the backgriound and setting and characters and the way they looked were the same for pages...

And the periods were all mixed up. [Anal-retentive fanboy alert!] For instance, Namor's outfit was that which he wore in the early 1970's, which Reed designed for him when he lost the ability to breath air. Iron Man's helmet has rivets, which he didn't have by the period that Namor wore the outfit he was wearing. Also, Reed and Sue were already married by that same period.