To Absent Friends: Glenda Sandoval

Content warning: mentions of intersexual assault

Even superheroes request friends! And, conscionable similar friendships successful existent life, immoderate of those relationships past a beingness and others slice distant arsenic you prosecute your ain destinies. In this series, I’ll beryllium spotlighting immoderate of the broadside characters who person been near by the wayside. Today we’re talking astir Marvel’s Glenda Sandoval.

Glenda Sandoval and James “War Machine” Rhodes met arsenic children. She is fractional Black and fractional Puerto Rican, which makes her the people of bullies astatine schoolhouse and causes her relatives connected some sides to dainty her arsenic lesser-than. So I conjecture it’s not astonishing that she had to find immoderate mode to vent her frustrations. In 1 flashback, we spot her frying ants with a magnifying solid successful retaliation for their sidesplitting a caterpillar.

As an adult, she became a doc and joined an implicit dillweed by the sanction of Parnell Jacobs, an (ex-)friend of Rhodey’s who sold guns to highly atrocious people. We don’t spot their romance, truthful however they ended up unneurotic is simply a mystery, but if Glenda’s puerility was arsenic neglectful and unpleasant arsenic it seemed, I conjecture she ne'er would person learned however to spot reddish flags successful imaginable romanticist partners.

In Glenda’s archetypal appearances, successful Iron Man #15, she was a precise passive character, lone serving to structure Rhodey aft helium got beaten up adjacent her location successful England…

…and past trying to person her no-good hubby to halt being a supervillain — helium was playing the relation of a counterfeit War Machine for a concern rival of Iron Man’s — and travel enactment connected their matrimony similar helium promised. It didn’t spell excessively well.

It wasn’t until 2008’s War Machine that Glenda got immoderate existent improvement arsenic a character. Here, we larn she volunteered to enactment her aesculapian skills to enactment successful the war-torn federation of Aqiria, wherever she was soon kidnapped. Rhodey forced Parnell, nether menace of death, to assistance him rescue her.

Despite suffering a caput wounded and intersexual assault, Glenda proved herself much level-headed — and, arguably, much principled — than the men who stormed in, guns a-blazing, acceptable to execution arsenic galore radical arsenic indispensable with nary questions asked.

But, similar I said, Glenda has/had a existent vicious streak. This is made worse by the information that her captors infected her with slayer robot exertion and, on with a clump of different captives, acceptable her escaped connected Aqiria’s superior metropolis to infect the full populace. She ended up shooting the antheral liable for her torture successful acold humor earlier Rhodey could halt her.

I truly thought they were going determination with this — like, however overmuch of Glenda’s actions erstwhile she was a robot-zombie were the effect of the corruption versus her ain interior nature? Would she proceed down an amoral oregon immoral way adjacent aft being cured?

Unfortunately, aft being cured, Glenda’s relation successful the bid ebbs. She joins Team War Machine arsenic their medic, which means she is often seen successful the background, tending to wounds suffered by those with powers and/or gun-laden armor. She is intelligibly inactive a badass — she grabs a weapon and shoots astatine Norman Osborn’s men erstwhile they effort to onslaught the squad — but these moments are fewer and acold between.

I’m not saying she should person been fixed powers oregon a suit of armor. Given however she behaved erstwhile she did person powers, she mightiness not person wanted them anyway. Still, there’s nary crushed we couldn’t person had a quiescent infinitesimal betwixt her and Rhodey, her husband, and/or the remainder of the team.

Or possibly she grew retired of her ant-murdering tendencies and is present a perfectly well-adjusted adult. She did look genuinely horrified by her actions erstwhile cured of the infection. We don’t cognize the reply to this due to the fact that Glenda has ne'er had the accidental to beryllium a quality successful her ain right. She is ever a instrumentality that idiosyncratic other uses to get what they want, and past erstwhile her relation is finished, she disappears. That’s beauteous disappointing, arsenic determination is simply a batch of worldly near to excavation present if Marvel wanted to. I for 1 would beryllium precise interested!

Come conscionable our erstwhile absent friends: Eddie “Iron Man” March, Terry Berg, Harris Hobbs, Bridget Clancy, Willie Lincoln, Ed Indelicato, Roger Willis, and Chanda Madan!