Back in college, we had a very interesting presentation once on domestic abuse versus consensual BDSM relationships. One of the presenters was a domestic abuse victims' advocate (and a survivor of an abusive relationship herself), and the other presenter was a, um, leather daddy. We got to see him flog a volunteer in front of the audience!
Anyway, what we see dealt with in these scans is clearly horrible domestic abuse. And yet the addition of a B-story where Clark recounts trying to intervene in a different case of "abuse" and ends up learning about the importance of consent and safe-words and such, and how a BDSM relationship differs from an abusive one, would have been quite a sight to see.