Captain Marvel, v. 1: In Pursuit of Flight

Collects: Captain Marvel #1-6 (2012)

Released: January 2013 (Marvel)

Format: 136 pages / color / $14.99 / ISBN: 9780785165491

What is this?: Carol Danvers takes a new codename, gets a new haircut and costume, and becomes unstuck in time.

The culprits: Writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artists Dexter Soy and Emma Rios

I really wanted to like Kelly Sue DeConnick’s new Captain Marvel series, but unfortunately, Captain Marvel, v. 1: In Pursuit of Flight underwhelmed me.

Flight starts with Carol Danvers selecting a bland new direction for her career: she adopts a more flattering costume and a less flattering haircut, and she lets Captain America push her into choosing the Captain Marvel name over her previous nom de costume, “Ms. Marvel.” Her great pleasure / motivation now is flight, which makes sense for an ex-USAF officer. But trying to instill wonder in the most mundane of superhero powers is a difficult sell.

With that setup, of course the action in Flight revolves around a random time-travel plot. To be fair, DeConnick ties time travel into the flight theme by using Captain Marvel’s aviatrix hero’s airplane as a time machine, but the time displacement still comes out of nowhere.

Captain Marvel ends up in Peru in 1943, fighting alongside women pilots without planes vs. the Japanese, who are flying Kree ships. The women have been in South America longer than Captain Marvel, but they are as confused as she is about how they got there. And even thought they haven’t traveled in time, why shouldn’t they be confused? They are fighting the Japanese, who are flying Kree ships, in Peru. The reader doesn’t learn until issue #4 that the women of Banshee Squadron were flying a non-combat mission from California to Hawaii before they randomly appeared in Peru. Peru makes some sense, as Captain Marvel’s hero flew her plane there on a famous flight. But other than being female flyers, the Banshee Squadron has nothing to do with Captain Marvel or her plane. World War II has nothing to do with Captain Marvel either. But it all makes sense when the reason for the random time travel is revealed as …

Carol’s hero, Helen Cobb, using a piece of the Kree psyche-magnetron, the “wishing machine” that gave Carol her powers.

Hunh. Well, it explains the Kree ships. The rest still feels as if it were assembled using darts and a blindfold. However, the last two issues proceed more sensibly, as Captain Marvel finds herself alongside Helen at NASA, training for the space program along with other women.

The scattershot plot elements do the book no favors. The supporting characters aren’t helpful either. Helen’s all brass, without any attributes to recommend her to the reader. Carol checks in on Tracy Burke, a cancer patient who used to work for Carol at Woman Magazine, but their current relationship is unexplored, and Tracy is prickly at best. The women of Banshee Squadron are better, but they fall into archetypes: the tough leader, the gung-ho fighter, the innocent … their gender is novel, though. I suppose that’s the point: they are soldiers first, or humans. A few more pages devoted to the characters would have been nice; the seven-page fight sequence at the beginning feels like an indulgence.

The art does not help Flight at all. It’s not often I say, “Thank God for the Emma Rios art” — in fact, before Flight I had said it never times — but I was overjoyed when she took over for #5 and 6. Not that I enjoy her wispy-thin line, spindly figures, and generally manga-influenced art — I don’t — but compared to Dexter Soy, she’s wonderful. Soy, who drew #1-4, gives the reader a muddled world filled with blocky, stiff characters. His line is so thick I wouldn't be surprised if he used a paint brush to ink himself. The muddy palette used by the colorist — not explicitly named but by implication Soy — does not make anything more attractive or recognizable. (Jordie Bellaw, the colorist for #5-6, lightens the colors slightly but still favors browns and dark colors.) Soy doesn’t do himself any favors with the Banshee Squadron; one is drawn firing an enormous machine gun that would knock Sgt. Fury on his keister, and another has blonde pigtails and wears her uniform to expose her midriff and cleavage.

So: plot, characters, protagonist, and art are all lacking. None are awful — well, Soy’s art is. But the entire package is, as I said, underwhelming. Skip this Flight.

Rating: (1.5 of 5)

Ms. Marvel, v. 1: Best of the Best

Collects: Ms. Marvel (v. 2) #1-5, Giant-Size Ms. Marvel #1 (2006)

Released: March 2007 (Marvel)

Format: 136 pages / color / $14.99 / ISBN: 9780785119968

What is this?: The first volume of the new Ms. Marvel series.

The culprits: Writer Brian Reed and penciler Roberto de la Torre

Ms. Marvel is not usually a character that I’m very interested in. I mean, I’ve read the Essential Ms. Marvel, but I read all the superhero Essentials. And I’m about as likely to be drawn in by Marvel’s premiere “feminist”²² superhero as any male, I suppose. But I decided to pick this up on a lark — 2/3 off cover price! — and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.

Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) has been around for a long time, since the ‘60s, and she had her own short-lived (for the time) series in the ‘70s. After that, she became a journalist, an Avenger, an X-Men associate, a victim of very, very bad writing, an amnesiac, an alcoholic, Binary, and Warbird. Ms. Marvel is a name that is deeply ingrained in the Marvel Universe, but over the past 20 years, it’s faded into the woodwork. In Ms. Marvel, v. 1: Best of the Best, Brian Reed takes advantage of that setup and makes the series about Carol, who after being a great hero in the House of M universe, decides to work on becoming one on the regular Marvel Universe.

It’s a great starting point. Carol’s first move is to quit her job, become a solo hero, and hire a PR firm, which gives an idea of what she thinks it takes to become a famous hero. She needs more name recognition! And an archenemy! Who conveniently follows her through from the House of M universe, so that’s OK. But overall the strategy works about as well as you’d think.

Best of the Best shows something we don’t see that often in superhero comics. Ms. Marvel makes a large mistake and can’t save the townspeople who normally are saved. Although the fallout of her failures isn’t seen in this volume, it’s nice to see heroes who aren’t invulnerable. Reed makes a big deal out of Carol’s level of confidence; she sees heroes like Captain America and the Fantastic Four as bulletproof, while she makes big mistakes. It works well, and it fits in with Carol’s previous characterizations — if her confidence isn’t shaken a little after everything that’s happened to her, then she hasn’t been paying attention.

So the main character and the idea for the series are solid. The archenemy is ready made from another universe, which works surprisingly well; he’s a mage, someone Carol can’t always run up and punch, which is her strong suit. He even manages enough of a backstory to be interesting. She’s even managed to get a cat in the same transaction as the supervillain. So far, so good; what are the shortcomings?

The art — mainly the covers by Frank Cho — leave me cold. In Cho’s hands, Ms. Marvel comes across a bit too … pneumatic for my tastes, with thighs larger than her head. Regular penciler Roberto de la Torre doesn’t have those problems — at least not beyond the regular superhero comic expansion of chests — but there are others. Carol’s friend Jessica Jones looks nothing like she does in other appearances, and Carol looks inconsistent at times. De la Torre has fun with the Brood and the alien Cru, and he tells the story clearly, so overall, he does a very good job.

There are times the plot sags a little. The Brood is a good choice for Carol to fight, given her history with them — their attack triggered one of her transformations, into Binary — but the connection isn’t mentioned, which it should have been. Dr. Strange is taken out like a chump at one point, which is a let down. There’s a lot of reality and time hopping, which can be (and is, at times) confusing. As I said, Carol’s failing isn’t dealt with in Best of the Best, and I’m not sure whether it will be; I’m also not sure whether Carol’s somewhat callow exterior is something the reader is supposed to recognize or if it’s an unconscious insertion by the writer.

Still, this is a good collection, and I’m interested in how it progresses. Unfortunately, it progresses through a couple of crossovers I have no interest in, and I have severe doubts I want to read them, even tangentially.

Rating: (3.5 of 5)

Essential Ms. Marvel, v. 1

Collects: Ms. Marvel #1-23, Avengers Annual #10, Marvel Super-Heroes Magazine #10-1 (1977-9, 1981, 1992)

Released: January 2007 (Marvel)

Format: 512 pages / black and white / $16.99 / ISBN: 9780785124993

There’s not much of a way to sugarcoat it; the Essential Ms. Marvel, v. 1 is a collection of ‘70s mediocrity.

I mean that in the best way, of course; it’s not bad enough to offend, nor is it good enough to truly entice. It falls in the same category as the Essential Iron Fist or Essential Nova. The former collection is an apt comparison in more than one way; although Ms. Marvel was created by other hands, Ms. Marvel is the work of Chris Claremont. Like Iron Fist, Claremont rode Ms. Marvel to cancellation at the same time he was making X-Men a sales juggernaut. In fact, his work with Ms. Marvel begins at about the time Iron Fist ends.

Early Claremont is the main draw here. With eight pencillers in 23 issues, there are frequent changes in art styles, although Jim Mooney provided art for ten issues over a couple of stints. The few guest stars are second tier, and although the established villains in the book are occasionally better than average (MODOK, AIM, Scorpion), there is plenty of dead weight in the form of Grotesk, Tiger Shark, and the Faceless One.⁹ Just as Ms. Marvel was wrapped up in an Avengers Annual and an issue of X-Men, Claremont wraps up a storyline from the even more obscure Supernatural Thrillers #10-15. (Why, I don’t know.) The new villains are mostly crap: Destructor, the reptilian People, two unidentified aliens. Except …

Except Deathbird and Mystique. Deathbird is an alien cypher working for MODOK, but Mystique is a big player with a mad-on for Ms. Marvel. (Claremont’s predilection for long-dangling plotlines don’t tell us why during Ms. Marvel; in the Marvel Super Heroes Magazine reprinted after the Ms. Marvel issues, Destiny reveals she’s predicted Ms. Marvel will harm Rogue, Mystique’s stepdaughter.) For fans of Mystique, it is interesting to see her humble and obscure beginnings.

Also interesting are the two issues of Marvel Super Heroes Magazine. #10 would have been Ms. Marvel #24; the completed cover for #24 is included. #11 is a condensation of Claremont’s plans for Ms. Marvel’s non-Avengers career before Rogue steals her powers, including scraps with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the Hellfire Club. It’s too condensed to be enjoyable, but it’s good to see Claremont’s intentions, and I appreciate Marvel reprinting the two relatively obscure ‘90s anthology issues. (It has some quintessentially ‘90s art that is a jarring shift, though.) Also included is Avengers Annual #10, famous for Rogue’s debut but included here because it shows Carol dealing with her lost powers and memories and excoriating the Avengers for letting her be mind controlled and abducted by the son of Immortus in Avengers #200 (not included in Essential Ms. Marvel, presumably because of page constraints).

This is Claremont, through and through. A powerful female character, some verbal tics and a great deal of unnecessary verbiage, and several mind control plots. For those who love the Claremont of the ‘70s, this book is well worth your time. For the rest of the world, it’s a bit more missable.

Rating: (2 of 5)