The reinvention of Captain Marvel has been one of the best recent moves from the House of Ideas, even if the sales figures don’t always bear that out. Taking the crackerjack ex-military pilot Carol Danvers out of her ridiculously impractical thong and giving her a much more iconic and relevant role in the Avengers and superheroics in general seems to have kickstarted an earnest effort to bring in female readership and take a few steps back from the crass oversexualization of comic book women that seems to be embraced over at their Distinguished Competition (por ejemplo: Harley Quinn). The All New Marvel NOW initiative, slated for early next year, will include new books starring Black Widow, Elektra, She-Hulk, and even a brand new character stepping up to take Carol’s old moniker of Ms. Marvel.
The Captain isn’t being left behind, either, although she will be taking a break for a few months after this week’s Captain Marvel #17 wraps up Kelly Sue DeConnick’s first volume. She’ll be relaunched with a new artist around March, but Filipe Andrade has given the book a fond farewell in this very inspirational issue.
The events of this series have led Carol Danvers to a strange point in her life – she’s a hero beloved by the city, but she’s getting evicted from her apartment and she’s completely lost her memory, thanks to a weird brain glitch in her half-alien DNA. She’s replaced a lot of the facts, histories and Avengers case files – enough to function as a superhero properly – but she has no emotional connections to the people around her. She’s struggling with the process of rebuilding her identity in the midst of unprecedented public adulation – a weakness despised by “absolute objectivist” Grace Valentine, a tech-success story from Missouri with an avaricious streak so pronounced that, in the span of a couple of days in New York, she goes from successful CEO to full-on supervillain. Her New York Beat Magazine profile was scrapped in favor of more Captain Marvel praise, and her downward spiral of jealousy (and perhaps too much red wine – a notion I really like, that someone got too drunk one night and accidentally became a world-famous super-criminal) prompts her to organize a drone assault on the Captain Marvel ‘key to the city’ ceremony. Cue some ass-kicking and a Spartacus moment for Carol that delivers her some strength.
DeConnick is imbuing Captain Marvel with all the best aspects of superheroes – kindness, pathos, inspiration, hard-won triumph over personal obstacles – in a way that could feel like she was pushing too hard to sell us on her to the cynical among us. But she seems to know how much is riding on Captain Marvel’s public profile. Marvel Comics has a lot of great female characters, but none of them have been particularly iconic, and the perception was that they could never sustain their own solo titles. They’re now making a concerted effort to change that perception, and Captain Marvel needs to be their Wonder Woman. This issue feels like it’s accomplishing that goal. She’s got so much more presence about her than she did wearing the thong – the red, gold and blue costume redesign is utterly majestic, completely respectable and really damn snazzy.
Carol first shows up in his issue at a school to pick up her friend’s 8-year-old daughter Kit (the world’s biggest Captain Marvel fan), and it’s a full page image of quiet lushness that I can’t stop looking at. Andrade’s artwork is likely an acquired taste for most – it differs drastically from Comic Book Standard (which I might want to start calling Comic Sans), it’s angular and distorted, but it’s very dynamic and impressively emotive once you give it a chance. On this page, which owes a lot of credit to colorist Jordie Bellaire as well, is everything this book is trying to be distilled to one image. It’s beautiful, Kit explodes with joy at her arrival enough to shout her name in logo form, and Carol is trying to comfort a child who has just been bullied. It’s just a lovely bit of everyday superheroism that plucks at the heartstrings in a way you like them plucked.
After another touching scene between intrepid Kit and the intrepid Carol at the end of the issue, the new Ms. Marvel, aka Kamala Khan, is briefly seen in Jersey City, and we get a hint of her shapeshifty powers when she looks partially steroidal. We’ll get plenty more on her in the near future when she gets her own book, and it’s up to us to make sure the perception that comic fans are hostile to women is put to bed forever. I’m planning to give each of these female-led books at least three issues before I decide whether or not I’m on board for the long haul, and I hope you’ll do the same.
