What I Bought 10/31/2012 - Part 3

I have no idea for an opening paragraph today. So let's just get to the second half of DeConnick's opening arc for Captain Marvel.

Captain Marvel #4-6, by Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), Dexter Soy (artist, #4, pgs. 1-15), Al Barrionuevo (artist, #4, pgs. 16-20), Wil Quintana (colorist #4, pgs. 16-20), Emma Rios (artist, #5 & 6). Jordie Bellaire (colorist, #5 & 6), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Definitely prefer the cover for issue 4. Little more dynamic than the "people flying/floating" stuff we get on the other two.

OK, so Carol and the Banshees take out the Japanese soldiers with the Kree weapons. Carol figures out the  soldiers were trying to unearth more of it, and she finds something she recognizes, even if I don't (yet). Then her plane reappears. As she flies up to it she finds herself flung into the 1960s, just in time to join up with Helen Cobb and her fellow fliers, who are getting their chance to fly jets as part of the prereq for the space program, thanks to that hunk of metal Helen had previously.  Carol tries to keep her powers under wraps, but she gets Helen suspicions up just by virtue of being a better pilot. Then they find out the jets were a ruse, a sop to keep them quiet. So Helen resolves to steal her piece of metal back, Carol tags along, and she can't keep her powers under wraps any longer. While they're arguing, the plane reappears, and they get flung to the point in time when Carol received her powers. Which leaves Carol trying to decide whether to get involved and help Mar-Vell, maybe keep herself from getting powers. The end result of that is. . . Helen gets the powers, and the time stream is going to have to resolve itself somehow. Once the plane appears again, it becomes a matter of who makes it back first, because the plane is a time machine. OK, I don't understand that, but anyway, Carol makes it back in first, makes it back to her time, and here we are.

So the end result of the arc was to make it clearly Carol's choice to be Captain Marvel. I mean, she could always opt not to use the powers, throw the costume in the trash, Parker-style, but she'd still have the powers. This was a chance to ditch all that, just be a pilot, succeeding and failing on her own basic human abilities. And Carol decided "To hell with that". I'm not sure if it's meant to be because she likes having the powers, because she remembers all the good she did with them, and can't trust Helen to save those days, or if she's just royally pissed Helen was screwing around with her. Honeslty, I don't like Helen much. I can appreciate the self-confidence, but her determination veers too far into ruthlessness. She reminds me of a quote my dad used to describe the '20s prior to the Stock Market Crash: 'Screw your buddy, get that money'. It isn't money that interests Helen, but when it comes to getting into space, or getting super-powers, she seems pretty content to screw over, backstab, double-cross anyone she has to so as to get what she wants.

Unless, of course, she was just doing that to push Carol to embrace who she is, because once they started hanging out in 1961, the timeline was set for their adventure near the Psyche-Magnitron to occur, and so Helen somehow remembered all that. No, I don't know how she'd remember things that hadn't happened yet, and so it sounds a little silly, but that's what time travel does to me.

They switched artists partway through, as you noticed in the credits. Now, generally speaking, I don't mind. I prefer Rios' work to Soy's, and certainly Bellaire's colors to Soy's. Bellaire's colors aren't necessarily bright, in the sense they really leap off the page, but they're considerably less murky than Soy's. And Rios' art has a greater sense of movement. The sequences where Carol is flying have a lot more energy to them, with the cometary cloud of energy surrounding and trailing behind her. The fights, too. Soy's panels seem like a particular moment frozen in time, while Rios captures this sense that a particular panel is a sequence all crammed together. It's the blurring of the fist, or the face as the fist makes contact. It isn't frozen entirely, it's more slowed down. I do think they need more communication between the art teams. Barrionuevo gave Helen close cropped hair, but Rios made it much longer.

I said, generally speaking, I don't mind, and yeah, I'm fine and dandy with the art change strictly on the skills of the artists and my personal tastes. But I do think it's kind of stupid to change artists two-thirds of the way through the first arc. Which comes back to Marvel cramming six issues into 4 months, instead of, here's a crazy idea, six months. Give Soy the time he needs so the book can have a consistent look. I know, way too late to complain about such things now, Marvel's made their stance on the issue pretty clear. Still, if there were really committed to shipping that fast, why not go whole hog with different artists for different timelines? They sort of did that, but not really. Give Soy the present day, Rios the Psyche-Magnitron parts, Barrionuevo the 60s stuff, maybe let Kesel do the WW2 stuff. Or Russ Heath, or there must be someone that would have a suitable look for a sci-fi/war book that could do a couple of issues.