"Child Endangerment, Marvel Style," Captain Marvel (vol. 7) #17, by Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), Filipe Andrade (artist), Jordie Bellaire (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)
I ended up going with what Marvel says for the volume number. It includes Mar-Vell's series from back in the day, plus Genis-Vell's two series (it is crazy to me that guy got two ongoings that ran a combined 60 issues), plus a trio of mini-series that starred Monica Rambeau, Genis, and Mar-Vell (or a Skrull imposter), respectively.
Anyway, this was Kelly Sue DeConnick's first turn as writer of a Carol Danvers' ongoing. It's when Carol took the name Captain Marvel - I wanna say as a result of something that happened during Avengers vs. X-Men? - got the new costume, although almost none of the artists on the book actually drew her with that sort of faux hawk Ed McGuinness gave her for the cover.
This run deals a lot with Carol's past. The first story throws her back through time, ultimately gives her a choice of whether to let her past self get these powers or not. That segues into an old Kree enemy coming back with reality manipulating powers, plus Carol losing all her memories. That woman's brain is the equivalent of the surface of Io. Just a huge, constantly reshaped disaster area. I enjoyed the build up to that, Carol trying to refuse to acknowledge any weakness that might inhibit her, and it backfiring. There was also a two-part team-up with Monica Rambeau that was fun, which also brought in Frank Gianello from Carol's first ongoing series as another way to present problems for her to solve.
It was a mixed bag of a book, although I liked the attempt to build Carol a supporting cast of superheroes and civilians, new characters and old. There were tie-ins to things I wasn't interested in, and I felt like the first arc could have been shorter than six issues. Keep things moving, build some momentum.
The book was not helped by the constant shuffle of artists, none of whom had styles similar to each other. The initial time travel story had at least 3 or 4 pencilers for 6 issues, including Dexter Soy, Karl Kesel and Emma Rios, and it was not a case of each artist drawing a specific time period. Then you get Andrade for several issues, a crossover with Avengers Assemble (which DeConnick was also writing) drawn by Scott Hepburn and Gerardo Sandoval, an Infinity tie-in by Pat Olliffee, and then back to Andrade.
It's too bad, because this book came out less than a year after Daredevil, which would have Chris Samnee as the regular artist to pair with Mark Waid by then. The Matt Fraction/David Aja Hawkeye book started about 3 months after Captain Marvel. That whole Marvel NOW approach of actually trying to giving a regular creative team a book, and just letting them do it. Captain Marvel could have been in a similar vein, but it never developed a style that was distinctly it. Unless mass confusion counts.
They'd try again in early 2014, and we'll take a look at that next week.
3 comments:
Apparently it's volume 7, so Marvel does count those other miniseries you mentioned.
I'm still shocked that this came out six years ago. Six!
Yeah, that was what the Lone Star Comics website said, too, but it just seemed weird to count mini-series.
And it really doesn't seem like it was that long ago, but here we are.
I have long since given up on trying to understand Marvel's numbering so-called system. If they want to count random miniseries no one remembers, then so be it.
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