Sunday Splash Page #106

"Marvel's Straining for Big Event Premises," in Captain Marvel (vol. 8) #11, by Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), David Lopez (artist), Lee Loughridge (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

The previous volume of Captain Marvel (which as Kelvin noted in the comments last week, Marvel does count as volume 7) ended in late 2013, after 17 issues. Marvel, showing remarkable restraint by their standards, waited a whole five months before starting a new volume with the same writer. On the plus side, they actually gave DeConnick a consistent artist to pair with, in David Lopez. Having a consistent look helped immensely, as does the fact I like Lopez' work more than I did any of the artists on the previous volumes. He has the type of clean linework I like, and he can draw a good fight scene. There's a fun one in this issue with Carol fending off two crazy people who hate her while her powers are nullified and her hands are shackled.

Carol's still dealing with a loss of memories, although it doesn't get played up too much because this series sends her into space, as the Avengers representative in matters of galactic importance. Carol's mostly dealing with people and places she's never been before, so memory doesn't factor as much.

The first arc dealt with Carol helping a planet of refugees, who were being hassled by Star-Lord's imperialistic ass of a father. I don't think Carol getting crosswise of J'son ever came to anything, since someone else killed the guy shortly afterward. I still felt like 6 issues was more than the story needed, but after that DeConnick shifts back to shorter stories. Two issues about how Carol's cat is not a cat (so this is where that bit in the movie came from). An issue of Carol helping Lila Cheney (seen above panicking about Christmas) get out of an arranged marriage. Then returning to Earth to check in on a sick friend. And team-up with Santa Claus!

I bought the book for 11 issues. Don't know why the splash pages I like best are always in the last issue I bought. The next issue was going to start a tie-in to Black Vortex, some mini-event thing with the Guardians of the Galaxy and those time-lost teen versions of the original 5 X-Men. There's no device known to man that could detect the microscopic amount of fucks I gave about that.