I don't know what prompted Marvel to give a supporting cast member of Captain Marvel her own ongoing. I think Marvel's prior attempts at a superheroine solo book were things like The Cat (canceled after 3 issues) or Black Widow as a co-headliner in a book with The Inhumans. Was Carol Danvers really popular with Marvel readers of the '70s? However it occurred, she got her own book, and it lasted 23 issues. Gerry Conway wrote the first 2 and plotted the 3rd, which Claremont wrote (John Buscema drew all 3.) After that, it was Claremont all the way as writer, with Jim Mooney as the penciler for the largest number of issues (though also, Sal Buscema, Keith Pollard, Carmine Infantino and Dave Cockrum, among others.)
What I find most curious is, initially, Carol has no idea she's Ms. Marvel, nor does Ms. Marvel have any idea who Carol Danvers is. Carol will be doing something, having lunch with Mary Jane Watson (who Conway tires to establish as a supporting cast member, a young woman who looks up to Carol, but that gets largely dropped by Claremont.) Carol gets a bad headache, most likely passes out and transforms to Ms. Marvel. Ms. Marvel goes to confront whatever premonition her "seventh-sense" provided, while wondering why she occasionally thinks of herself as an Earthling. She's a Kree warrior, after all.
Claremont dispenses with that near the end of issue 3, as Ms. Marvel finally remembers Carol while trying to stop AIM from interfering with Skylab's launch by unleashing the Doomsday Man. Then he takes an approach more similar to the Hulk: Carol and Ms. M share the body, and Carol grows to steadily resent the havoc the super-powered warrior plays with her personal and professional life.
Carol's supposed to be editor of Jonah Jameson's Woman magazine. Hard to do properly when she's being dragged away to stop jewel store thieves or being assaulted by a lethal winged warrior. Ms. Marvel doesn't see the problem. She's saving lives, that's more important. This comes to a head at the end of year 1, when Salia Petrie, an old friend of Carol's, is in danger, but Ms. Marvel insists on being involved in a struggle between Moses Magnum and two other losers, against some sorceress named Hecate. She reasons the battle could destroy the world, so needs of the many outweigh the few, or the one. Carol is not impressed by this logic.
Rather than pursue the notion of Carol being stuck sharing her body with someone she despises, who forces her way to the forefront of the mind and usually screws up Carol's life in the process, Claremont instead has Hecate help Carol finally realize she and Ms. Marvel are the same person and always have been. I guess Carol's mind created this break inside itself to cope with the exposure to the Psyche-Magnitron. You'd think that would make Carol's guilt even worse. She can't foist the blame on someone else. But she's so darn happy about this revelation that she seemingly forgets entirely about her friend who died alone in space after her shuttle exploded.
(Claremont will reveal in the last issue that Salia survived, saved by some robot with a malleable orb for a head. No, not Ruby Thursday from the Headmen, a different robot with a malleable orb for a head. And he wants to mentally subjugate Carol like he did Salia, because Claremont.)
That inner conflict swept aside like an empty hamburger wrapper, Claremont shifts to, well, not a lot. He introduces Carol's parents mostly to show her dad is of the mindset women belong in the kitchen, but that never comes up after the 2-issue arc. A couple of love interests pop up, but whether it's the therapist guy, or cocky photographer Frank Gianelli, or whoever, none of them are terribly memorable. Nor do they get very far. Mar-Vell finally makes an appearance in issue 19, if you were waiting for that (I wasn't.) Dave Cockrum gives Carol the black outfit with the yellow lightning bolt during his two issues as artist. The editor job falls apart in the penultimate issue.
The closest thing to a major subplot is mysterious figures trying to find and destroy something Carol has. That runs through the background for months, but most of the time Frank Gianelli's investigating it somewhere off-panel. It ultimately brings Carol into conflict with Mystique, and then the Hellfire Club, but the book gets cancelled before there's any resolution. (The final two issues would be published years later in Marvel Super-Heroes, culminating with Ms. Marvel's defeat at Rogue's hands.)
One thing that doesn't help the book is Ms. Marvel doesn't get a rogue's gallery. Mostly she faces one-off fights against guys in powered armors, or villains on loan from other characters. Scorpion, Tiger Shark, M.O.D.O.K., Ronan the Accuser in the issue with Mar-Vell. Mystique stays in the background. Doomsday Man's became a recurring foe in later volumes, but Carol only faces him the once here.
Deathbird's probably the closest Carol gets to an arch-foe, and she's a) always working for someone else, and b) Claremont doesn't get very far into her character or motivations, beyond revealing she's some sort of alien and she has some limited notion of honor. She's a decent visual, and the battles are presented as back-and-forth struggles, but that's about it.
2 comments:
I don't know what prompted Marvel to give a supporting cast member of Captain Marvel her own ongoing.
As I understand it, it was a combination of jumping on the "women's lib" bandwagon just as Marvel had done with kung fu and blaxploitation, and -- as they'd done with She-Hulk and Spider-Woman -- trying to secure a female version of a male character before someone else did.
I find it a bit bizarre that Marvel would lump feminism in with Bruce Lee and Shaft, so I don't know if I believe that, but it was the 70's so who knows.
They both sound plausible. That was kind of the deal with Dazzler, Marvel trying to get in on the disco craze (except I think disco was dying by then.) Maybe Marvel framed it as appealing or trying to attract women readers, but that's probably distinction without difference.
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