Captain Marvel #5, by Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), David Lopez (art), Lee Loughridge (color art), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Sadly, there really isn't even implied punching in this issue, merely the suggestion of punching to come.I'm not going to get Carol fighting some giant, sentient, world poisoning creature. She is going to fight an entire space fleet. That's pretty cool, I guess. Turns out Torfa has Vibranium, which I had always sort of assumed was strictly found on Earth, because that's how things seem to work in the Marvel Universe, but no. And someone, in a bit of a rush, has been using unsafe mining techniques to get it, and the by-products of that are what poison people. Carol's learned all this just as J'Son has decided to hell with evacuating the healthy, he's just going to kill everyone and take the Vibranium so he can build an invincible fleet. But he'll still be a loser. The leader of the people on Torfa, appears to submit and send Carol away, but does so in such a wording Carol takes it to mean she should do what she does best: beat up bad guys. And yes, I believe Captain America would understand her decision, and I agree with it, so go Carol!
Well, this is promising, but we'll have to see how the big fight issue goes. I am optimistic that, given the chance, David Lopez will make it look real good. He gives Carol some of the most delightful scowls. Also, I just noticed this, but, remember how when they originally gave Carol this uniform, they also gave her that short mohawk? And then nobody who drew the book ever drew her hair that way? Emma Rios and Felipe Andrade each gave her a full head of hair down to her waist, which is about as far from what Ed McGuinness was drawing on the covers as you could get. Well, Lopez normally draws her with a full head of
hair that goes down to about the base of her neck. But when she puts on that mask/helmet thing, it pushes her hair up into the mohawk. Which doesn't necessarily make sense from a practical standpoint, but what the hey.
(lettering) - Here, once again, we see the average, everyday working crook, being kept down by a snooty superhero. Won't someone think of the robbers who have to carry their own duffel bags laden with cash? The ones who don't have henchmen to take the punches and do the grunt work?
Kamala doesn't stop any poor, hardworking bank robbers today. She's a little busy, first with the little robots the Inventor has been sending out to find her, then she has to meet with the dreaded Sheikh Abdullah to discuss her recent wayward behavior. Against both her expectations and mine, Sheikh Abdullah is quite receptive to Kamala's vague explanation that she's been violating curfew because she's "helping" people. He advises that if she is still very much a work in progress at "helping" people, she should find a teacher. Otherwise, simply do the very best she can in a proper manner. She's getting her chance, because the Inventor - an attempt at cloning Edison that was unfortunately crossed with a cockatiel - has riddled the sewers beneath Jersey City with traps. Also alligators, which he is controlling to see how readily he can make things behave against their nature. Oh, and Wolverine shows up, which turns out to be hilarious. I mean, Logan does the teaching thing about the value of planned falls versus unplanned falls, and prioritizing.
But mostly it's Kamala geeking out about meeting Wolverine, and trying really hard to impress him and make friends. Which mostly seems to confuse Logan. Now they have to fight a giant alligator.
I completely agree with Logan that it's horrible the story and him and Storm in space, fighting an alien that farts wormholes lost out to a romantic story about Cyclops and Emma Frost in Paris. At the same time, I'm completely certain that's how the results would have turned out on the Internet here in real life. Freaking Internet, man.
No Adrian Alphona on art month, but we have Jacob Wyatt, who does a fine job. His Wolverine doesn't look so good, but Logan doesn't look particularly good in it when Todd Nauck draws it, either. So I'm going
to chalk it up to the new costume being stupid, and ugly. Beyond that, Wyatt did fine. He draws a perfectly
good alligator, as well as a good giant talking Edison-bird. His style reminds me a bit of Adventure Time,
mostly with Kamala, when she's in costume. Some of the big-eyed looks she gets would fit right in on that show. The one after she punches the gator, or the panel after that, when she's checking on it because she's
worried she killed it. Also, there's a nice sort of mirroring panels in the book. The ones on page 7, when
Kamala peers into the manhole, then drops in, and the ones on page 17, when Logan tries his "planned fall".
In each case, there's a small square panel at the top, showing the moment of truth, so to speak, and then a tall, narrow panel of the drop. Kamala's just shows her landing, with the scarf trailing behind, while Logan's shows him trying to angle so he lands smoothly. Because he has to worry about injuries now, and she doesn't. Also, he's experienced enough to know how to do that, and I doubt Kamala is an expert diver.
I liked the scene between Kamala and Sheikh Abdullah. It played against expectations, but also shows people are rarely just one thing or the other. Sheikh Abdullah might very well believe in following all those rules about the women having to be separate from the guys in the mosque, but that doesn't me he's strictly about putting women in the kitchen or whatever. Kamala also isn't some faceless entity to him. He's been teaching there for 10 years, she's been there willing or not for probably the enitre time. He has a decent bead
on her personality. So he doesn't try to stop what she's doing, and there's not even any indication he thinks she should stop. Again, I think he knows her well enough to know when she says she's helping people, she really means it. And he can appreciate that, so he tries to offer encouragement and constructive advice.
2 comments:
I'm not reading Captain Marvel, although I probably should be...but Ms. Marvel has been a helluva lot of fun.
I'm not sure I can entirely recommend Captain Marvel. It's solid, and very pretty with Lopez as artist, but never quite seems to reach that level that Daredevil or Ms. Marvel do.
Ms. Marvel is fantastic, though. I feel Daredevil's 3-year reign as my top ongoing is in serious jeopardy.
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