What I Bought 11/15/2014 - Part 1

So guys, I got these things in the mail. They're thin booklets, combining pictures and words to tell a story. It's the most extraordinary thing. What do you mean that sounds crazy? OK, fine, I was lying. They mostly only tell part of a story. But sometimes if you read two of them together they tell a story. And sometimes they still only tell part of one. But these two told a story!

Captain Marvel #7 and 8, by Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), Marcio Takara (artist), Lee Loughridge (color art), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I liked both covers, if only for the oddness of Carol doing the horror movie "clutching the sides of her face" pose, but I had to go with this one. The raining cats, er, Flerkens, Rocket's reaction (and the way he's clutching some of Carol's hair), and Carol's grumpy look.

Carol's borrowed a ship from Torfa so she can get back to her ship Harrison, which the Guardians of the Galaxy are supposed to be looking after. Turns out Tic stowed away, and is gung-ho to be Carol's sidekick, over Carol's objections. When they reach Harrison, they find Rocket, who has been messing around with the ship's computer in an effort to make it speak Flerken, since he's certain that's what Carol's cat is. Unfortunately, he also put out some feelers through his contacts about Flerkens, and now there's some alien goo thing attacking Carol's ship to get Chewie. And Chewie lays eggs. Lots of eggs. So it's a Flerken, after all.

From there Carol and Tic try to fight off the attacker from the outside, while Rocket actually makes a game attempt to protect Chewie from the goo that's already breached the hull. Ultimately, Chewie eats most of the goo, because Flerkens apparently have dimensional pockets in them, or can access dimensional pockets. Carol doesn't feel she can protect them, so she leaves all of the Flerkens with some alien pet rescue center. Except Tic and Chewie refuse to be left behind, and you can use those Flerken dimensional pockets to travel, so they pop back up on the ship, and Carol's stuck with them. Unless she shoots them out a torpedo tube, I guess. But she probably won't do that.

I think DeConnick does better when she sticks to these shorter stories that can feed into a larger arc. But she keeps opening with 6 issue stories, which feel longer and slower than they need to be. But I did enjoy this story, though I'm starting to think we should be concerned about Tic, after her comment that she's older than Carol thinks, and her insistence on traveling with her. I'm suspicious, what can I say? I'll wait and see about Chewie being some alien species rather than a cat. It'll depend on what DeConnick does with the idea. How about seeing if Chewie can send a bomb to J'Son, and blow that guy to bits?

Marcio Takara is the artist for both issues, and I know this is a small thing, but it annoyed me that Carol's hair was not a length consistent with how Lopez has been drawing it. He'd kept it above the shoulders, but Takara has it going about halfway down the back. This was one of the things that bugged me about the previous volume's artists (beyond the fact they all varied so greatly in style the book had no consistent visual look), that nobody could be bothered to mention, "Hey, Carol is keeping her hair relatively short." It shouldn't be that difficult. Beyond that, Takara's work is fine. Reminds me a little of Annie Wu in some places, Rick Leonardi in others. Some of the facial expressions are very good - especially Rocket and Chewie's when they're covered with pink slime, or the bit where Tic and Chewie regard Carol with matching skeptical expressions. I do wonder who did most of the work on the alien goo thing, Loughridge or Takara. It's essentially an amorphous black shape, so maybe Takara did the outline and Loughridge colored it? Or maybe Takara did it all with inks.