This Friday Flashback is in celebration of two big events:
1. An all-new Captain Marvel #1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick and David Lopez coming in 2014 announced at New York Comic Con.
2. Kelly Sue DeConnick is a special guest at GeekGirlCon ’13 in Seattle. The writer who successfully charted a new course for Carol Danvers and became the first female writer on an Avengers book is a perfect guest for this celebration of women in geek culture.
Captain Marvel is more popular than ever with her own series and appearances in Avengers and Avengers Assemble plus The Enemy Within crossover.
One of my fellow geeks and aspiring writers Mitch Cook (Concrete Martians)wanted to salute the Captain with this review of the first arc that set up Carol Danvers as the new Captain Marvel:
A funny thing about superhero origin stories, they are rarely about the person who transforms into the fantastic being and more about the mask and cape. But not for the new Captain Marvel.
Writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Dexter Soy have been tasked with establishing a character that has already been established and is merely making a name change as a part of a relaunch of Ms. Marvel. Transitions of this kind are never easy but this team has done something unexpected. The first six issues have completed the first arc of Carol Danvers new reign as Captain Marvel in a very compelling way.
Generally, I am not a fan of rehash. How many times have we seen that radioactive spider bite Peter Parker, or the gamma ray blast rearrange Bruce banner’s DNA on that bomb test range?
When I was a kid, like most kids who read comics, I lived for the origin stories. Pre-pubescent boys are especially sensitive to the transformative nature of superhero stories. We wish we could be on the receiving end of that spider bite, or find that medallion in the cave, or are struck by the lightning bolt from another world, just so we didn’t have to live in our tightly selfish world of hormonal confusion. I even re-read those stories during fits of darkness. But eventually, as we get older, we don’t respond to the retelling of the same stories like we used to. We, instead, choose to watch the transitive nature of character development. This can be a rare achievement in comics. A prime example is Frank Miller’s The Dark Night Returns. He took a long established character and practically reinvented Batman. He did it without an origin story too. That single novel turned the comics world on its ear and threw down a challenge to any and all writers to do the same. Now comic books and characters must evolve rather than be reintroduced.
DeConnick has managed to do just that for Carol Danvers. The big surprise here is that she does retell the origin story of Ms. Marvel and the reader comes away with a new and exciting feeling for her in spite of it. Nothing should change for Carol except her costume and name. But after six compelling issues this new creative team has relaunched Captain Marvel by evolving Carol Danvers into Captain Marvel on a level deeper than just the perfunctory. Danvers has been through much in her long tenure as Ms. Marvel so the challenge here was to take something old and make it new without boring rehash. If DeConnick and Marvel had decided to do that then this well established character would have died a swift and senseless death. A risk was needed and this new creative team accepted the challenge with gusto.
Old themes of feminism, time travel, origin, loyalty, dedication and service; all base level traits of Ms. Marvel are explored and the reader accepts these tired notions with glee and is left begging for more. In the end Carol is the very embodiment of Captain Marvel without losing a single element of what made Ms. Marvel great. Even the art is risky. What seems simple and rudimentary, even incomplete by today’s high standards of Marvel Comics, becomes a source of inspired design. Everything is purposeful. The intent here is to take the reader on a journey through time in a reminiscent way. The use of nostalgia is liberally applied but doesn’t turn off the reader. Instead we are taken along for the journey with Danvers as she discovers what it means to be Captain Marvel. What is even more extraordinary is that she does not lose what it means to be Carol Danvers in the process.
Thanks Mitch for your writing, support and allowing me to geek out with you! Here’s to Carol and Kelly Sue as Captain Marvel’s soaring success blasts into the All-New Marvel Now. Watch for an update from DeConnick’s appearance at GeekGirlCon ’13 in Seattle this weekend.
By Editor