Kamala, Carol, and the Marvelous Meetup We’ve All Been Waiting For

Marvel’s Secret Wars event is in full swing… in some comics. Due to publishing schedules, however, a few stragglers, identifiable from the “LAST DAYS OF” appended to their titles, are still putting out stories leading up to the grand collision of multiverses. These “Last Days” series generally follow their protagonist as they try to prevent the collision, or at least rescue or protect as many people as they can. They also try to wrap up whatever storyline was happening, because once they catch up to the Secret Wars event, that comic is essentially over. A new book with the same or a similar title may crop up in a month or two when the apocalyptic event has blown over, but creative teams will likely have changed, and it’s also generally bad form to leave readers hanging. Anyway, while most Last Days have come to a close, Ms. Marvel is still stuck in the midst of them, leaving Kamala bearing witness to a cataclysmic planet-to-planet collision while just trying to take care of Jersey City and protect her family. Don’t worry, though, there’s good news.

Captain Marvel Is Back in Action

Have you ever seen a little girl run so fast she falls down? There’s an instant, a fraction of a second before the world catches hold of her again… A moment when she’s outrun every doubt and fear she’s ever had about herself and she flies. In that one moment, every little girl flies. I need to find that again. Like taking a car out into the desert to see how fast it can go, I need to find the edge of me… And maybe, if I fly far enough, I’ll be able to turn around and look at the world… And see where I belong.

—Captain Marvel #1 (2014).

Last year I was struck with tragedy: namely, the news that the ongoing Captain Marvel series that began in 2012 would end with issue #17. Cap’s enthusiastic fanbase, the Carol Corps, were heartbroken… until we found out that Carol would be coming back in a new series starting in 2014. As of now, three issues of that new series have come out, and I figured it was time to give them some love.

To quote the inimitable Kelly Sue DeConnick, “Captain Marvel can punch through a fucking planet. The challenge is to put her in situations she can’t solve by punching.” The last volume dealt with Carol facing as internal a threat as you can face: a tumor in her brain. While she did eventually overcome it, she had to sacrifice a lot of her memory to do so. She does remember people, but she has difficulty relating to them in the same way she once did. When that series ended, she had begun “tutoring” with her young fan Kit, who was teaching her how to be Carol again.

At the start of this series, Cap seems to be doing better, but she’s still feeling restless on Earth. So when Tony Stark, who recently spent some time in the far reaches of the galaxy himself, suggests that the Avengers should take turns doing a stint in space, even her burgeoning relationship with James “Rhodey” Rhodes doesn’t stop her from volunteering.

So You Want To Read Comic Books 2.0: Captain Marvel

Okay, moving on with my life and focusing on nicer, happier, excitingly feminist things happening in the Marvel comic book world, let’s talk about the new Captain Marvel.

So this lady with accidentally-got-them-from-an-alien-device superpowers named Carol Danvers apparently used to be Ms. Marvel for a super long time. But I’m not worried about that because I have never read a Ms. Marvel comic and know nothing about her and you don’t really need to either. What you do need to know is that she recently decided to promote herself to Captain and she is now in her own series, being billed as Earth’s Mightiest Hero. It is amazing.

So, weirdly enough, the first thing I read in Captain Marvel was… the first page of #1. And this one page actually made me stop and stare for like ten minutes, grinning like an idiot, and then go find my roommate and show her and babble a bit, and then stare a bit more before I managed to move on to page two. Okay, let’s compare Carol as Captain with Carol as Ms. Marvel. The image of Ms. Marvel is much more sexualized, with a more unrealistically proportioned body type, an outfit that isn’t exactly practical superhero wear, and her hair down. The image of Captain Marvel is just so much better to me in so many ways: her one-piece costume, despite still being skin-tight, seems so much more practical for crime-fighting than a bathing suit, opera gloves, and thigh-high boots (have you ever tried to wear them? They slide down the second you put them on!). Her hair is pulled back and up, also a more practical change. And the way she is drawn is less sultry and more confident and powerful. From the first page I was loving Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel.

And then I read the actual story, and I was hooked.