Marvel is gearing up for The Marvels with some special trade paperbacks this week focusing on Carol Danvers and Monica Rambeau. While the movies aren’t a one-to-one copy of the MCU, they certainly inspire choices, making these collections an intriguing read knowing some of what’s inside will end up on the big screen.
This collection houses Captain Marvel (2012) #1-8 and #17, and The Life of Captain Marvel #1-5. The latter story is particularly important to MCU fans as it was Marvel’s push to reform Carol’s origin and make her part Kree. The former is when Carol was more of a hotshot hero zapped back to World War II.
The Life of Captain Marvel does a lot to humanize and ground Carol’s character in a way we don’t often see in superhero comics. Opening in Maine, writer Margaret Stohl shows us Carol’s life as a kid during the summer which is about as iconic as one can get for an American kid growing up in the last 30 years. There are beach days, getting into trouble, and eating lots of sugar. It’s the American summer many have enjoyed, especially people who live in New England like me. You can practically smell the sea water due to how well these scenes are rendered. Things take a turn for the worse though when family issues, more specifically violent father issues, crop up. This trauma ties into the now well as the comic cuts to Carol beating down supervillains. It’s an opening that humanizes Carol in a believable way and reminds readers even if you have superpowers you can have family baggage like the rest of us.
Carol goes through some personal stuff in this collection.
Credit: Marvel
As Carol deals with this social calamity, an alien threat gains steam in a big way. The art in this series is excellent by Carlos Pacheco. Pacheco does a good job establishing this new alien threat via a familiar alien encounter. As the comic cuts between Carol’s family issues and the alien, there’s a good balance of emotional stress and impending physical danger ramping up the tension of the book until we reach the cliffhanger.
A lot is owed to writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and what we see in the Captain Marvel movie. That makes Captain Marvel (2012) #1-8 and #17 a must-read as well. Dexter Soy draws the first four issues, with Emma Rios joining in on issues #5-6 and Filipe Andrade wrapping up with issue #17. DeConnick grounds the character very well, and right off the bat she’s sparring with Spider-Man and teaming up with Captain America. Eventually, she’s sent back in time which has Captain Marvel chucking grenades and blasting old school planes. It grounds the character while giving her a war-time vibe.
All told, Captain Marvel: The Saga of Carol Danvers contains some of the best modern Captain Marvel stories that clearly inspired the MCU take on the character. There are obviously other ways to purchase these stories, but as a two creator pack, it’s a stellar read.
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