Friday, July 19, 2019

1977 - Ms. Marvel #4



Ms. Marvel #4



This female fights back!
America's newest super-heroine sensation!
Ms. Marvel.
The final hour!

Ms. Marvel #4

Stan Lee presents: Ms. Marvel!
Death is the Doomsday Man!

Chris Claremont, Author.
Jim Mooney & Joe Sinnott, Artists.
I. Watanabe, Letterer.
Jan Cohen, Colorist.
Archie Goodwin, Editor.



Cosmic Awareness.

Cosmic Awareness (Mar-Vell)
Inside the cave where she obtained her powers, Ms. Marvel is attacked by the Doomsday Man while she is distracted after recovering her memory and realizing she really is Carol Danvers. As she is damaged by its shots, she finds out that the Doomsday Man is stronger than her and that she is not as invulnerable as she had thought.

She keeps thinking of her previous battle with the Doomsday Man in outer space and how that battle led her to this cave where she remembered her true identity. Because of that, she does not notice the arrival of a badly hurt Destructor, also known as Professor Kerwin Korman, who managed to escape from AIM and travelled here in search of Kree weapons his equipment have detected.

Meanwhile, at Kennedy Space Center, the General sends Astronauts Salia Petrie and Major David Adamson in search of two unidentified objects that fell from space and are emitting potentially lethal radiation that could affect a good part of Florida. Salia is worried because her friend Carol disappeared earlier, but obeys the command and goes to investigate.

Ms. Marvel #4
Ms. Marvel is running out of options and is barely able to stay out of the Doomsday Man's reach. She uses the wreckage of the Kree Psyche-Magnitron that transformed Carol into Ms. Marvel to hit the robot, but she is getting tired, and the Doomsday Man keeps hitting her with its blasts.

During the battle, Ms. Marvel has started to think of herself as Carol Danvers, and she uses her recovered memories to recall all she knows about the Doomsday Man. As Security Chief at NASA, she had access to Dr. Kronton's Project Doomsday Man. She had shared with him her concerns about such a strong robot getting out of control, but it did get out of control before she could press on her demands, and the Doomsday Man was reportedly destroyed by the Silver Surfer. She suspects the late Dr. Kronton had indeed secretly done something to stop the Doomsday Man if it ever went out of control.

Ms. Marvel uses Carol's knowledge of the robot's design and her Kree abilities to locate the place where such a failsafe control could be stored inside the robot. She manages to extract the control box from the back of its head, but it falls to the ground when the Doomsday Man catches Ms. Marvel's scarf and throws her away. Since she does not know the frequency the device operates in, she needs to operate it manually, but she is too weak to reach it before the robot does. However, she throws a rock that hits the failsafe control's correct button right in time and causes the Doomsday Man to go inactive.

Then Ms. Marvel's Seventh Sense starts warning her of danger, but the Destructor uses that moment to knock her out with his Tachyon Beam. He is getting desperate because, even if his sensors keep detecting immense power, he cannot find any Kree weapons, as all the machinery present is completely destroyed. He finally finds a box that does not contain a weapon, but something even better, the power source of the Psyche-Magnitron.

Ms. Marvel is just recovering from the Tachyon Beam attack and fails to stop the Destructor from opening the box. The energy released from it damages Professor Korman's mind, causing him intense pain and making him lose his five senses. What is left of Korman lashes out with his Tachyon Beam and causes a cave-in, making it impossible for Ms. Marvel to rescue him.

Ms. Marvel starts to feel the heat from the radiation even though she is usually unaffected by heat or cold. She will not risk a second exposure to the Psyche-Magnitron's radiation and tries to escape, but the power source explodes before she can get to safety. Multiple explosions destroy the cave with Ms. Marvel still inside.

The radiation levels drop quickly afterward allowing Salia Petrie and Major David Adamson to get close to the ruins of the destroyed cave. There, they find an unconscious Carol Danvers mumbling about the Doomsday Man and Ms. Marvel. Carol is taken to the Space Center hospital, where she will be expected to answer quite a few questions about what happened.

Three days later, Carol returns to New York City, having convinced NASA Security that she had nothing to do with the Doomsday Man. Just as Ms. Marvel knows she is Carol, Carol is now aware that she is Ms. Marvel. As she goes into her office wishing she could be sleeping instead, she receives a call from her friend and Psychiatrist Michael Barnett, who tells her he knows everything about Ms. Marvel and that he wants to talk to Carol about it.



The Good and The Bad (and The Weird).

 
The Good.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
The action. This issue is really action packed. It starts with the Doomsday Man's ambush and ends with a large explosion that destroys the Psyche-Magnitron's cave (if we do not count two pages left for two epilogues). Carol does not have an easy time in this fight, and she has to use her intelligence and every trick she knows to defeat the invincible robot.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
NASA. The focus on NASA was a good fit for this book, as it uses Carol's history and her current job as Editor of Woman Magazine, and also gives her a strong foe in the Doomsday Man. It also brings her close to the Psyche-Magnitron for a second time.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
The Psyche-Magnitron. This device's explosion gave Carol her powers. It is interesting to see her exposed and affected by it once more. Anything can happen afterwards. Perhaps she will lose her powers. Perhaps she will become stronger. Perhaps she will become something entirely different.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
Woman. Even amidst all the action, and even with the writing team changes, the plot has managed to stay close to Carol Danvers's job at Woman. She is still working on the first issue of her magazine, and that is the reason why she is in Florida. It would have been easy to center on Ms. Marvel's side of the story, so it is nice to see Carol and her job have not been forgotten.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
The art. Jim Mooney has taken over as the artist. It is bad that we lose John Buscema's art, but Mr. Mooney's art is very good, too. I think he manages to create distinctive faces for each character. The General, Professor Korman, Dr. Kronton and the background NASA staffers all look very different. David and Michael look a little more similar, but that is because both are the handsome hero type. Jim Mooney is also good at drawing bodies in movement; Carol is in a constant battle during most of the issue, but she is not drawn the same way twice.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
The colors. Most of the story happens inside a cave with a lot of metal lying around everywhere. This could have made the colors in this issue very boring, but Janice Cohen used a nice selection of different colors and shades to make this book look exciting. There is subtle shading in the cave's floor and walls, and in the pieces of the Psyche-Magnitron and the Doomsday Man. Even Carol's hair has some great shading. Jan did not take any shortcuts when coloring this issue, and it shows.
 
The Bad.
The Bad (Rogue)
Carol's release. Given Carol Danvers's previous positions inside Military and Intelligence agencies, her current role as a member of the Press, her sudden disappearance from NASA's installations, and her presence in an area where high levels of radiation were found, a cave exploded and the inert body of the Doomsday Man is lying, it is very unlikely that she would have been let go in just one day, if ever. Especially as she surely did not have any reasonable explanations for her involvement in these events. Any friends she still had at NASA would have held her for longer out of respect for the job she did as Chief of Security at the Cape.
 
The Weird.
The Weird (Storyteller)
The Destructor's arrival. I am not saying it could not have happened, but still I feel it was weird to have Professor Korman arrive so quickly at the cave in Florida when he was last seen in New York City being brainwashed by AIM. He mentions he escaped and then travelled to the cave in search of Kree weapons, but he could have stopped to rest a little, as he was not in such a hurry the last time he investigated the cave. I suppose things got a little more urgent after he was defeated by Ms. Marvel and betrayed by AIM.



The Endgame.

The Endgame (Carol Danvers)
After the previous issue showed some plot transitions and down time for Carol, now we get all super-hero action. And it was well drawn action, at that.

Carol's civilian life was portrayed and affected by the story, too. It was because of Carol's job that she went to Florida, and it was thanks to her previous job that she got the idea on how to defeat the Doomsday Man.

Ms. Marvel gets two dangerous adversaries in this issue, and is forced to use skill, strength and smarts to survive.

And her link to the Kree and their Psyche-Magnitron is explored and used to create another threat for her and possibly modify how her powers work in the future.

This issue has it all. Even a cliffhanger once Carol returns to her normal life in New York City.

The final grade is:

The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Bad (Rogue)The Weird (Storyteller)

6 Tracys, 1 Rogue and 1 Storyteller.



Next issue:
Ms. Marvel battles the awesome power of the Vision in a race against time -- with twenty million lives hanging in the balance.
The bridge of no return!


Wednesday, July 3, 2019

1977 - Ms. Marvel #3



Ms. Marvel #3



Ms. Marvel.
Death is the Doomsday Man!
The world's new super-heroine sensation in her deadliest battle yet!

Ms. Marvel #3

Stan Lee presents: Ms. Marvel!
The Lady's not for killing!

Chris Claremont, Writer.
John Buscema, Artist.
Gerry Conway, plot.
Joe Sinnott, Inker.
John Costanza, Letterer.
Don Warfield, Colorist.
Archie Goodwin, Editor.



Cosmic Awareness.

Cosmic Awareness (Mar-Vell)
Ms. Marvel and Professor Kerwin Korman, the Destructor, are hurt but willing to continue fighting each other. The Destructor can attack from a distance, and his Tachyon Blast is strong and fast enough to be a threat to Ms. Marvel. Both fighters are aware of the other's capabilities, so there is no quarter asked nor given. Ms. Marvel is surprised because her foe knows of her Seventh Sense power, but she knows she must focus on saving the innocent bystanders, so she uses her strength and also her intelligence to defeat the Destructor from afar as quickly as she can.

As soon as the Destructor is defeated, Ms. Marvel gets a strong headache, but it suddenly disappears just instants before AIM agents burst from under the street to retrieve Professor Korman, since he knows too much about them to be allowed to be captured. Ms. Marvel hears Korman's name, but is unable to recall anything about him or the AIM agents despite having a feeling that she knows them from somewhere. The AIM agents successfully distract her by endangering innocents and flee with Professor Korman.

A frustrated Ms. Marvel flies away and randomly reaches the roof of the Daily Bugle, where she muses about her human and Kree nature. At that moment, the headache returns and she transforms into a very confused and equally migraine-ridden Carol Danvers. Carol ignores her co-workers and finally tells Mary Jane Watson that she is feeling awful and has a lot of work to do, so MJ stops using Carol's office as hangout.

Ms. Marvel #3
Carol gets to work and even cuts off her Psychiatrist friend, Dr. Michael Barnett, when he tries to schedule a meeting to tell her how in their last session he found out she really is Ms. Marvel. A note in her desk told her about NASA planning to secretly send a team of Astronauts to Skylab, with a female friend of hers in the crew. She sells this story to Jonah Jameson as an exclusive to both the Daily Bugle and Woman Magazine and is sent to Cape Canaveral to cover it.

At AIM's New York's headquarters, AIM agents use a Psycho-Conditioner to try bring Professor Korman's mind under their control as punishment for failing them. They also decide to stop the secret NASA flight by launching a rocket containing one of their more powerful assets to Cape Canaveral, one that even they fear and that may not be entirely under their control.

Carol is welcomed to Cape Canaveral by her friend, Astronaut Salia Petrie, who gets Carol to rest at her place for a night to recover from her headaches. Salia and Major David Adamson escort her to Kennedy Space Center, but Carol gets another migraine and gets away from them, becoming Ms. Marvel shortly after.

Ms. Marvel realizes she is near the place where she was "born", or where her memories began, but quickly turns her attention to her Seventh Sense visions of the rocket sent by AIM. She flies to outer space to stop the rocket, realizing her costume protects her from the environment and allows her to breathe. When she tries to come inside the rocket, a giant fist hits her and she almost is thrown away, but she destroys the rocket's engines, forcing her enemy to come out to battle her.

She recognizes her enemy, the Doomsday Man, a very dangerous robot created by an US scientist named Dr. Kronton and supposedly destroyed by the Silver Surfer. Their battle wrecks what is left of the rocket and both of them fall to the planet. Ms. Marvel is unable to escape the fall as the Doomsday Man grabs her scarf.

Ms. Marvel wakes up later, having survived atmospheric reentry. Her Seventh Sense lets her see images of a cave and she leaves the Doomsday Man behind to find what her visions try to tell her. The cave has remains of destroyed machinery, and she recognizes the place as it was before its destruction, when she was present during a battle and an explosion that changed her from what she was then into what she is now. Her memories are restored as she realizes she is Carol Danvers.

While she celebrates that she has a past to call her own, the Doomsday Man, now unable to stop NASA's launch, goes after her, as AIM programmed it to see Ms. Marvel as a target to be destroyed.



The Good and The Bad (and The Weird).

 
The Good.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
The art. I suspect this will be a fixed comment as long as John Buscema and Joe Sinnott stay as the artistic team. The action looks fantastic thanks to them, and they make the calm moments look good, too. And they get extra points for every panel where they draw Jonah Jameson.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
The pacing. This could have easily been a bad point instead, but it managed to stay as a good thing. The middle part of the story is a transition from what came before in Gerry Conway's first two issues and what is to come in Chris Claremont's. Mr. Conway gets the plot credit, but the break is so pronounced that I believe the last third of the plot was guided more by Mr. Claremont, as he may have had strong reasons to send Ms. Marvel to Cape Canaveral as soon as possible, while Mr. Conway's story was more rooted in New York. Noticeable as this break is, John Buscema's art and Chris Claremont's words make it work, with the middle part of the story as some type of calm before the storm, with big action right before and after.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
The colors. They are still very far from what Marie Severin achieved in Ms. Marvel's first issue, but Don Warfield's colors here are a big improvement from his job on the last issue. He uses contrasting colors to make elements stand out more, and some subtle shading that makes the visuals more interesting. The shading on metallic surfaces deserves special mention, as it looks so much better than the solid colors he used before. The Psyche-Magnitron ruins look very nice with the different shades of green he used, and the lighting on Doomsday Man's first full appearance looks great with that background of... planets... seen from an extra-atmospheric orbit.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
AIM. What's not to love about those yellow bee keepers? Thanks to them, we get to see all sorts of big technology used against Ms. Marvel, with drill vehicles coming out of New York's streets, or space rockets being launched from the Bronx. They do not let anything go to waste: they grab Professor Korman to use him for their own purposes, just as they must have done with Doomsday Man some time before and with the Scorpion just recently. Even though they are faceless bee keeper agents, we get to see how they work as a group and how some individuals react to the group's projects, with some visibly upset at having the Doomsday Man stored in their facilities.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
Ms. Marvel's combat abilities. The Destructor may be a normal human being, but his armor helps him survive Ms. Marvel's punches, and his Tachyon Blast makes it difficult for her to get close to him. In a situation where she has to protect the bystanders from such a dangerous foe, she makes use of everything around her to surprise the Destructor, defend herself from his blasts and attack him from a distance.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
Doomsday Man. We could ask ourselves how a human scientist could create a robot who is able to fight the Silver Surfer and, ultimately, survive. But we are better off accepting Doomsday Man's power and enjoying the epicness of its battles. The space battle in this issue was just the beginning, with more to come in the next issue. After this, Doomsday Man will forever be linked to Carol Danvers.
 
The Bad.
The Bad (Rogue)
Carol's clothes. Not even the perfect John Buscema can be perfect all the time. It seem he really likes Carol's clothing style, because he draws her in basically the same thing all the time. Last issue before she went to get dinner with MJ (in all fairness, getting a sleeveless version while they had dinner) and when she went to see Dr. Barnett, and in this issue when she got to the airport at Cape Canaveral and the following day when she goes to NASA's installations (in all fairness, the text about it being "the next morning" could have been added by Chris Claremont while the drawings actually depicted a single day). In both issues, the same style is worn by her in her memories of the battle between Yon-Rogg and Captain Marvel, too.
The Bad (Rogue)
The change of writers. While getting Chris Claremont is something good for any book, the change was not completely seamless. Whatever AIM's Plan Beta One was we will never know, perhaps because the Scorpion turned out to be unable to defeat Ms. Marvel. And unable to climb down the statue where she left him after last issue's battle, as the complete lack of mentions about him in this issue would indicate. And then there's that thing with Mary Jane...
 
The Weird.
The Weird (Storyteller)
Mary Jane Watson. Yes, she has behaved like a clingy little sister in Gerry Conway's attempt to make her Carol's best pal, but even she deserved a better send off. Instead, she is scolded by Carol and goes away, never to be seen again in this book. One can only wonder what she must have thought all those years before she met Carol again at Avengers Tower.



The Endgame.

The Endgame (Carol Danvers)
This is an interesting issue, as we see the plot change from Gerry Conway's to Chris Claremont's. As Mr. Conway was in the middle of his unfinished story, the change seems kind of drastic, as Mr. Claremont comes in and things he will not use get thrown out by the middle of the issue, or even completly ignored. This was a risky move, but the execution did not come out as bad as it could have.

Even in this rushed change of the guard, we got a balance of story from Ms. Marvel's and Carol's lives, with events influenced by and affecting both of them.

In this issue we see Ms. Marvel showing nice heroic qualities and also doing amazing feats. She prefers to save lives than to capture villains, which happens to be something an Avenger should do on instinct. Likewise, she is able to go to outer space and survive in it under her own power (even surviving a fall all the way to the planet). These two things that seem natural to Ms. Marvel at this point in time will be tested in the future, when she is at her lowest point thanks to depression and alcoholism. And she will fail those tests then. It is a story for another day, but during the events of Live Kree or Die Carol neglects to protect innocent civilians to go after the Kree bad guys, and she is unable to reach space when she tries to fly all the way to the Moon. During that all-time low she refuses to call the Avengers for help so she can impress Captain America with her abilities, and in this issue we learn that Carol Danvers tends to do things without asking for help. Also in this issue we see her ignoring a non-immediate menace to innocents to follow a call from the site of the Kree Psyche-Magnitron. In a single, early issue we see just how heroic she is, but also how she has flaws that help define her character.

The final grade is:

The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Bad (Rogue)The Bad (Rogue)The Weird (Storyteller)

6 Tracys, 2 Rogues and 1 Storyteller.



Next issue:
Death is the Doomsday Man!
And that's just where the book starts off -- wait'll you see the finish!


Thursday, May 23, 2019

1977 - Ms. Marvel #2



Ms. Marvel #2



This is it!
The untold secret origin of Marvel's great new super-hero sensation!
Ms. Marvel.
Alone against the Scorpion and the Destructor!

Ms. Marvel #2

Stan Lee presents: Ms. Marvel!
Enigma of fear!
Featuring the stunning secret origin of Ms. Marvel!

Gerry Conway, Writer/Editor.
John Buscema & Joe Sinnott, Artists/Storytellers.
Joe Rosen, Letterer.
Don Warfield, Colorist.



Cosmic Awareness.

Cosmic Awareness (Mar-Vell)
Professor Kerwin Korman shares his data on Ms. Marvel with a trio of AIM agents who want him to capture her. Korman thinks they are underestimating her and that there may be need to actually kill her to remove her threat, as he goes on to list her abilities, even the Seventh Sense power he suspect she possesses.

The reason AIM wants her alive (surely it has nothing to do with her being a very good looking female) is because they want her to reveal the secrets of her suit, which they realize enhances her natural abilities and allows her to fly. When Korman's prize for capturing Ms. Marvel is negotiated, the AIM agents say he has not proven himself in the field, so he could fail just as the Scorpion did, revealing at this moment that they retrieved the injured Scorpion and have him captive.

Korman ends the negotiations by showing just how capable he can be when acting as his new alter ego, the Destructor, whose main weapon is the strong and incredibly fast Tachyon Blast fired from his helmet.

Mary Jane Watson is wandering on the offices of the Daily Bugle again, and she visits the office of the Woman Magazine Editor, Carol Danvers, who is working late hours. They decide to go have dinner together, which would be a nice change of pace for Carol after having to listen to her boss Jonah Jameson all day long.

The older Carol manages to see how the younger Mary Jane's usual behavior is just a mask that hides a smart woman behind the fun-loving girl look. When asked how she found her self identity, Carol talks about her time as a Security Chief at Cape Kennedy, meeting the alien Captain Marvel, her involvement in his battle against Kree Colonel Yon-Rogg and how all of this led to her change of careers, from Security Chief to writer. As she finishes her story, she starts feeling bad and goes home, but she passes out in the taxi before she can arrive.

Professor Korman has travelled to Florida to visit the cave where Captain Mar-Vell fought against Colonel Yon-Rogg. He has studied Ms. Marvel since her debut weeks earlier. He has acquired a lot of information about what happened in that cave and has come to analyze the energy residues, which indicate the amount of atomic power released back then was very high. He has deduced some of Mar-Vell and Yon-Rogg's power is now yielded by Ms. Marvel and plans to get it for himself.

Back at AIM's base, the Scorpion has recovered much faster than the AIM agents expected. When he escapes, his pain drives him berserk and he starts threatening everyone who crosses his path, even real guards and civilians at the department store that works as a front for AIM's base. The AIM agents fear the Scorpion will go after Ms. Marvel, ruining their plans to capture her alive, and proceed to activate Plan Beta One.

Carol Danvers wakes up in her apartment, having a dream she has been having lately and with no idea of how she got there after passing out in the taxi. Worried about her sanity, she visits her friend Michael Barnett, who happens to be a Psychiatrist. Trying to find what caused her memory issues, he proceeds to hypnotize her so she can recall her past.

Ms. Marvel #2
A hypnotized Carol tells him about Mar-Vell and Yon-Rogg's battle and how she got hit by radiation after an explosion, even though Captain Marvel shielded her with his body. The doctors said she had not been affected at all and she went back to her job at Cape Kennedy, but now she did not fit in anymore, so she left that job and started writing. For months after that, she had suffered intermittent depression, until one day she blacked out at her home. Michael realizes this is the point where he will find the answers he seeks as she is reluctant to remember what happened afterward. He makes her continue despite the pain she feels and then she tells him how her body changed as she transformed into Ms. Marvel when she was unconscious.

Michael thinks this is just a delusion and decides not to tell Carol what he discovered, for fear of triggering a black out spell, but she reacts badly when she is told the hypnosis did not work and faints, becoming Ms. Marvel right in front of Michael.

She quickly leaves and goes to find the Scorpion (most likely, guided by her Seventh Sense). The Scorpion is easily defeated and left trapped above a very tall monument just moments before Ms. Marvel is hit by the Destructor's Tachyon Blast. Ms. Marvel will not be taken as a prisoner so easily, but the Destructor will put everything he's got into the fight, so they end up knocking each other out, falling into unconsciousness just inches away from each other.



The Good and The Bad (and The Weird).

 
The Good.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
The art. John Buscema and Joe Sinnott do it again. The backgrounds clearly tell us where the characters are. The character's expressions are detailed and help the story. The poses are dynamic and powerful. What else can I say? These are masters who know exactly what they are doing and take no shortcuts.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
The storytelling. Just like they did with the art, the Buscema-Sinnott team got another winner in the storytelling department. Each panel leads nicely to the next, and we can always know where the characters are by looking at the elements the artists include in them.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
Kerwin Korman. Professor Korman is shown as a very talented scientist. His inventions are good and have been bought by HYDRA as weapons. He also knows the importance of knowing one's enemy, and has studied Ms. Marvel meticulously, even suspecting the existence of her Seventh Sense power. He is smart enough to realize just how much of a threat Ms. Marvel really is, unlike the overconfident bee keepers. He does not let emotions cloud his judgment, and has his eyes fixed on the prize, Ms. Marvel's powers, which he wants for himself. This is the kind of focused enemy who would work well as a regular antagonist, posing a significant threat to a hero.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
AIM. I simply love AIM's bee keepers. They will have a history of clashing with Ms. Marvel, and it all begins in these early issues. Intelligent as they are, I still love how their secret bases always end up being destroyed either by Ms. Marvel or other characters in her stories, like the Scorpion in this case.
The Good (Tracy Burke)
Carol's backstory. In this issue, we see more of Carol's past and how it had an effect on her current situation. First she tells Mary Jane about her time as Security Chief at Cape Kennedy, where she met Captain Marvel and Colonel Yon-Rogg. Then we see the Destructor visit the cave where Mar-Vell and Yon-Rogg fought each other and discover the high amount of radiation still left in that place. Finally, Michael learns about that battle and how an explosion changed Carol, giving her the powers of Ms. Marvel. As I love the Kree, I like how this ties Carol to them.
 
The Bad.
The Bad (Rogue)
The colors. Don Warfield's colors are such a decline in quality after the previous issue's colors by Marie Severin. His color selections are boring, unnatural or simply not well combined. Or all three. The interior of a cave is colored bright green; an elevator's cables are bright yellow; a department store's bricks are colored bright pink. And Michael's hair goes from brown to almost red, while his eyes are left colorless in some panels. Ms. Severin did such a great work in the first issue, so the bad job done by Mr. Warfield in this one feels even worse.
The Bad (Rogue)
The Destructor. Professor Kerwin Korman may have studied Ms. Marvel for some time, and he may have created a Tachyon Blast that is strong enough to damage her and fast enough to hit her, but still he gave himself the uninspired name of "the Destructor" and a horrible costume that is only slightly better than the one worn by the Unicorn on early Marvel Comics. The armor is functional, but I do not think the design would make the Destructor memorable or iconic. This shows that even John Buscema cannot win all the time.
The Bad (Rogue)
Michael Barnett. Michael is presented as Carol's friend who happens to be a Psychiatrist. When she realizes she needs to look into her headaches, black out spells and memory issues, she goes to him. Even though a Psychiatrist treating a person close to him is not the best idea. It would be fine if the cause were evident and easy to treat, I suppose, but he then uses hypnosis on her. Besides not respecting those boundaries, he also interrupts a session with one of his patients when Carol asks him to. A patient who clearly shows low self-esteem and anxiety. I know bursting into the doctor's office is more dramatic than waiting for one's turn, and it shows Carol's desperation, but this is not a good way to introduce a new character we are expected to see as competent and responsible.
The Bad (Rogue)
The flashback panels. The flashback panels are just fine, but there is a lack of consistency in their portrayal in this issue. When Carol and Mary Jane are talking, the flashback panels have round borders, so they stand out from the other panels. But when we see Carol's memories on Michael's office, the panels' borders are square.
The Bad (Rogue)
The use of non-English words. There is a joke where one of Michael's patients, Mr. Fisbein, is said to feel like a schlemiel. Looking this up on the Internet, I see this means "incompetent person", "fool" or "stupid, awkward, or unlucky person", and is commonly used as a Jewish joke. But the problem is that this word is spelled correctly once, and then is almost immediately spelled incorrectly as "schlemeil". I always dislike when other languages are forced into the story but not used correctly, and this time I can spot it even though I know nothing about this language.
 
The Weird.
The Weird (Storyteller)
Michael's patient. As previously mentioned, Mr. Fisbein is shown as a person who feels like a schlemiel, and this is done as a joke. While I am interested in mental health awareness, I am not against mental health jokes, as a comic book is not necessarily the place to educate people about this. But I am more curious about the level of detail used in the visual design of this character. It is almost as if this was meant to be based on some famous Jewish guy from real life, but I have no idea on whom. And now I would very much want to know if he is indeed someone from the real world. If someone knows if there is something more behind Mr. Fisbein, please let me know.
The Weird (Storyteller)
The distance units. One of the AIM agents who review Korman's data on Ms. Marvel says the technology on her suit is light-years beyond AIM's. Light-years. Usually, people measure the advance of technology in time units, like "years". I suppose "light-years" sounds more impresive and perhaps also geekier, but light-years measure distance, not time. However, I pass this off as "weird" instead of the more probable "bad" just because of the tiny chance that this AIM agent is referring to the technology race as an actual race, making distance an appropriate way to compare advances. Yes, surely that was it.



The Endgame.

The Endgame (Carol Danvers)
This issue contains a lot of information. It counts as an "origin story", while it also has its own independent plot.

Carol's backstory is revealed to the reader in smaller doses, first as she tells it to Mary Jane, then as Professor Korman visits the site of Yon-Rogg's last battle, and, lastly, as Dr. Michael Barnett hypnotizes Carol. I liked this approach, as it was not all told as a single information dump, but integrated with the current plot.

It is good that they are not stretching the mystery of Ms. Marvel's identity for too many issues, as that could get boring real quickly.

This issue has some calm moments, but also some good action scenes, like the Scorpion's escape, Mar-Vell and Yon-Rogg's battle, and Ms. Marvel's fight with the Scorpion and the Destructor.

Even though Ms. Marvel gets to defeat the Scorpion very easily for the second time, it is good to see that the Destructor will be a more dangerous foe. He may not be able to resist Ms. Marvel's attacks, but has a way to damage her, so this can be dangerous for her if she does not react quickly.

I really enjoyed this issue. It features AIM getting ready to go against Ms. Marvel, it introduces Korman as a serious enemy for Ms. Marvel, it shows her origin and how her powers are related to the Kree, and it explores more of Carol's life while solving the mystery that has caused her problems for some time. It is a lot of good content in just one issue.

The final grade is:

The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Good (Tracy Burke)The Bad (Rogue)The Bad (Rogue)The Bad (Rogue)The Bad (Rogue)The Bad (Rogue)The Weird (Storyteller)The Weird (Storyteller)

5 Tracys, 5 Rogues and 2 Storytellers.



Next issue:
The final climactic chapter in the mystery of Ms. Marvel -- featuring the menace of --
The Doomsday Man!