Stan Lee presents: Ms. Marvel!
Death is the Doomsday Man!
Death is the Doomsday Man!
Chris Claremont, Author.
Jim Mooney & Joe Sinnott, Artists.
I. Watanabe, Letterer.
Jan Cohen, Colorist.
Archie Goodwin, Editor.
Cosmic Awareness.
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.
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 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. |
| 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 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. |
| 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 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 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. | |
 | 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 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.
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:
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!
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