1977 - Ms. Marvel #3

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

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.

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Cosmic Awareness.

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.

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.

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The Good and The Bad (and The Weird).

	The Good.
	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 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 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.
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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 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.
	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.

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The Endgame.

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:



6 Tracys, 2 Rogues and 1 Storyteller.

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

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1977 - Ms. Marvel #2

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

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.

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Cosmic Awareness.

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.

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.

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The Good and The Bad (and The Weird).

	The Good.
	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 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.
	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.
	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.
	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 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 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.
	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 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 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.
	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 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.

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The Endgame.

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:



5 Tracys, 5 Rogues and 2 Storytellers.

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

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