1977 - Ms. Marvel #5

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Ms. Marvel.
Day of the doom wagon!
Ms. Marvel has to stop it -- but the Vision is sworn to defend it -- at any cost!

Stan Lee presents: Ms. Marvel!
Bridge of no return.

Chris Claremont, Writer.
Jim Mooney & Joe Sinnott, Artists.
J. Costanza, Letterer.
Janice Cohen, Colorist.
Archie Goodwin, Editor.

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Cosmic Awareness.

Carol Danvers is in a therapy session with her friend, Dr. Michael Barnett. On her way to work she had a black-out and her Seventh Sense power made her see herself as Ms. Marvel fighting the android Avenger, the Vision, on a bridge at Upstate New York's Stormwind Canyon. A big truck was speeding through the bridge, and she knew that twenty million people's lives were in danger.

When her Seventh Sense flash ended, she had gone directly to Michael's office to tell him about it. Both Carol and Michael know Carol is Ms. Marvel, and they are surprised the black-outs continue even after Carol learned this. As the headaches and black-outs are caused by Ms. Marvel's Seventh Sense, Michael suggests giving up the Ms. Marvel identity before Ms. Marvel takes over completely and stops being Carol Danvers, but Carol does not want to leave the life of super-heroine behind.

As she goes to work to a Long Island Stark International complex, she starts thinking about her own subconscious seeing Ms. Marvel as someone better than her, as she learned once she listened to Michael's record of her hypnosis session. She remembers her old career, and how things changed when Captain Marvel appeared. She goes on thinking about the Psyche-Magnitron explosion that should have killed her even while shielded by Captain Marvel, her new job at Jonah Jameson's Woman Magazine, her headaches, her new identity as the super-heroine Ms. Marvel and her powers, like her costume-assisted flight. After defeating the Scorpion and the Destructor, a battle with the Doomsday Man made her remember she was two people in the same body, Carol and Ms. Marvel.

Once she arrives at Stark International, she interviews Abe Klein, as Tony Stark had another appointment. Her skills as Editor of Woman are evident, but, in the middle of the interview, she is surprised to see the truck from her Seventh Sense flash departing the facilities with the Vision going along for the ride. She is not told what the truck is transporting, but she knows what she saw is going to happen soon. Once she is at home she thinks about this and Ms. Marvel appears even though Carol tries to resist the change. Ms. Marvel is still more accustomed to a Kree life than to life as a human, even though she is one; but she does not waste time thinking too much about this, as she has to stop the tragedy she saw in her mind.

Catching up to the truck, she sees no signs of danger in the area, so she deduces the danger comes from the truck itself. She tries to stop it, as she realizes that they will not simply listen to her warnings, as they may not know who she is. But the truck's driver has been ordered not to stop, and smashes the barricade she created with an uprooted tree. The Vision goes out to battle her. Even if her costume resembles Captain Marvel's, her actions mark her as an enemy. She continues the fight at the same time as she tries to inform the Vision about what she saw with her Seventh Sense, but she does not know any specific information that would help her case be more believable and focuses on trying to defeat the Vision.

Somewhere else, the Vision and Ms. Marvel's fight is observed by MODOK, leader of a faction of AIM, who is now interested in the heroine who has already interfered in AIM's plans a few times.

Ms. Marvel is unable to defeat or convince the Vision, and he uses his intangibility powers to shock her system, leaving her unconscious, but only for a short time. She flies ahead and sees the Stormwind Canyon Bridge. She now understands the danger she foresaw. The truck has dangerous cargo that could end a lot of lives if released closer to the city, so the only option is to stop the truck before it crosses the bridge, as the cargo would only do minimal damage if released in its current location.

Some time later, the Vision is flying ahead of the truck, as he expects more attacks. He is surprised to see Ms. Marvel already recovered and fruitlessly trying to convince him once more. Her attacks have little effect on him, so she resorts to using a trap she had set up under the bridge before the Vision arrived. Tricking the Vision into phasing through the bridge, she catches him in a hidden field generator that knocks him out, leaving her free to stop the truck. The driver uses the truck's defense systems, but Ms. Marvel manages to stop Tony Stark's unstoppable super-truck.

She soon discovers a bomb hidden on the truck's door, but throws it away right before it explodes. As she ponders the existance of an inside man at Stark's planting the bomb, the driver attacks her with a blaster gun and attempts to shoot the cargo cannister. Ms. Marvel was surprised because her Seventh Sense did not warn her of the danger. She tries to stop the driver, who does not seem to care about releasing the cannister's contents while he himself is so close to it. Ms. Marvel's punches are not stopping the driver, which makes her think her recent second exposure to the Psyche-Magnitron's radiation may have affected her powers. She manages to destroy the driver's blaster but is too far away to stop him from using energy beams shot from his eyes to destroy the cannister. Only a quickly-recovered Vision is able to stop the beams from reaching their target. A final punch from Ms. Marvel reveal the driver to be a robot, explaining his unexpected resistance to her punches.

The two heroes wonder who sent him on this mission to kill so many people, while MODOK keeps watching them and plans to enslave Ms. Marvel soon afterwards.

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The Good and The Bad (and The Weird).

	The Good.
	The action. I would say that this one is even better than the previous issues. Both the Vision and Ms. Marvel get some really great action scenes. Their flying and fighting poses are very well done and flow from one to the next naturally.
	Woman. This book has not lost sight of Carol's work at the magazine, and I love that. The first issue of Woman is ready to be sent to the printer. And she is already getting more content for the next one.
	The art. Jim Mooney and Joe Sinnott do really nice art in this issue. There are different settings in this story, and they all look equally good: city, Doctor's office, woods, bridge. The people have recognizable faces and expressions. The poses for normal people and for the combatants are dynamic and strong.
	The Vision. Usually, new books have Spider-Man guest-star in the first issues to boost sales. Ms. Marvel had Peter Parker and some of his friends, but no Spider-Man. In this issue we have one of the mighty Avengers, which is less usual. And it is not just any Avenger, but one of the most powerful Avengers, the Vision. Besides being visually interesting with his long cape and the bright combination of colors of his costume, he also provides a big challenge for the book's heroine. Ms. Marvel would have a very hard time trying to match the Vision in a straightforward display of strength, so she has to use her intellect, strategic mind and even Kree technical knowledge to get him out of the fight for a short time. And let's not forget that this event helps the Avengers be more aware of her existence and her status as an ally.
	MODOK. It seems that I add AIM to the "good" list whenever they appear. MODOK is not the current leader of AIM, but he is still related to them. And it is still a good thing to have AIM/MODOK in this book. He is not directly involved in the action, but he observes how one of his plots is foiled by Ms. Marvel. And he promises to get more involved with her, which is good from a storytelling point of view.
	Stark International. The use of Tony Stark's company is a great way to show Carol Danvers in the bigger Marvel Universe. There is no need to actually show Tony Stark himself, just having his company appear in the story makes the connections happen.
	Ms. Marvel's Seventh Sense. Comic books stories often have to rely on hard-to-believe coincidences for the plot to advance or work. In this case, Carol happens to be at Stark International when a heavily fortified truck leaves with very dangerous cargo. But other books would have the action happen at exactly the moment the hero is present. With Ms. Marvel's Seventh Sense power, that can be easily avoided. As the story is presented, if she had no such power, she would have been at Stark's but she would not have noticed anything out of the ordinary. Some time later, millions of people would have died thanks to MODOK's plan. So her power not only helped save many lives, but also saved this story from relying on coincidence alone.
	The Bad.
	The colors. It is hard to believe this issue was colored by the same Janice Cohen who colored the previous one. The colors in Ms. Marvel #4 were perfect, and very impressive given the limited palette available to the colorist. But this issue's colors seems very rushed. There is hardly any shading at all; and, when it is used, it is not consistent: Ms. Marvel's hair will have some shading in some of the pages, but will be colored solid yellow in the rest. The art provided wonderful opportunities for Ms. Cohen to show her true skill but they were not used; blasts and energy fields have very bland colors. I hope that in future issues Janice Cohen's work goes back to the superb level she showed on #4.
	The Weird.
	Mike's suggestion. When it is clear that learning the truth about her double identity will not stop Carol's headaches, Mike is quick to suggest that she should give up her life as Ms. Marvel. He cares for Carol as a friend, boyfriend and Therapist, and he thinks there is a chance that Carol's personality will be lost if Ms. Marvel decides to be dominant the whole time, but this still comes as a very quick decision for something so big. More research should be made before asking her to do this, but he is very certain that this and nothing else is the solution to her problem. I am not conflicted by the way he started helping her with her headaches as he already was her boyfriend and the problem was not clearly related to Psychology at first. But this issue shows that he may not be able to separate his feelings from his duty.

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The Endgame.

This is the first issue after the Kerwin Korman and amnesiac Ms. Marvel story concluded. The first four issues centered on Ms. Marvel's Kree origin and Korman's attempt to get more power by using Ms. Marvel, but now we are free to go wherever the writer may take us. I think it was a very good first post-origin issue.

A link to the Avengers is introduced by having the Vision in the story (and Tony Stark mentioned). Ms. Marvel fights against him and has trouble staying on top, as he is physically stronger and has more attack options than she does. But this only forces her to use her brain to incapacitate the hero. With all of this happening and even an instance of her Seventh Sense power, new readers could start reading here and catch on quickly.

A link to the earlier stories is the inclusion of a small branch of AIM. MODOK is no longer the leader of AIM, and he was not around in the first four issues, but now he makes his entrance and he will definitely become an important adversary for Carol in the future, with his interest in her starting in this story.

Another ongoing plot is Carol's partial rejection of Ms. Marvel's persona. She has not fully accepted her other self, and this seems to be causing her strong headaches. This will be looked into later.

This is a self-contained story with enough things happening to keep everyone interested. It shows Ms. Marvel's current status and also presents things that push her into the future. It is a well-constructed glimpse of things to come.

The final grade is:



7 Tracys, 1 Rogue and 1 Storyteller.

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Next issue:
And Grotesk shall slay thee!

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1977 - Ms. Marvel #4

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

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.

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Cosmic Awareness.

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 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.

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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.

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The Endgame.

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:



6 Tracys, 1 Rogue and 1 Storyteller.

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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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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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