Higher, Further, Faster, More: the Carol Danvers (Re)Read!
I really should have done this entry BEFORE starting my (re)read project, but I guess that’s no excuse not to do it now! At first it was just about reading the collected editions of her previous comics, but the more I read the more I wanted to read (about her times as Binary/Warbird for example), because so far Carol had led a very long and sometimes confusing life. I’m not even going to touch continuity stuff – like how she worked with Ben Grimm when he was a test pilot, and met with Fantastic Four while she was at NASA, but in the Marvel Fanfare #24 when she walked into the poker game as Carol Danvers, he didn’t know who she was? Aaaanyway.
Like I’ve mentioned in my first post Marvel Masterworks: Ms. Marvel Vol. 1, I was mainly an X-Men reader, and most of my comics was after Rogue so they didn’t include the days when Carol was with the X-Men. So back then, I didn’t know the name Carol Danvers – I’ve read her name at the back of trading cards, but I never remembered it. I only knew of Ms. Marvel as the superhero Rogue got her powers from. This bit, too, I read from the back of trading cards, and I saw in the old X-Men cartoons.
I only became interested in Carol when I started reading the Ms. Marvel (2014-2015) run. Kamala was stanning Carol so much, I started reading Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Captain Marvel run, tried a bit of Brian Reed’s Ms. Marvel run, and then went back to DeConnick and following all the Captain Marvel comics from there on. I’m absolutely in love with Carol now. And since I’ve caught up with her comics as Captain Marvel (the current Kelly Thompson/Carmen Carnero run is awesome!) I decided to go back to her past.
This Woman, This Warrior
What I know about Carol’s past, from various flashbacks (although flashbacks from different era’s comics may contradict each other timeline-wise) or articles that I’ve read over the years: even as a child, she liked assembling fighter plane models, and as a teenager, she had hitchhiked to watch test flights (and got into fights with her father over it.) She was a good student and wanted to go to college (she was aiming for NASA, according to Stohl’s Life of Captain Marvel run) but her father didn’t believe that a higher education was necessary for girls, who just needed to find a good husband. (He even suggested that Carol find an astronaut husband in Stohl’s comic!) He said that he could only afford to send one of his children to college, and it would be Steve, the older of his two sons.
Carol worked part-time for two years but didn’t earn enough to pay for tuition, and her father refused to even loan her the remaining amount. She graduated as her high school valedictorian, and decided to join the Air Force, signing on after her 18th birthday. There, she met Michael Rossi who became her mentor (and love interest for awhile?) She became a Major and a test pilot with the call sign “Cheeseburger”, because she puked her cheeseburger on her first flight, or something like that. She received a Medal of Honor sometime during her career, but I’m not clear as to when/why exactly. Her final mission was to test an experimental aircraft (by Stark Industries!) over Afghanistan, but her plane was shot down.
She was tortured by the local armed force, but she managed to escape and met with Rossi. She told them about her intelligence she gathered in Afghanistan, but was told to keep quiet. Upon arriving in the States, she found that her military flight license was revoked because she was to transfer to Rossi’s intelligence unit. She worked as his partner for awhile, eventually finding her way to the CIA where she worked with Nick Fury and Logan (who was then not yet Wolverine?) At one point she even worked with test pilot Benjamin J. Grimm (The Thing), and Natasha Romanova (Black Widow.)
When her brother Steve died, her father started drinking heavily, and Carol’s relationship with him worsened. Sometime after this she was caught while on mission and sent to the Lubyanka prison – Rossi and Logan rescued her, but she was severely weakened by her experience, and ended up leaving her career in intelligence. She ended up stuck in desk jobs, becoming a security specialist at NASA’s Cape Canaveral. This was where she met Mar-Vell, the first Captain Marvel, who was undercover as NASA specialist Dr. Lawson. Carol distrusted Lawson at first, investigating him, while falling for Captain Marvel. During this time, she eventually trusted Lawson enough to defend him when he was starting to look suspicious, and was humiliated/betrayed when he disappeared (Mar-Vell was called away), and eventually she was kidnapped by Yon-Rogg.
In a fight, Carol was hit by a blast near Yon-Rogg’s Psyche-Magnitron which was just a fancy way of describing what was essentially a wishing machine of some wort. She had wanted to be like Mar-Vell, and she started to mutate without her knowledge, her genes becoming a mix of human and Kree. Perhaps to help her get used to it, she also subconsciously developed a Kree personality. She continued her work at the Cape but she was under high scrutiny because of the whole fiasco with Mar-Vell/Lawson, and after several incidents that she couldn’t possibly stop, she was let go from NASA.
This was when she started her writing career, selling articles to magazines and earning a name for herself as a writer. She ended up writing a tell-all about her experience in NASA, which became a bestseller. Around this time she started to get migraines and blackouts… during which her Kree personality took over and became Ms. Marvel.
And so… my (re)read begins. I know that I’m still in the middle of my DWJ (re)read which I absolutely DID NOT abandon, so I will just be doing all the rereads I want to do according to what I’m in the mood for at the moment. Right now, I’m obviously on a Carol high!
Since comics continuity and publication order can be confusing, this is just how I plan to reread them, and isn’t like the ultimate guide to reading Ms.Marvel/Captain Marvel or anything! I’ll be skipping the X-Men/Avenger comics for the most part, although I may mention them in my other posts. I’ll be including A-Force since there are just 3 volumes, and I love almost all the members, so why not.
Started: August 28th 2018
Updated: March 10th 2019
1. Marvel Masterworks: Ms. Marvel Vol. 1
Ms. Marvel (1977) #1-14
Written by Chris Claremont, Jim Mooney
Art by John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Gerry Conway
2. Marvel Masterworks: Ms. Marvel Vol. 2
Ms. Marvel (1977) #15-23; Marvel Super-Heroes (1990) #10-#11; Avengers (1963) #200; Avengers Annual (1967) #10; material from Avengers (1963) #197-199; Marvel Fanfare (1982) #24
Written by Chris Claremont, Simon Furman, Bob Layton, David Michelinie, George Perez, & more.
Art by Dave Cockrum, Michael Golden, Mike Gustovich, Carmine Infantino, Jim Mooney, & more.
3. Binary & the Starjammers
4. Warbird
5. Captain Marvel: Carol Danvers – The Ms. Marvel Years Vol. 1
Giant-Size Ms. Marvel #1; Ms. Marvel (2006) #1-17, Ms. Marvel Special #1
6. Captain Marvel: Carol Danvers – The Ms. Marvel Years Vol. 2
Ms. Marvel (2006) #18-34, Ms. Marvel Annual #1
7. Captain Marvel: Carol Danvers – The Ms. Marvel Years Vol. 3
Ms. Marvel (2006) #35-50; Ms. Marvel Special: Storyteller; Siege: Spider-Man
8. Captain Marvel: Earth’s Mightiest Hero Vol. 1
Captain Marvel (2012) #1-12
9. Captain Marvel: Earth’s Mightiest Hero Vol. 2
Captain Marvel (2012) #13-17; Avengers: The Enemy Within #1; Avengers Assemble #16-19; Avenging Spider-Man #9-10
10. Captain Marvel Vol. 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More
Captain Marvel (2014) #1-6
11. Captain Marvel Vol. 2: Stay Fly
Captain Marvel (2014) #7-12
12. Captain Marvel Vol. 3: Alis Volat Propriis
Captain Marvel (2014) #12-15
13. Captain Marvel & the Carol Corps
Captain Marvel & the Carol Corps; Captain Marvel (2012) #17
14. Captain Marvel Vol. 1: Rise of Alpha Flight
Captain Marvel (2016) #1-5
15. Captain Marvel Vol. 2: Civil War II
Captain Marvel (2016) #6-10
16. A-Force
17. The Mighty Captain Marvel Vol. 1: Alien Nation
The Mighty Captain Marvel (2016) #0-5
18. The Mighty Captain Marvel Vol. 2: Band of Sisters
The Mighty Captain Marvel (2016) #5-9
19. The Mighty Captain Marvel (2016) Vol. 3: Dark Origins
Captain Marvel #125-130
20. Generations
Generations: Captain Marvel & Captain Mar-Vell (2017) #1; Generations Ms. Marvel & Ms. Marvel (2017) #1
21. The Life of Captain Marvel
The Life of Captain Marvel (2018) #1-5
ghostgrrrl reads 