Captain Marvel, Vol. 2: Down by Kelly Sue DeConnick

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I was not a huge fan of the first volume of this series but this volume (collecting Issues 7-12) of Carol Danvers' (Captain Marvel) adventures was just awesome.

Issues 7 and 8 have Captain Marvel teaming up with a previous Captain Marvel named Monica Rambeau, who had held the title of Captain Marvel in the 1980s. This was important because one problem with the last book was its own self-importance about Carol Danver being a female Captain Marvel when there had already been one. But more than that, the story was just great with some mystery and Danvers bringing some awesome action.

Issue 9 is a bit of a one-off but leads into a larger story. It features Tony Stark trying to micromanage Carol Danvers' day only for her schedule to be shot to heck by many catastrophic incidents. Most famously she and Spider-woman (Jessica Drew) team up to fight a dinosaur leading to my favorite line of the book when she tells a cab driver, he's an honorary deputy Avenger. She leaves her cat with him (telling him that it's really Spider-man) and announces, "Now if you'll excuse me...I need to go punch a dinosaur."

How can a book with a line like that not have at least four stars?

However, events take a turn for the worse at the end of Issue 9 and into Issue 10 with a diagnosis of an anomaly in Carol's brain and she's grounded by Doctor's orders, a very painful thing for a woman who loves flying. Here I expected the story to get maudlin and woe as me, bu o Kelly DeConnick's credit...she didn't go THERE. Instead, we get to see Carol fighting back, first ignoring Doctor's orders and then adjusting and then ignoring them when she has to. Of course, she has a villain to face a, and while I've never heard of this particular baddie before, it's still a very compelling story of Captain Marvel continuing to be awesome even while she faces this challenge.

Overall, this book is exactly the type of thing people look to superheroes for. The art takes some getting used to, but other than that, it's perfect pitch. It wasn't trying to be edgy or some sort of polemic on feminism. And to be clear, it's not some masterpiece epic that people are going to insist is "must read" but it is incredibly awesome and a book that really makes this Captain Marvel worth reading about.



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