The original run of Ms. Marvel lasted 23 issues. This volume comprises #15-23, the infamous Avengers #200, Avengers Annual #10, plus several surprises as well. Apparently, when the series was cancelled, issues #24 and #25 were already in the can. #24 finally saw print in Marvel Super Heroes #10 (Jul ’92) and #25 in #11 (Oct ’92). Those two stories are slotted in after #23, and precede three pages from Avengers #197, one and one third from #198, and two from #199 which lead into #200.
The final four pages of MSH #11 serve as a direct prelude to Avengers Annual #10 and explain exactly why Rogue was battling Carol Danvers and threw her from the Golden Gate Bridge to be rescued by Spider-Woman in the first place. (The very last page of what should have been Ms. Marvel #25 was updated from a 1992 perspective which foreshadowed Carol Danvers’ transformation into Binary.) The volume ends with a story from Marvel Fanfare #24 which serves as a coda to overall saga, as Carol Danvers learns of Mar-Vell’s death and pays her final respects.
It’s nice to have all of these story pieces assembled in chronological order under a single cover at long last.
The introduction is written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, who chronicles the current adventures of Carol Danvers. I like the character, despite (or perhaps because of) her various changes, but I don’t buy her current title. This is largely due to the fact I’m reluctant to buy comics written by “new” writers. However, the introduction to this volume was so well-written that I likely try a Captain Marvel tpb the next light week I have.
No discussion of this run of issues would be complete, I suppose, without at least a mention of Avengers #200 and Avengers Annual #10. [Google “The Rape of Ms. Marvel” to find the essay by Carol A. Strickland originally published in LoC #1.] For me, it was less the rape angle than the incest angle which turned me off, but it was a story that never should have passed Marvel editorial, much less the Comics Code Authority.
As I understand it, Michelinie wanted to explain Carol’s mysterious pregnancy as being caused by the Kree Supreme Intelligence, but Shooter found that explanation to be too similar to a recent What If…? story, so he concocted the explanation that saw print. The plot was attributed to Shooter, Perez, Layton and Michelinie, but it was Michelinie who wrote the script. It is my theory that Michelinie purposefully added the loopholes that Chris Claremont eventually exploited in Avengers Annual #10.
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Got this collection. Love it.
Not really liked Carol since she ditched the blue with red sash look.
We should get to Avengers #200 in the Avengers And There Came Another Day thread......in about a year(!)
Take a look at the above mentioned Avengers thread though - we're up to his Avengers writing debut....and actually he starts out really quite strong!
Captain Comics said:
Oh, Shooter can be a good writer. He made Legion of Super-Heroes a viable strip. On the other end of his career he did great work on the Gold Key characters at Dark Horse. Perhaps that's why his mistakes stand out so starkly.
I once spoke briefly to Jim Shooter at a convention back when he was still Marvel's EIC. I found him open and opinionated. Sadly I did not mention Ms. Marvel but I did talk about Hank Pym!
Anyway, a bigger question should be "Why was Ms. Marvel written out of The Avengers in the first place?" With her book cancelled, she was a freer character than the Wasp or Scarlet Witch. She was a physical powerhouse with links to the Kree. She was a modern woman not reliant on any man.
She just became another super-heroine removed from the team to keep it just Jan and Wanda! See: the Black Widow, Mantis, Moondragon and Hellcat!
Philip Portelli said:
She just became another super-heroine removed from the team to keep it just Jan and Wanda! See: the Black Widow, Mantis, Moondragon and Hellcat!
Is it that they didn't know how to write women and couldn't handle more than two? Prior to that they couldn't handle more than one on a team!
Did they think they still had a majority of prepubescent boy readers? Who else would object to more women heroines?
The plot of Avengers #200 was credited to "Shooter, Pérez, Layton & Michelinie". However, the mysterious pregnancy storyline started in #197, by Michelinie. According to Mark Gruenwald the child was originally going to be the Supreme Intelligence's, and Shooter ordered this changed as he thought it too similar to the recent What If? #20 (which featured the Avengers).
Shooter has a post on Avengers #200 at his website here in which he says he agrees with the criticisms of the issue and doesn't remember it. One of the comments quotes Gruenwald's remarks (from a "Mark's Remarks" column), and another explains what the similarity to What If? #20 was.
The plot idea - a machine intelligence forces a woman to bear its living child - sounds inspired by the film Demon Seed (1977), which is described at Wikipedia. (Wikipedia tells me the movie was based on a novel by Dean Koontz. I've neither seen the movie nor read the novel.)
Reportedly at the end of Demon Seed (spoiler warning) the child speaks with the computer's voice. Possibly it was Michelinie's intention that the child would be the Supreme Intelligence itself in a physical form. That would explain why in the finished issue the child is his own father.
Supermegamonkey's page on the issue has a link to a critique of the issue by Carol Strickland, to which I owe my knowledge of Gruenwald's paragraph.
I don't think it's fair to lay all the blame at Jim Shooter's feet.
The plot change ordered by Shooter meant a last minute re-write of a double-sized anniversary issue which had to meet an extremely tight deadline. An "11th hour" plotting session happened which must have involved Shooter, Michelinie, George Perez, and Bob Layton, (since they all get plot credit), as well as Avengers' editor Jim Salicrup. Shooter claimed on his blog in 2011 he doesn't remember being involved in the plotting at all, but said if any of the others remember him being there, then he was (and David M. said he was). Frankly, that could have been a 15 minute meeting and one of many Shooter had on a given day.
I'm not trying to excuse Shooter's part in it. He was the EIC, and this happened on his watch. He ordered the plot change, and I believe, as Michelinie said, he helped with the plotting afterwards. Avengers 200 was horrible, and he deserves some share of that. But Michelinie came up with the plotline in #197, as Luke said. I would say he deserves the lion's share of the blame. He came up with the idea of Carol being impregnated by someone she did not willingly have sex with.
Richard Willis said:
In 1980? Of course they thought that. And they probably weren't off by much. Certainly the vast majority of the readership was male then. And I'll point out that in the next few years after #200, Jan became team leader, they added Tigra, She-Hulk, and Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), who would also lead the team later on.
To his credit, Shooter agrees it was horrible and as EIC takes full responsibility for it.
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