#CBR11 Book 17-20: "Captain Marvel: In Pursuit of Flight", "Captain Marvel:Down", "Avengers Assemble: The Enemy Within" and "Avengers Assemble: Infinity" by Kelly Sue DeConnick and assorted artists

Total page count: 544 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Back in the summer of 2016, I read what I believed to be the first trade in a run about Captain Marvel, but that turned out to be incorrect and Marvel had just been stupid in how they were rebranding and renumbering their comics. As I came to discover, the reason there was so little back story given about Carol Danvers, her powers and her role in the Avengers, is because despite being entitled Vol 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More, it was by no means the start of Kelly Sue DeConnick's run.

Rather let down by the experience, I put Captain Marvel on the back burner and decided to read other things instead. Then she became the first female superhero to get her own standalone film in the MCU, and it felt like I should probably give her another chance. I always prefer to read the source material before seeing a movie (although honesty forces me to admit that when it comes to the MCU, Captain Marvel is more the exception than the rule. My husband has nagged me for years to read Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America (which forms the basis for much of The Winter Soldier and some of Civil War and that's still firmly on the TBR list). Anyway, I had some of the comics and sat down to read them the weekend before I was going to the cinema to see Captain Marvel. As is sadly the norm for these reviews now, that was more than two months ago now, so my recollection of the various stories is a bit fuzzy.

Hence this review is going to to be light on the various plots of the books and focus more on my reactions to the stories (as far as I can remember them now). All this vagueness makes for thrilling reading, I know. Sorry. I should also mention that if you haven't read these comics before seeing the film, there are some spoilers regarding the motivations of some characters. Nothing major, because the film does its own thing, with mostly the costume and Carol's name taken from the comics, but still - I was able to predict some things that could be considered spoilery.

In In Pursuit of Flight, Carol Danvers actually ends up travelling back in time when trying to set a new flight record, and helps a group of female fighters battle a sinister enemy during World War II. In Down, she reunites with the previous Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and they work together to fight an alien threat coming from the ocean depths. There was also a Captain Marvel/Avengers Assemble cross over focusing on Carol's past, which gave insight into how she got her powers in the first place (in flashbacks), in the actual story, she's having seizures every time she tries to fly and horrible headaches. There is an old enemy of hers staging attacks all over New York and she needs the help of the Avengers to stop the various enemies and figure out what is going on. There was also more of a big space cross over thing, which was less interesting, probably because I suspect it would have helped to read more of the surrounding issues, and they weren't included in the trade.

I read the comics, not knowing all that much about Carol Danvers, and then shortly afterwards watched the film. I've now seen the movie twice, and I really like Carol as a character, both in these comics and in the film. I think it's absolutely abysmal that it took the MCU twenty one films to make one focusing on a woman, but this review is not really the place to go into that. Because it's been two months since I read the comics, it's difficult for me to separate my view of comics Carol with movie Carol. Suffice to say, having now read a lot more of Kelly Sue DeConnick's early run on the title, I should probably go re-read Higher, Further, Faster, More, since I suspect it'll make a lot more sense.

Judging a book by its cover: As this review covers a number of Captain Marvel trade collections, let's just skip over this part. The covers are cool, some using art reminiscent of the golden and silver age of comics. Carol's new Captain Marvel costume looks awesome, so much better than her old "bathing suit" one.

#CBR8 Book 76: "Captain Marvel, vol 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More" by Kelly Sue DeConnick and David Lopez

Page count: 136 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Carol Danvers, who is apparently a hot-shot pilot and one of the Avengers, lives in the crown of the Statue of Liberty (you can do that?) with her sister and niece. When the Avengers find an escape pod from a spaceship with an alien refugee inside it, they decide that Carol be the one to return the girl to her homeworld, as well as take up a more permanent presence in space as a representative for the Avengers Initiative. As she returns the girl to her home planet, she discovers that they are in dire need of help, as much of the populace (already relocated from another planet) is sick and dying. Now the aliens are fighting another forced resettlement and Carol decides to help them.

Considering this is the first trade of a new Captain Marvel run, extremely little was done to explain who Carol Danvers is or what her powers are. At the end of the first issue, there is a brief one page explanation of how she ended up where she is (rendered as a child's drawing), but I really didn't think I learned enough to really feel like I got to know the character. She's brave, she can fly, she's apparently part alien. She likes Star Wars, she has a cat called Chewie (who may or may not be some sort of alien beastie that Rocket Raccoon really wants to murder) and she's a very good pilot. She was possibly in a relationship with Rhodey, the Iron Patriot, but decided to go off and live in space for an unspecified amount of time instead. I just don't think I was given enough to decide whether I even like this character or not.

This trade collects the first five issues of the run and I sadly found the story a bit too disjointed and confusing to entirely engage me. It starts with a dramatic action set-piece and then flashes back to several weeks previous. There is a guest appearance by the Guardians of the Galaxy (who I now care a lot more about because of the movie). I had trouble caring about what happened, even if there were quite a few quips and the art was well done throughout. I wasn't expecting a full and drawn-out origin story just because this was the first trade in an ongoing series, but a bit more back story would have been appreciated. As it is, I'm not sure I care enough about Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel to seek out further issues of this. I have enough ongoing comic books to follow as it is.

Judging a book by its cover: Fairly dynamic cover pose. Carol Danvers with a bit of a Natalie Dormer smirk pulling on gloves and looking bad-ass. I very much appreciate that unlike so many female superhero costumes, there is nothing gratuitous or exploitative about Captain Marvel's costume. It's functional and practical.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

#CBR8 Book 71: "Bitch Planet, vol 1: Extraordinary Machine" by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine DeLandro

Page count: 156 pages
Rating: 4 stars

"In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. Mother Earth, we used to say, before we understood. Space is the mother who receives us, you see? Earth is the father. And your father has cast you out. For your trespasses, your gluttony, your pride, your weakness, and your wickedness are such that you are beyond correction and castigation. Like a cancer you must be excised from the world that bore you. For the well-being of us all, lest your sickness spread. You will live out your lives in penitence and service here..."

These are the words, read by a woman, that the women sent to the Auxilliary Compliance Outpost, an off-world prison colony, more colloquially known as "Bitch Planet". Who is deemed non-compliant? It could be as the back cover of the trade paperback says anyone who doesn't fit in their patriarchally-assigned box, be they too fat, too thin, too loud, too shy, too religious, too secular, too prudish, too sexual, too queer, too black, too brown, or too whatever-it-is-they'll-judge-you-for-today. Compliant women all seem to be thin, demure, white and blond.

The world is controlled by the "Fathers" and anyone who doesn't fit into their ever-changing images of what a good, submissive and compliant little female should be, is sent away to prison. It is a world that wouldn't work if many women didn't also conform to these crazy standards, helping the men police their sisters, mothers, daughters, supporting the internalized patriarchy.

In the first five issues, collected in Extraordinary Machine, we meet a number of women sent to Bitch Planet, and get some glimpses into what some of them did to be deemed non-compliant enough to be imprisoned. Some of the women are offered a flimsy chance at freedom, offered to form a team and compete in the hugely popular, much betted-on, universally televised sport Megaton. Kamau Kogo, a former athlete, now accused of a murder she didn't commit, is asked to assemble a team. She initially refuses, but is persuaded to change her mind by other women in the prison, who want to grasp at the tender straw of hope the proposal brings.

So many Cannonballers have already written excellent and much-more eloquent reviews of this book than I can manage. El Cicco, SavageCat, Narfna, Emmalita, Yesknopemaybe, Jenny S, Alwaysanswerb and Bonnie. It's difficult to come up with anything clever and insightful that one (or several of them) hasn't already said. This is an important, angry and deeply feminist comic. It has many important messages about the way toxic patriarchy brings women down and how it brain-washes ladies into buying into the lies, so many of them in turn help oppress fellow women. The writing is good, the art is deliberately pulpy. The "adverts" at the end of each issue are subversive and great, but also provide terrifying facts about domestic abuse and violence against women in the US today.

I don't know when the next trade is out, but I shall keep my eyes open.

Judging a Book by its cover: Each of the issues of Bitch Planet have stylised and pulpy covers, reminiscent, as Emmalita points out in her review, of the cheap pop art of “girls, girls, girls” comics. There is the silhouette of a full-figured lady who is clearly non-compliant, giving both middle fingers to the world. The pink background shows some of the prisoners on the right side of the silhouette, with the  prison guards and their terrifying busty, and leggy Confessor Nun in a chair with her legs crossed. Above the silhouette's head, naked women wearing helmets, fighting. "Are you woman enough to survive?" "Girl Gangs...Caged and Enraged" printed at various places across the cover, again, calling to mind pulpy exploitation comics. It's a good cover, for a very good book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.