Review: Captain Marvel #1

Story:

“It’s a bold new frontier for Carol Danvers as she soars to new heights in her greatest mission yet—leader of the all-new Alpha Flight space program. Yup, Alpha Flight. As earth’s first line of defense, Carol and her team aim to protect the planet from extraterrestrial threats. But can Carol be a soldier and a diplomat? Especially when an unknown enemy emerges that Carol can’t quite punch.”
Read more about it on Goodreads.

Review:

This is the first issue without Kelly Sue DeConnick and I was really hesitant to read it because I’m terrible with change. But not only is it the writers’ first issue (on Captain Marvel and writing comics in general) it’s Carol Danvers first day on the job being the commander of alpha flight.

I don’t know much about alpha flight other than Northstar was a member at one point (and I hope he shows up at some point because Marvel is really lagging behind on their queer representation). We only get introduced to three of them and the only one I can remember is Puck who Carol connected with in the issue. So if you don’t know anything about alpha flight that’s okay because it looks like they’re easing readers into the new team in.

Pretty much everything else is new too so this is a good jumping on point for new readers. Although there have been a lot of Captain Marvel #1s in the last few years that weren’t really necessary.

The only recurring characters we’ve seen before in a Captain Marvel book is Rhodey who’s there to see her off into outer space and Rocket who shows up for a cameo. I love carol and Rocket together.

Carol is determined that this won’t be a desk job and sure enough as she’s sat in a meeting with some aliens getting bored the alarm sounds and she’s delighted to leave and go tackle the asteroids heading for the station. This is after she’s insulted them and leaves Brand (her new second in command who doesn’t like her) to deal with them.

She’s much happier punching the asteroids than dealing with diplomacy so hopefully that will create lots of conflict for the book going forward. Although it does make you wonder who thought she would be good for a desk job. When she’s going to spend the whole time hoping for an attack on earth so she can abandon paperwork.

These are the same writers as the Agent Carter TV show and they do a good job for their first time writing comics.

The art is good too. It’s the same as the cover, which I always like, so you know what you’re getting. But towards the end the panels get a bit cramped and busy like it wasn’t planned out that well.

I like the slight redesign of Carol’s costume. It’s enough to put their own stamp on it without getting rid of what people liked about it. She’s also had a hair cut and when we see her in her gym clothes she’s got muscles. You don’t see that a lot with female super heroes.

The cliffhanger at the end didn’t grab me though. It turns out the asteroids weren’t nature but an attack and Carol goes off to find the source. But what she finds didn’t have any impact on me. I was a bit confused wondering if we were meant to be impressed or shocked by that. I’m sure issue two will be good but I don’t get what Carol finds so shocking.

This is nothing drastically different than what came before so fans should be pleased and new readers shouldn’t get lost. You don’t need to know her entire back story to understand what’s going on and I don’t think it’s going to go in depth into her back story anyway.

They’re also not assuming any knowledge of alpha flight because they only introduce three characters. The issue is busy anyway and it would have been a mistake to introduce any more.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Next: captain marvel #2

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