Live Kree Or Die - The Death Of Captain Marvel!

Following the events of the epic Kree-Skrull War, Captain Marvel was once again awarded his own comic which picked up with the numbering of his old series.

This time the talents of Superman legend Wayne Boring were used in combination with new writing talent Marv Wolfman to attempt to kickstart the character, a character Marvel desperately wanted to succeed. (Maybe if Black Goliath had been named "Black Marvel" he'd have been given a few more shots at the big show.) But the series was clearly on a low simmer and going not much of anywhere when with nothing to lose the young up-and-coming talent Jim Starlin was given a stab at the Kree Captain.

Re-introducing his characters from the moon Titan, who had shown up briefly in the pages of Iron Man and Marvel Two-In-One, Starlin at long last had a worthy place to work and to showcase his epic story line featuring the mad god Thanos. And Captain Marvel had a  mission and an enemy worthy of the name. (It's worth a closer look sometime in the future all by itself, I've taken a glimpse here some years ago.) It saved the series and even after Starlin left, the arrival of Steve Englehart and Al Milgrom and later Pat Broderick, kept the title afloat for several more years. (Maybe it was the change of hair color from silver to gold.) By hook and by crook Captain Marvel kept on running throughout the 70's even showing up in a revived Marvel Spotlight after his own title was once again and for all time cancelled. After that there was only one story that Starlin wanted to tell -- the story of how Captain Marvel died.

This final story really began in Captain Marvel #34, the last by Jim Starlin who had done so much to revitalize the character. In that issue Cap must save the world from a deadly government-created nerve toxin named "Compound Thirteen". His opponent is the deadly Nitro a man who can explode his every atom and them recombine them with devastating effects. Defeating Nitro finally by overloading his power by combining it with the energy of the transformative Nega-Bands, Mar-Vell is able to end the threat of the nerve toxin but not without massive exposure which throws him for a loop short term. It turns out to have had long term consequences as well.

Marvel Graphic Novel #1 no less is the setting for the final Captain Marvel story titled "The Death of Captain Marvel". It begins with a reflective Mar-Vell recording his earliest adventures, creating a record of sorts of his life and times. He is traveling with Mentor and Eros to gather up the stony remains of Thanos (who had been killed in an epic battle with Adam Warlock).

They find that the calcified body of Thanos is being worshiped by his demented followers and have to fend off their attack. That attack isn't much but it causes Captain Marvel to reveal a weakness and he confesses to Mentor and Eros that he has cancer, or as the Kree call it "The Blackend".

Soon after Mar-Vell continues to reflect on his life, a life filled with enemies both dead and alive and some few who became allies. Then he begins the grim task of informing his loved ones especially the woman he's come to love -- Elysius. When he attempts to tell Rick Jones of the dire situation, in a precautionary effort to have Jones checked out by experts, he is met with anger and frustration by Jones, an orphan who has suffered a great deal of loss. Later still the greatest minds on Earth look for a cure and like Mentor and his scientists on Titan realize that Captain Marvel has lived so long because of the Nega-bands and their energy, but that same energy makes any treatment nearly impossible. Still they continue to search and reflect on why they have not to this point used their awesome intellects to solve this problem which afflicts all humanity.

As the end nears, the heroes of the Marvel Universe assemble on Titan to pay homage and get in a final visit with the Kree soldier who turned his back on his own people to save the people of Earth many times. It is a grim and reflective group of sundry heroes who gather. Even a representative of the Skrull Empire arrives to bestow a medal on Mar-Vell recognized as their greatest foe. The Kree remain silent, rejoicing it seems that the traitor Mar-Vell will soon be dead.

Finally Rick Jones appears and he and Mar-Vell are able to mend fences as Rick opens himself up to the grief which overwhelms him. The other heroes respect this special relationship and give them time.

The end comes as Mentor announces that Mar-Vell has slilpped into a coma. The heroes assembled in a somber watch for the final moments.

But strangely for the reader those moments expand inside the consciousness of Mar-Vell who is visited by his old foe, the ghost of Thanos who takes him on a journey in which he encounters old foes which he must quickly dispatch and eventually to meet Death itself. Mar-Vell has been coming to terms with the grim reality of his situation, deep in his soul and begins the process of death.

As he embraces Death once and for all, his heart ceases to beat and joining hands with Death and with his enemy-no-more Thanos, Mar-Vell prepares for his final journey.

As the trio travel into a nimbus of light, to a destination beyond human knowledge, Captain Marvel dies and back on Titan the machines are turned off. The heroes bow their heads as the great hero passes and is pronounced dead. The end has come indeed.

When I first encountered Captain Marvel I was a mere lad of ten, just hooking onto the grand mythos of the Marvel Universe and drinking it in totally. I followed the ups and downs of Mar-Vell's varied career for many years thereafter, always regarding him as my "favorite superhero".

When he seemed to find happiness on Titan it was a grand thing. When Jim Starlin returned in the early 80's and created this final story for a hero whose time had passed, it was powerful stuff indeed. I was an adult, a married man with one new daughter and another soon to appear in a few years. This story had impact indeed.

Now I read it again as a much older man, one nearing retirement alongside my lovely wife of forty years, and my two beautiful girls are long since adults who make their own ways into the wide world. I am a man who has since lost his father and who feels the sting of coming death more fiercely each day. This story of Mar-Vell's passing has never lost its potency, its elegance and its profound impact. 

The promise of what might be beyond the veil is a secret I more than ever want to know, and reading and re-reading saga of Captain Mar-Vell of the Kree is a splendid way to reflect on the path of life and its inevitable conclusion.

Merry Christmas Everyone! Be well. 

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Live Kree Or Die - Godhood's End!

The great Kree-Skrull War is a remarkable story by Roy Thomas and a team of artists such as Sal Buscema and his brother John. But the name almost everyone thinks of first is the great Neal Adams.

Apparently after all these decades Roy and Neal disagree about who did what sometimes on this epic, but there's no denying it was exciting at the time and still bristles even all these many many moons later. Neal Adams actually started his run on the title (fresh from his stint on the defunct X-Men) with the cover to issue ninety-two, an issue actually drawn by Sal Buscema.

It is issue ninety-three that's the blockbuster of his series. For a brief moment Marvel toyed with the tantalizing notion to make all of their comics larger twenty-five cent comics. This move lasted a month maybe a little more and then the switch was made to a regular size comic with a nickel increase of for twenty cents total. DC had followed Marvel's lead but stayed with the quarter price longer and many say this is the move that finally once and for all put Marvel into the sales lead in the great contest between the Big Two. I for one loved DC's quarter comics and still regard them as great, but apparently at the time I was a minority opinion.

Whatever the case "This Beach-Head Earth!" is a robust and raucous tale picking up the threads of the story after the apparent dissolution of the Avengers by the Big Three (Cap, Iron Man, Thor) who seem not to be award they have done this. The sudden arrival of the Vision who immediately collapses adds more mystery but then suddenly Hank Pym arrives in his Ant-Man guise and he takes one of comics great journeys into the innards of the Vision to help diagnose and repair him. He does just than and flits away leaving the Big Three to discover how the Vision came to be there.

He tells them of their seemingly to have disbanded the team who went to find Mar-Vell but only find creepy cows who attack them in the weird forms of three of the members of the Fantastic Four. The Vision is able to escape leaving Golaith, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver behind.

The scene shifts to a space ship on which are the captured Avengers and Captain Marvel himself. They have all been captured by Skrulls who attempt to get Mar-Vell to reveal the secret of the Omni-Wave which will allow the Skrulls a profound advantage in their war. But while the suddenly arrived Avengers battle the three Skrulls in the FF forms Captain Marvel uncovers the ruse of Carol Danvers really being his old enemy the Super-Skrull and destroys his Omini-Wave device. Switching schemes the Skrulls then make off with Mar-Vell and the two mutant Avengers leaving Golaith behind, his growing serum having worn off.

In the next issue (ninety-four) the Avengers consult the Fantastic Four to investigate the Skrulls who have deceived them. They realize that the Vision is missing, having slipped aboard the ship of the Super-Skrull who is on his way to unleash a deadly bomb against the Inhumans in their Great Refuge. But a force field protects the Inhumans homeland. The Super-Skrull is incensed and he and the Vision reach a stalemate as the latter resigns himself to Wanda's capture and leaves to get reinforcements.

In a chapter drawn by John Buscema the Super-Skrull heads to his homeworld where he is met with resistance by the Emperor's forces who himself takes the hostages Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel. The two mutants are sent to a bizarre environment occupied by deadly fuzzball aliens and used to force Mar-Vell to capitulate and give the Skrulls the secret of the Omni-Wave. Meanwhile the Avengers  themselves come under direct assault from the government, specifically SHIELD who use agents in high-tech armor, the Mandroids to attempt to subdue the Assemblers. As that battle breaks out, Triton appears out of sewers of NYC.

After the Avengers are finally able to end the threat of the Mandroids they learn from Triton of the threat to the Inhumans and go with him to find Black Bolt who is dealing with other issues in the slums of San Francisco.

They find him and after he bids farewell to the young boy he was helping, Black Bolt remembers how his brother Maximus became mad, it was when Black Bolt himself discovered his treacherous brother helping the Kree to take command of the Inhumans and in a last ditch effort Bolt used his powerful voice which ended the threat but drove his brother mad. Finding the Great Refuge at last the Avengers gain access and Black Bolt destroys the force field with his great voice and then commands the Inhumans to stand down. Once again the Kree are plotting with Maximus and as they flee they kidnap Rick Jones leaving the Inhumans relatively safe but the Avengers declaring that they will carry the war to the stars themselves.

That happens in the ninety-sixth issue as the Avengers commandeer a space ship from SHIELD (Nick Fury is of two minds about their criminal behavior) and head into space. They quickly find the Andromeda Swarm, a vast fleet of Skrull warships headed to Earth. They engage the lead craft and using deception and their array of powers attempt to forestall the invasion.

The emperor of the Skrulls shows them his prisoners Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Captain Marvel who once again deceives his captors  and the Avengers vow to go to the Skrull homeworld and save their allies.

Meanwhile Rick Jones is taken to the Kree homeworld and confronts Ronan the Accuser who puts him in a locked room with the deposed Supreme Intelligence, who itself tells Rick that he is the source of some great power and sends him into the Negative Zone again where Annihilus appears.

And finally at long last the finale. In issue ninety-seven Neal Adams steps aside and John Buscema takes up the last chapter in this grand tale. Rick Jones evades the threat of Annihilus and then is informed by the Supreme Intelligence that he is the source of a great power which can end the war. He sees the Avengers fighting the Skrull armada on the outer reaches of the Earth's solar system, he sees Captain Marvel and the twin mutants held captive by the Emperor of the Skrulls, and then he is pulled from the Negative Zone itself. He is then able to produce from the depths of his memory and imagination palpable dopple-gangers of the four-color heroes of his youth and seemingly the Golden Age heroes (Captain America, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, Blazing Skull, Vision, Fin, The Angel, and the Patriot) battle the Kree.

(Rick conjures Captain America, the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, the Fin, the Vision, the Angel, the Patriot and the Blazing Skull.)

Then Rick unleashes an incredible mental bolt which flies across the universe and stops all the actors in their tracks, effectively ending the war. On Earth the Congressman Craddock is revealed to be the forgotten fourth Skrull who first attack the Fab 4 so many years before. The Supreme Intelligence reveals that the reason the Kree and Skrulls fight over Earth is a recognition of the potential of the human race while they are at an evolutionary dead end. Rick Jones collapses but Captain Marvel is summoned and agrees to merge his lifeforce with the teenager once again reestablishing their cosmic partnership.

With the war mostly all wrapped up, the Avengers are sent to Earth and there they then realize that Goliath, the former Avengers known as Hawkeye is still missing.

But that's another story. One we'll see soon enough. As for Captain Marvel, we have one more story to look at, as it turns out a very important one. 

See you next time. And be good for goodness sake.

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Live Kree Or Die - The Only Good Alien!

The Kree-Skrull War is appropriately celebrated by most as one of Marvel's great early epics of storytelling. It is a story which has its oldest roots in the earliest days of a budding Marvel and a story which at once closes story lines and opens others. But what is often overlooked when this epic is showcased is the significant role that "Our Pal" Sal Buscema played in the early chapters. With inks by himself and longtime ally Sam Grainger as well as veteran George Russos he drew nearly half of the story, but is often forgotten because of the later work Neal Adams did when he famously debuted on the series.

The story by Roy Thomas begins in Avengers eighty-nine in Miami where the Avengers are hunting down the Kree Captain Mar-Vell. After a quick slugfest he is shot by Rick Jones who surprisingly is no longer connected to the Captain by dint of the Nega-Bands. Mar-Vell is swiftly taken to a lab to extract deadly excess radiation which is soon to prove fatal to those around him. This radiation had come about when Captain Marvel was able to finally find a way out of the Negative Zone thanks in no small part to Reed Richards who had himself been trapped there in the pages of Fantastic Four and who Cap had seen escape through a portal to the Baxter Building.

Avoiding the deadly threat of Annihilus Cap makes good his escape but then runs afoul of the Avengers who have answered an intruder alert. They follow Cap to the Cape in Florida where they capture him. Thanks to the Vision his deadly radiation is dispersed. But the story shifts to the distant homeworld of the Kree and we see Ronan the Accuser defy the Supreme Intelligence and activate Sentry 459 who attacks as the story closes.

In Avengers ninety the Sentry takes Captain Marvel and disappears with him as the Avengers get a rundown on the Kree on Earth as well as Mar-Vell's long career.

When they return to the Avengers Mansion they find a distress call from the Wasp saying that her husband Hank Pym, the Yellowjacket is lost in a mysterious green area of the Arctic. The Avengers head north to follow Goliath who had gone earlier to assist, and find a world where time seems to have been lost and ancient pre-historic beasts roam. There they find both Goliath and the Sentry protecting a Kree experiment run by Ronan which will devolve the humans of Earth and remove them as a threat to the Kree Empire. As the story closes we see Yellowjacket himself has been turned into a ferocious caveman.

As the next chapter opens in Avengers ninety-one, Yellowjacket kidnaps his wife Wasp showing more tenderness in his transformed state than Ronan expected.

The Avengers meanwhile battle the Sentry and a mind-controlled Goliath and defeat the latter. The latter captures them all and the Vision and Scarlet Witch are held prisoner and we get a hint of the romance which will blossom between the two. While Yellowjacket battles other scientists turned cavemen for the Wasp, Ronan reveals his scheme to use the atavistic radiation of the Kree outpost to devolve all of humanity into dust. But Quicksilver and Rick Jones are able to bring an attack which stifles that plan while Ronan gets an urgent message that the ages-long Kree-Skrull conflict has broken out again. He leaves to serve and the Senry without instructions shuts down as the transforming radiation disperses and the changed humans return to normal. The Avengers seem to know more is coming soon.

In the next chapter in issue ninety-two the Avengers recover at the Mansion and are shocked to learn that the technicians they saved have taken the story to the authorities. The result is a congressional investigation headed up by a unscrupulous fame-seeking politician named H. Warren Craddock. The Avengers are called to testify before his committee as is Captain Marvel. SHIELD is called upon to see to it that the Avengers and especially Mar-Vell do not elude the public. When Captain Marvel saves Carol Danvers public attention is somewhat more positive to him but she quickly indicates he should come with her to find some measure of isolation from the media. He agrees and Nick Fury allows them unofficially to elude capture.

(This is  a strange array: In addition to Sub-Mariner, Captain America, and the Human Torch, we have Catman, Fighting Yank, Fantoman, the Green Lama and the Heap. They come from several defunct Golden Age companies.)

As the Avengers head off to testify Rick Jones reveals that he has been having some incredibly potent dreams populated with the four-color heroes of his comic book drenched youth. The Avengers refuse to cooperate with Craddock's committee and when they return to the Mansion they find Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man there who voice their disapproval and disband the team effective immediately.

Outstanding stuff, a real nifty blend of adventure and social commentary. Clearly Thomas is attempting to evoke the infamous McCarthy hearings of the 1950's when he creates the loathsome Craddock and the Avengers are the noble types who stand up to the browbeating. But this does call into question the nature of the team as they are officially sanctioned by the United States government. Given the situation one is forced to agree that while it is a strong reaction, the behavior of Cap, Thor, and Shellhead is not totally without merit. We shall of course see that more is at play there, but the uncomfortable nature of the Avengers, a team of vigilantes and ex-criminals who become agents of the government is a sticky wicket indeed.

It's great to see Sentry 459 back in action. Sal does a great job drawing him and his oddball nature of being something more than robot and less than a fully-realized living entity is developed a bit when he's compared to the Vision, another more fully developed enigmatic artificial being.

(Mister Fantastic first enters the Negative Zone in Fantastic Four #51 1966)

As for Captain Marvel, splitting him from Rick was a crucial step in setting up this story. The two of them had evoked the classic Billy Batson-Big Red Cheese combo in the last issues of Cap's magazine and it's nice to see that thread untied going forward. The tie-in to Fantastic Four was also neat and the weird landscape of the Negative Zone did become a bit more fully realized. We'd seen it had some really dark and dangerous denizens in the pages of the FF and now that becomes more fully realized in the larger Marvel Universe.

More next time as after this skirmish the Kree-Skrull War takes over for a blistering few issues. And with the war comes the great Neal Adams.

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