I'm a writer, of comic books mostly. I live in Portland, OR, with my husband, writer Matt Fraction and our kids, Henry Leo and Tallulah Louise. Our company is called Milkfed Criminal Masterminds, Inc.
a lot of people are tagging this with “film” and “movies” or talking about the magic of moviemaking but i really want to point out that Kidding is a TV show.
i feel it’s important to make this distinction because there’s a common (sometimes subconscious) thought that TV is a lesser form of digital art compared to film, but television, especially recently, has been phenomenal and it deserves proper credit as a storytelling medium, as well as a craft just as capable of amazing work like this
We open this issue with our good Captain Marvel, AKA Carol Danvers, walking dramatically out of a spaceship, surrounded by allies. It seems that they’re hiding from someone, but they don’t have to wait very long until they are noticed by the very people they’re trying to avoid.
This doesn’t deter Carol.
After making a quick Star Wars reference, we get a fight not only between the Cap and bad guys, but it extends to an all-out brawl among all the people gathered.
Carol takes this chance to jet out of the chaos, but is soon realizing that she lost track of Tic, her current young ward. Cut to intro page.
What a way to start a new series, eh? It draws us in as an audience. We have no idea what the story is about, but now we want to know.
We won’t find out just yet, however, because we go to an extended flashback of six weeks ago.
Besides her general kick-assitude, one of the first things we find out about Carol in this issue is that she can be very loving. Despite being able to kick people through a wall, we see that she’s gentle and warm. We see her talking to Kit, a young girl who is the daughter of one of Carol’s friends. Kit is also Captain Marvel’s self-proclaimed “biggest fan.” The two have a discussion about what Carol wanted to be when she grew up.
This particular scene is fabulous because it reminds us all of how we were when we were young. We wanted to be everything. We look back now and we think about why we ever stopped wanting that. Carol’s response of “I don’t remember” is our first look into her uncertainty. She doesn’t remember what she wanted to be when she was young, and she doesn’t quite know know what she wants to “be” right now. This moment is sweet but brief, as Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, cuts into the fray. We get another small look into Carol’s current feelings as Kit has a talk with her mother.
Tony tells her that the Avengers are in need of someone to travel to space. Knowing what Carol’s going through, he points out that they’re looking for “someone who needs some solitude right now.” Carol thinks herself the obvious choice.
Carol is at a point in her life where she is restless and confused. We find out that she is dating James “Rhodey” Rhodes, AKA the Iron Patriot. She tells him that she wants to go to space. As opposed to being upset that she’s leaving, he tells her that she should go. Because Rhodey cares so much about her, he doesn’t want to be the one who ties her down.
We end this issue with Carol contemplating her future. There is hope to be seen, but also feelings of uncertainty.
This same character of Carol Danvers continues from a volume that had a run from 2012 - 2013. This volume, starting its run in 2014, depicts Carol’s adventures in space. In later issues, we see her interacting with Marvel’s newest powerhouse team, the Guardians of the Galaxy. The Guardians meet up with Carol before their movie comes out, providing an interesting introduction for anyone who had planned to see the movie. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why we see Carol in space.
However, of course we wouldn’t be getting this new volume just for Marvel to show off its new team of superstars. Carol is journeying to outer space to find more about herself not only as a human being, but as a superheroine. Carol’s powers initiated from technology from the Kree, an alien species. Perhaps she will encounter shadows of her past up there, maybe find some new things about herself she didn’t know before. At the time I’m writing this, there are 11 released issues. It’s still relatively new in the game, so I’m excited to see what action develops.
So brace yourselves, Mighty Marvelites! We’ll meet up again with Carol in a few days.
DISCLAIMER: Captain Marvel and this comic are property of Marvel Comics. I do not own any of it. Credit for this comic book and its storyline and art can be found in the intro page within this post. Please support the official release by buying at your local comic book store or buying online.
Even more new friends! You guys are too good to me. Did you enjoy the last arc? It was a bit more lighthearted. Well, this week we got a one-issue arc that’s even more fun! Brace yourselves!
We start this issue with Captain Marvel, AKA Carol Danvers, and Tic, a young alien girl who has become her ward, and they are flying their ship somewhere in the middle of space. It appears they’re playing a game of “would you rather,” and they’re listening to music by an artist named Lila Cheney.
When, lo and behold, who comes crashing in? The aforementioned artist.
Carol of course, is very confused as to how Lila got there. Tic, meanwhile, is fangirling a little. Carol states that she read in Lila’s file that she can’t teleport places she hasn’t been before. Lila, however, responds that she didn’t have to be on the ship before, because her voice has been (in the music that Carol and Tic were just listening to). Lila then starts singing and playing along to the music, and Carol acts… unexpectedly.
Words cannot express how much I love this reaction. Big hero Captain Marvel, superpowered, saver of worlds, is actually a giant dork meeting this musician that she loves? Amazing.
I’ve already talked a little bit in my previous blog posts about how we want our heroes to be relateable. Sure, seeing them with simple joy or crushing sadness makes us feel closer to them, but seeing them acting like us with all our weird quirks is even better.
I’m gonna veer a bit off the path here to talk about another current female superhero we can see being an adorable nerd: Kamala Khan, AKA the new and AMAZING Ms. Marvel. She plays video games, speaks in memes sometimes, and fangirls over superheroes. I love Kamala so much, and I can’t push her enough onto everyone I know who loves comics. (After I catch up with Carol, I’m hoping to try adding Kamala to my reviews. I don’t think I’ll start with issue 1, but I do wanna talk more about this amazing young woman)
Okay, back to the story. Lila opens up to Carol and Tic, talking about how she got her powers. Apparently, when she was younger, her powers were unreliable and she found herself on strange worlds. At one point, she got herself engaged to a prince on one of these different worlds.
Lila then takes the pair to said world. Apparently, they like to talk in rhymes.
So to sum up those panels, Lila wants Carol to try and talk the prince’s parents out of her marriage.
The prince pulls Carol aside and tells her that he knows about her and her adventures. He also gives her the details about his engagement to Lila:
In this world, women have the power to choose their spouse, or forfeit the choice altogether. A man has no choice to wed whom he wishes. He asks Carol to encourage Lila to marry him, and he’ll release her from the “matrimonial duties” (wink wink nudge nudge) once he becomes king.
An interesting reversal of gender roles, eh? In most royalty in literature, this is the other way around. Most of them are patriarchal societies, so to see a society led by women is something different. But this is still a monarchy, and security to the throne is needed, hence him needing to be married before ascending the throne. Progeny is to ensure that your family’s bloodline can continue ruling, and although he states that the marriage would be in name only and that he would abolish the law, for now he has to go through with it.
However, if Lila can’t go through with the ceremony, he needs Carol to object. But then that would mean that his choice of wife could go to his mother. And that choice would result in an unfavorable one called Marlo.
At the wedding:
“So I challenge this Lila to a Fight to the DEATH!”
So now we meet this Marlo, who is obviously not happy to be losing out on the prince. Lila wants to get herself, Carol, and Tic out of there, but Carol refuses because she doesn’t want to subject the prince to Marlo. Carol volunteers to fight in Lila’s place.
The fight heats up:
Yes, friends. Even in all the confusion of the fight, the rhymes are still flying around. Carol even rhymes in a small internal monologue. We also find out that this Marlo is pretty strong, and uses her own blasts which look suspiciously like the “Solar Flare” technique from Dragon Ball Z.
Marlo’s still no match for Carol though.
And right after this moment of badassery, Carol’s internal monologue is “’Tale’ doesn’t even rhyme with ‘fell.’ Amateur.”
It seems as if Carol’s about to finish Marlo off, when Yan (the prince) calls for the fight to stop. He doesn’t want anyone to die for this law. Carol is moved by his sympathy.
Although Carol said once that she doesn’t see herself as a diplomat, she still has a good way of bringing conflicts to an end. Carol wants to help her friends, and she needs to be clever to do so. It’s more an obligation than a talent.
For example, just today I had departmental assessments for the theatre department. One of my professors recommended that I look into directing, because they said I was organized and focused and knew how to direct people. However, I’ve been in a few positions of leadership, and it’s not exactly my forte. I don’t have a commanding or assertive presence, but I do know when to step up and accept responsibility if someone is needed to fill the role. And I believe that this is how Carol’s diplomacy works. It’s a skill that has become necessary on her adventures, but she knows other people (she mentions Captain America) who she thinks are better at it than her.
And deep down, that’s okay. Someone once told me something like “people that seem to have things put together have sometimes just gotten used to doing something, it doesn’t always mean they are comfortable with or like the work.” While Carol has mentioned before that she likes the punching method, sometimes she must step up and be the diplomat. Be the leader.
However, she still gets to punch something. Or rather someone.
That’s right. They just rhymed via onomatopoeia.
Carol then states that she won, and she has no need to kill Marlo. However, she takes the right to marry Yan, which she won in the fight, and tries to return it to him. She tells him that he should just keep saying no, but Yan says he can’t do it forever. And then, something interesting happens…
Tic even agrees to marry him then and there.
Tic recalls their “would you rather?” game from earlier. She also drops the bombshell that she is actually not that much longer for this world, uh, universe. In one of the other issues, Carol asked Tic how old she was. Tic only responded “older than you think.” Now we find out that Tic is well past half of her life, actually closer to death, and she wants to enjoy every moment of it. She also wants to make a legacy for herself, by making a difference to change the entire social structure for this planet. And that’s amazing.
However, we also get to see her act like a lovestruck teenage girl, and it’s adorable. A no “marital duties” marriage with a cute guy. For an asexual like me, that sounds like a dream *sigh*.
…Anyway, the issue draws to a close! In classic Shakespearian comedic fashion, we end this happy tale with a wedding.
Or do we?
Turns out that Lila has something to give to Carol:
Exciting new developments, right? Judging from Carol’s reaction, we’re done with our “lighter and softer” break in these issues. Looks like the suspense is gonna be loaded on soon! And what’s that in the corner? The next issue will be Carol Danver’s 100th solo issue! (As well as my 10th comic review!)
Hope to see you then!
DISCLAIMER: Captain Marvel and this comic are property of Marvel Comics. I do not own any of it. Credit for this comic book and its storyline and art can be found in the intro page within this post. Please support the official release by buying at your local comic book store or buying online.
By Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), Nicola Scott (artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer), Annette Kwok (colorist).
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Incredible.
It’s very fitting this book had a tribute to the tragically late-George Perez in the previous issue because now having read the concluding part of this story, it’s the same kind of mythic reinterpretation of Wonder Woman’s world that Perez’s 80s reboot of the character was. Something DC often tries to poorly with the character, or when they don’t just shoe-horn the character back into bog-standard superhero tropes.
While this isn’t really a story about Wonder Woman herself, DeConnick definitely joins the great tier of Wonder Woman creators for a variety of reasons but probably first and foremost being her depiction of Hippolyta here.
As I’ve said in previous reviews, Hippolyta isn’t a character many writers try to go deep on outside of a select few (Perez, Jimenez, Simone to name some), and even then it’s rarer to see a story about her that isn’t ultimately about her relationship with Diana. But other than she’s almost always just “Wonder Woman’s Mom” and the imposing Queen of the Amazons.
So while this story has retreaded some similar ground before, it’s quite refreshing to have a story where Hippolyta is largely the central focus and allowed to stand as a character on her own. And that includes having her questionable decisions that we and in-universe characters are given reasons to doubt, as we see at the end of book. And unlike previous times this has been done, it comes off as a questionable decision that character actually would make and not just character assassination like making her bang Zeus.
Another bit of praise DeConnick deserves praise in this series for is her handling the pantheon. Unlike previous depictions of them in DC’s comics, these depictions of the pantheon don’t sway to hard in the direction of HBO/CW rejects or the more traditional togas and robes speaking in faux-Shakespeare. They actually look and speak as if the way you’d assume deities would but have some bits of dialogue here and there that don’t make them to stuffy to a modern reader.
The scene between Ares and Hera would probably be my favorite “Olympus scene” in the issue. Shows a side of the two (one of which is traditionally the Big Bad of Wonder Woman media) that we don’t often see in modern depictions of the Greek pantheon. Though any scene with Artemis is also pretty great.
Much like Jimenez, Scott was a fan favorite Wonder Woman artist for many prior to this book so I was interested when I saw her name attached to this book how this stuff would compare to her prior work on the character in Rucka’s run. And unsurprisingly, this was as much of a level up for her as it was for Jimenez when he did the first issue. A certain scene with Heracles was masterfully well done and it’d like be my favorite scene in the book for both her and DeConnick if it wasn’t for the ending.
After 10 years, Wonder Woman’s true origin finally gets the lovingly rendered modern depiction it deserves. I know this isn’t the first instance DC’s done the clay origin since making Diana another offspring of Zeus but it’s always to nice to not only see it get used but also treated with the respect it deserves in such a high profile project. Especially as DC otherwise blows on with the Daddy Zeus origin. This is just one page but the whole sequence probably surpasses George Perez’s depiction of the event back in Gods and Mortals.
I’ve become fairly uninterested in the direction of DC’s comics as of late, especially with the direction of Wonder Woman given what they’ve already announced. So this makes appreciate this book all the more as just great standalone WW-verse story without being shackled to the rest of the DC Universe. I can only hope the series has done well enough so far to greenlight the sequels.
do yourself a favor and pick up the DC Comics book “Historia”. I can’t really describe how much this work succeeds in form and function as a moving graphic narrative.
one of my absolute favorite things from wonder woman historia is how they waste no time on heracles. No romance, no betrayal, the amazons kill him as soon as he shows up, then send him back to zeus in pieces
finally read through Wonder Woman: Historia Book Two today now that Book Three is out and HELLO??? Gene Ha, can I talk to you about your absolutely insane Golden Ratio Hera spreads???
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