CAPTAIN MARVEL #26 - The Brave New World Ends.

 This story was written by Kelly Thompson, with artwork from Lee Garbett

 

Marvel Unlimited is truly a wonderful service, aside from the random gaps in series, or otherwise just completely absent runs. Due to a shortage of the usual offerings that would populate my pull list, which you can thank DC’s “Future State” for mostly, I made the decision to delve back into the world of Kelly Thompson’s “Captain Marvel” run, in preparation for the ending of the “Brave New World” story arc that has been ongoing for the last few months. I have to say that, despite the usual criticisms that some unhelpful people have, this entire run has been utterly stellar from start to finish, with Thompson at her absolute best, with some awesome visuals from the likes of Carmen Carnero and Lee Garbett. Somehow, Kelly Thompson is just able to make me care about a group of characters that I usually couldn’t give two hoots about, with all of them being fleshed out perfectly, while having a believable and understandable bond to our protagonist.

That then brings us on to the subject of the events of this issue, and really the entire arc, considering that I have not really reviewed it before. Basically, “Brave New World” is one of those typical stories where our hero gets spirited away to a potential future timeline by parties unknown and has to help the inhabitants take down a threat, all while trying to find a way to get back to their native time. The small difference between this storyline and others of it’s ilk, is that it is actually taking place in an already established universe, as many of these characters here first appeared in the “Captain Marvel: The End” one-shot back at the beginning of last year, meaning that readers have previous experience with them, possibly understanding a bit more than those who haven’t read it (like myself, what a surprise). I honestly have no problems with the main arc itself (aside from maybe one, but I will get to that in a few moments), however it was in fact the ending of the story that just rubbed me the wrong way, as it seemed like an odd choice. For the last number of year, Carol Danvers and Jim Rhodes (known to many as the War Machine) have been in an on-again, off-again relationship, that seems to have survived splits, fights, and in one case the death of Rhodes, but for some reason it cannot survive Carol’s visit to a possible future that has Jim’s daughter in it, who Carol is not the mother of. Quite honestly, I whole heartedly agree with everything that Rhodey said during his dialogue here, as it is quite illogical for Carol to break off their relationship purely due to something that probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon, and not allowing Rhodey to at least plead his case properly was not fair in the slightest. It doesn’t really help Carol’s case when there were so many other solutions to her dilemma right there, up to and including the fact that she and Jim could just stay together, and possibly still have a child of their own, with that child then still managing to turn out the same as the one in the possible future that Carol visited. Honestly, as much as I disagree with the way that this was handled, I am more than willing to accept it, as long as it doesn’t result in Rhodey just becoming cold or distant, as he is one of the best members of Carol’s supporting cast, and I have seen far too many stories where Rhodey just becomes a dick for no reason (alright, two isn’t that many, but my point still stands).

Something that I would like to see in the not-too-distant future, is for some more of these characters to be given a bit more of a spotlight, and to be explored just a tad bit further than we were given in this story. Quite honestly, this is mostly regarding the parentages of a number of the characters that were featured in both this story and “Captain Marvel: The End”, as for whatever reason I find them quite intriguing, and would love to know how they ended up in this situation. In particular, I would like for Brigid and Rhodes to be explored in more detail, as those two especially are kind of enigmatic, as we only know one of their two parents (Thor and Jim Rhodes respectively), so I would love to maybe be given a reason as to why for example Brigid cannot get Mjolnir to obey here, possibly due to who her mother is maybe. Something that I don’t really want to see much more of though, is the character of Ove, as he was just an annoying, arrogant mama’s boy, simply another egomaniac bent on world domination. However, the one interesting prospect that was given to us by his transportation to the past was that we could potentially see a confrontation between he and his father, Namor the Sub-Mariner, which has the potential to be quite an explosive altercation. I do suppose that his return to these pages is pretty much inevitable, as his influence is already being felt, even at the very beginning of this arc.

To conclude, I believe that the future is looking incredible for this title and is going a good ways to rebuilding trust in the character of Carol Danvers, following a few years where she was really positioned as the bad guy among the Marvel community, just looking a “Civil War 2” will show you this. The next big arc is looking excellent, with Thompson seemingly taking Carol on a journey into magic (a “Journey into Mystery”, if you will), and considering the last time that Carol tried to do magic, this could turn out to be an utterly hilarious disaster. As I haven’t really mentioned it above, Lee Garbett’s art really wasn’t doing it for me in this issue, despite it being quite good at certain points in the past. Sadly, he won’t really have a chance to rectify this, as he will no longer be the artist for the next storyline. 

 

I WILL BE GIVING THIS ISSUE OF KELLY THOMPSON’S “CAPTAIN MARVEL” A “C+”, AS WHILE IT WAS A DECENT STORY ARC, THAT ENDING REALLY SOURED IT FOR ME.