Well, the last issue shipped a few weeks ago, so I thought I’d go in for a bit of an overview of the noble project that was Ms Marvel.
While Ms Marvel has been a fairly long established character, even through her identities as Binary and Warbird, this has been her first solo series in quite some time. It span out of the “House of M” event where, in the universe created by the insane Scarlet witch, Carol Danvers had been Captain Marvel and considered one of the best Super Heroes. Remembering this other life she strives to be the best, this was pretty much a metaphor for the whole series, where the writers wanted to try and set Ms Marvel up as Marvel’s Wonder Woman. Just as getting up from the B&C lists was difficult for Ms marvel so did selling a female fronted book prove difficult to Marvel.
Its actually been said that any female fronted book is a hard sell, I kind of hoped we’d be past that now but apparently not. Even Stalwart titles from DC such as Wonder Woman and Birds of Prey struggle at times despite what is often critical acclaim and Ms Marvel too was loved by critics but seemingly not loved by the comic buying public.
Still, over the years we got some very good stuff, yes the hero with low self esteem is now an old concept but the real power in Ms Marvel was that actually, as a hero Ms Marvel was really good at her job, but still pretty unsure of herself regardless. There were many nice touches, her Mentor relationship with Arana, for example really worked for me, and indeed her Civil War issues were some of the few that presented the pro-reg side in a positive light (Which writers on the main mostly failed to do).
One of the standout stories for me was the Secret Invasion tie-in, which largely involved Ms Marvel fighting Skrulls, a lot. It was mainly about her grit and determination to survive (Again, analogous with the comic) but also full of action and some pathos.
Finally we have Dark Reign where for a few issues we have Moonstone in as Ms Marvel, closely followed by war of the marvels, both top reads.
End of the day sadly the will to continue failed and so Ms Marvel joins She-Hulk on the pile of good comics, no support. However for people who like Female fronted comics Marvel appear to be doing more anthologies, one shots and Limited series. I’ll be interested to see how that develops
