Admit It, Carol Danvers Is a Great Hero (but She’s the Worst Captain Marvel)

Captain Marvel is a mantle that has become more important in the 21st century than it ever was before, at least for Marvel Comics. The first Captain Marvel wasn’t even a Marvel character; it wouldn’t be until the ’60s the publisher would get their own version, when the Kree soldier Mar-Vell decided that he wanted to protect the Earth and not conquer it for his people. He became a massively important character over the ’70s and even got his own sidekick in Carol Danvers, who would become Ms. Marvel down the road, wearing a costume inspired by his. He would battle Thanos, bond with Rick Jones, and have numerous amazing adventures, with his death of cancer in 1980 becoming one of the most important Marvel deaths ever.

Carol would grow beyond Mar-Vell in her own series Ms. Marvel and as a member of the Avengers. Avengers #200 ruined her as a character, with visionary X-Men writer Chris Claremont taking control of her in Avengers Annual #10 and bringing her to Uncanny X-Men, where he showed her the respect she deserved. Since then, Carol has had her ups and downs as a character but became one of the most beloved superheroines in the Marvel Universe. She’s taken up the mantle of her mentor and is currently Captain Marvel, reaching a greater place in the superhero community than ever before. Carol is an awesome character but she’s nowhere near the best Captain Marvel. In fact, she’s actually the worst.

Carol Danvers Deserves Her Flowers but Her Time as Captain Marvel Has Damaged Her

One of the most interesting aspects of the Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel thing was the revisionist history about how important Captain Marvel was to Marvel history. There have been lots of Captains Marvel, but the only one that was ever actually important was Mar-Vell and that was only because he stayed dead. In fact, an argument can be made that the second Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, was more important than her predecessor because she actually got to lead the Avengers. The Captain Marvel glaze was revisionist history to begin with.

In fact, before Carol became Captain Marvel, the mantle wasn’t anywhere near important. Before Carol, the last Captain Marvel ongoing series had ended in 2004, with an ’08 mini starring a Skrull imposter. That ongoing was the third series starring Genis-Vell as Captain Marvel, who the House of Ideas had been trying to push into the mantle for years. Captain Marvel hadn’t had any success in years by the time that Carol was put into the mantle; in a lot of ways, it wasn’t a way to make her important, it was a way to make Captain Marvel important.

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Carol’s years as Captain Marvel might seem like her most successful but if we’re being honest, they’re some of her worst years as a superhero. Carol as Ms. Marvel was a star on the rise, with numerous cool plotlines. Her return in the late ’90s in Avengers (Vol. 3) took her in new interesting directions, giving her a new codename of her own (Warbird) and giving her an alcoholism storyline that made a lot of sense for her as a character. Marvel put serious work into the character throughout the ’00s, using House of M as a vehicle for her return to prominence – on that alternate world, she was the world’s greatest hero and she wanted to live up to that after the story ended.

As far as it goes, other than her series written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Kelly Thompson, she’s really had nothing but failure. For some reason, Marvel made her the Iron Man of Civil War II and that slowed her down immensely. The House of Ideas doesn’t really seem to know what to do with her as Captain Marvel (remember when she was made head of Alpha Flight and it didn’t matter at all?) other than just do the same stories with her they would have done as Ms. Marvel. Her adventures never seem important and unlike previous Captains Marvel, she doesn’t really save the universe on her own. She doesn’t have the Nega-Bands, doesn’t have the cosmic consciousness, doesn’t work with Eon. The weird thing is, if you would have had her as Ms. Marvel all these years, nothing would change; you could do all of the same stories in the same ways. Her time as Captain Marvel has done nothing for her or the mantle.

Carol Danvers Never Needed to Be Captain Marvel to Be a Star

Carol Danvers is a character with a rich history and interesting legacy, to the extent that she created her own legacy hero in Kamala Khan. She’s an amazing hero and her history is full of brilliant stories that readers have loved in some cases for decades. She deserves a major place in the Marvel Universe and should always be a high-ranking Avenger. However, she has never needed the mantle of Captain Marvel to become a star. Looking at her time as the good captain, she’s easily the worst of them, though.

Other than the Kree heritage and the costume, she doesn’t really follow any of the tropes that past Captains Marvel have. She doesn’t go on universe-saving adventures on her own. She’s not an awesome cosmic hero, she’s just another defender of the Earth. She’s done nothing of note with the mantle and an argument can be made that the experiment has been a failure – very few of her series run for more than a year. Carol is amazing, but it’s past time to admit that her time as Captain Marvel hasn’t been the boon that it was supposed to be.

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