Marvel’s Original Captain Marvel Is Nothing Like the MCU Version (and His Death Changed Everything)

Marvel Comics gets most of the praise from the more casual sections of the superhero fandom, so most fans don’t really know that they’ve spent decades playing catch-up. Superman started the clock for the superhero and the House of Ideas worked for years to create a character that could match the Man of Steel. Eventually, they made one that would match – and then exceed – his popularity in Spider-Man, but they never made a character that could compare to Superman when it come to being a hero. They didn’t have that pure champion of good, the stranger from a strange land that decided to give their all for their adopted homeworld.

Over the years, the House of Ideas has created several different Superman pastiches, but none of them have really caught on. However, there is one character in Marvel history, one who does easily slot into the Superman spot in the Marvel Universe. He was a hero who everyone loved and looked up to, one who came to another world and fell in love with it, becoming its greater protector. He wore red, blue, and yellow and had a cool symbol on his chest that has since become one of heroism and hope in the annals of Marvel history. Every Marvel fan has heard his name, even if they don’t know who he is. He was Mar-Vell, the first Captain Marvel and he’s been dead for longer than he was alive.

Mar-Vell Blazed New Paths Through the Marvel Universe

Captain Marvel has become a venerable Marvel mantle, thanks to Carol Danvers in the modern day. However, she was the fifth Captain Marvel, having become a hero as the sidekick of the original, the Kree soldier Mar-Vell. Marv, as he would be called by his friends, was one of the pink Kree and he was chosen to go to Earth to butter them up for conquest. However, he decided that he actually liked humanity and became Captain Marvel, one of the cosmic protectors of the Marvel Universe.

Marvel grew in new direction in the ’70s. This meant that new heroes would get a chance to shine and Captain Marvel got his big break. He got his own series and would play a key role in “Kree-Skrull War”. He’d be given the Nega-Bands, gaining great cosmic power and a link with Rick Jones, with the two of them having to switch places in the Negative Zone to fight evil. Jim Starlin would get his hands on the hero, making him into the flagship character of cosmic Marvel alongside Adam Warlock. He became an enemy of Thanos and went on the kind of trippy adventures that would define Starlin’s cosmic Marvel stories.

Marv was basically the namesake of the Marvel Universe and creators did their best to play him as the ultimate hero. While he wasn’t raised on Earth, he definitely fit into the Superman spot. In fact, you could make the argument that his love of humanity is more “pure” than Kal-El’s, since he didn’t grow up with humans. While he didn’t have the popularity of Superman, his stories went in a lot of the same directions. That’s part of what made his death such a shock. He was a major Marvel character at this point and his death would have a massive impact on an entire generation of Marvel creators.

After The Death of Captain Marvel, Mar-Vell was basically sainted. He was the lost example for the other heroes, the kind of pure hero that fit the Superman mold to a tee. As readers who loved him started to become creators, you could see the lionization of the character in real time. The best example of this is the Earth X Trilogy, three stories that cast Marv as the savior of the entire Marvel Universe, fighting against Mephisto himself to reveal the secret history of the Marvel Multiverse and create a literal heaven for his friends and enemies, because he was that good.

One of the things you notice with a lot of the Marvel Superman pastiche characters is that creators always talk about wanting to do Superman “the Marvel way”. This usually meant giving the characters some kind of drawback, making them less than perfect in that way that Marvel does so well. It’s why characters like Hyperion, the Sentry, and Blue Marvel have been able to gain success; their stories do a lot of the same things as Superman stories, but they do it with a different kind of hero.

Marv isn’t one of those. While I can’t really speak to why the creators of the day made Marv the way they did, it feels like he was more of a straight-up copy of Superman than the other pastiches. Mar-Vell wasn’t human, so he didn’t really have the foibles the other Marvel heroes had. As far as the human character readers could understand, we had Rick Jones for that. This allowed Marv to just be the Marvel version of Superman – a powerful hero who does good because they’re such a good person.

Marv is a character you don’t really hear about much anymore, but his fingerprints are everywhere. If you love the cosmic side of the Marvel Universe, you have Marv to thank for it. He helped make the Kree mythos more interesting, making them a more important part of the Avengers comics. He’s what happened when Marvel creators did a Superman-style hero and unfortunately, modern Marvel fans will never really understand what made him so special.

The Death of the First Captain Marvel Defined the Character for Generation of Fans

Mar-Vell is a legend nowadays. His death was the best thing that happened to him. He was a character who was too pure for the world he lived in and his death ended up having a bigger impact on the Marvel Universe than any of his adventures ever did. He became the symbol of the best of them, the friend that they all loved and lost. If you look at just his accomplishments, it basically starts and ends with his death. He’s not even considered one of Thanos’s greatest foes, despite fighting him so often. Adam Warlock has done more for the Marvel Universe than Marv has.

However, he represents something interesting in Marvel history – he’s the Superman that wasn’t afraid of being Superman. He was the big, powerful alien hero who loved everyone and instead of “Marvel-ing” him on up, they just let him be a big earnest hero. Maybe that was the problem with the character in the long run; as important as he is, there’s really nothing about Marv as a character that stands out. Maybe the lesson of Mar-Vell is that you can’t really make a Superman-style character without modification in the more realistic Marvel Universe, since the more complex characters will always overshadow him.

These 5 Avengers Are Powerhouses but Everyone Forgets About Them