This is a book with so much potential that it's starting to get frustrating. I recently binge-watched The 100 from the start to last season's finale as I had heard good things (they were right by the way, check it out), and there are aspects of The Mighty Captain Marvel that remind me of that show. They both involve being trapped in hopeless, claustrophobic situations, with scarce resources that are constantly running out. So why do I love a TV show with lots of similar themes, yet I am getting increasingly disappointed with this comic?
Just to bring you up to speed real quick - our newly Hydrated (see what I did there?) Captain America has trapped many of Earth's cosmic heroes outside of 'The Shield' - an impenetrable force field covering the entire globe. And to distract our heroes from penetrating this barrier, he has also planted several Chitauri queen eggs on Earth, which are drawing millions of Chitauri to Earth in constant waves. Carol Danvers and her compatriots are on the wrong side of the Shield to survive these attacks, and must constantly battle wave after wave, while surviving in an increasingly battered space station, with little food, air or medical supplies. It's an impossible situation, and it is constant, round the clock blood, sweat and tears. Think trench warfare in the stars.
Sounds awesome, right?! Yes, parts of it are good, but with each issue it feels more and more like a missed opportunity. In the current story arc, the oddly titled Band of Sisters (I say oddly titled as we are into part 4 and there is no particular emphasis on the female characters over the male ones), we are mostly expected to be interested in the story of 3 Alpha Flight cadets rather than the main heroes. This could work if it felt like part of the story that you're reading, rather than a hopeful stab at spinning some new characters off into their own book. Like a lot of the new young characters that Marvel are introducing at the moment, they seem to be able to do everything right out of the box; there is no need to develop, or learn, or get better than they already are. They are presented as a finished product, or they become the finished product in no time at all, and that makes them very hard to care about.
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| So are those haircuts Alpha Flight Regulation, or do they just pull recruits straight out of the Apple Store? |
I am finding these 3 more and more annoying with each issue. They are being written like the reader should have a strong bond with their characters, which could never be done in only 4 issues, and they increasingly fit the Mary Sue/Gary Stu archetype by being immediately brilliant at everything they touch, including being the inspiration for other characters whose problems are insurmountable until an encounter with one of these three.
Aside from that, the book has some really good action sequences, although one of them will make you wonder 'if they had that in the bank all this time, why not use it before things got this bad?' It feels very convenient, and a little bit lazy from a storytelling point of view.
The art is great in this comic, Michele Bandini does some of my favourite Marvel stuff and this is no exception, with colour from Erick Arciniega seting it off beautifully. This feels like a book that only needs to change a precious few things to become a must-read, but until that happens it's getting closer and closer to me dropping it from my pulls. The setup is great, but story-wise it could be exploited better than it is at the moment.
3 / 5
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