The Four Color Media Monitor

Here's one more disappointing article about the real Ms. Marvel's history, that insults intellects as it tries to insinuate there was something wrong with her being a female variation on a male-originated role:

In the process, though, Danvers was exposed to a device called the Psyche-Magnitron, which gave her Captain Marvel’s super-powers. Not right away — they emerged in 1977, in “Ms. Marvel” #1. Which made her, unfortunately, little more than a distaff spinoff to a male character, instead of an independent character in her own right. She took a variation on his name, and even dressed like him.

All together now: Bleah.

Marvel righted that ship last year, by revealing that Danvers’ mother was a Kree, Carol’s powers are inborn and her birth name is, believe it or not, Car-Ell. Since Mar-Vell has been dead for decades, we can now pretend that Danvers is the most important Captain Marvel there has ever been — if not the first.

Seriously? We can "pretend"? Why? What was so wrong with Carol's origins in the Silver/Bronze Age? I guess this also means it was wrong to invent Hawkgirl - surely the first superheroine whose role derived from that of a male superhero's, or Supergirl and Batgirl, or to conceive Spider-Woman, or even She-Hulk, even though Stan Lee, as the co-creator of the Hulk, also took up the task of co-creating Jennifer Walters in 1980. The PC narrative in this puff piece is one of the most blatant I've ever seen. No issues raised about whether it was a good idea to retcon Carol's history so she was more Kree than human, as seen in the "Life of Captain Marvel" miniseries.

As a character that hasn’t been particularly successful sales-wise (until recently, anyway), Carol Danvers has been subject to a lot of tinkering over the years to find a winning formula. And some of it is … strange.

We’ve explained Ms. Marvel — a name she took because she thought she was somehow connected to Mar-Vell, who was still using “Captain Marvel” at the time. And she wore a horrible version of his costume that, for some reason, exposed her belly button. Yes, that’s just the sort of thing women want to wear into combat.

But she eventually came up with a unique outfit that fans still remember fondly. It was essentially a black one-piece swimsuit with a yellow lightning symbol, plus a black mask, thigh-high boots and a red sash — a colorful, well-designed uniform that, if nothing else, protected her midriff.

While I do think the black one-piece was fabulous, I don't think it's a good idea to belittle the first costume design, realizing the writer of this is only virtue-signaling. Besides, the bare midriff was dropped shortly after from the red-colored costume anyway. But even if it wasn't, it's important to note the original Aquagirl had a bare-midriff costume when she first appeared in the late 60s, and Starfire had one too when she debuted in New Teen Titans in the early 80s. In other words, women who wear tank tops and similar outfits into combat, in scenarios that're meant to involve the surreal, which the biased buffoon who wrote this puff nonsense would do well to consider whenever dealing with science fiction.

But the changes didn’t stop there. Eventually she ran off into space with the X-Men and started drawing stellar powers from a white hole. (Long story.) Calling herself Binary, Danvers suddenly had red skin and a head that looked like a star constantly going nova. At this point she was wearing a white variant of her previous look, although when you can fly through interstellar space unprotected you probably don’t even need clothes.

In that's what he thinks, why would he complain about her bare midriff costume? Curious this doesn't mention Carol was alienated from the Avengers because they bought into Immortus' yarn hook, line and sinker, and that's why she spent time with the X-Men, although she later left after Rogue (who is mentioned, but only later in the article), who attacked Carol and knocked up her brain, was taken in by Prof. Xavier after she distanced herself from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, though Rogue did reform remarkably well.

“Binary” didn’t last, and before long Danvers was back in black, back with the Avengers, and back calling herself Ms. Marvel. Oh, wait, at this point she was calling herself Warbird. That’s probably the coolest name she has had, and one that will be referenced in the movie as Carol’s call sign as a fighter pilot.

“Warbird” didn’t last either, and Danvers returned to Ms. Marvel in the oughties, despite that name being pretty dated. (It’s currently being used by a teenage superhero in New Jersey — where it remains dated, but is kinda charming.) Finally, in 2012, writer Kelly Sue DeConnick ditched all those missteps, gave Carol Danvers a modified Kree battlesuit and re-named her what she always should have been: Captain Marvel.

It only took 35 years for Marvel to finally get it right.

Oh, look at that. Without even mentioning the Islamic propaganda angle - by far the most disturbing thing about how the Ms. Marvel mantle was passed on - the writer simultaneously asserts the Ms. Marvel name is "dated", a huge problem with how alleged pundits look at past writings today, and then he validates the Islamic propaganda by stating it's "charming". Not so if rank and file whites are denigrated as badly as they were when it began. This is very dismal.

Remember when Carol was “the finest head of security a missile base could want”? That was in 1967. Ten years later, her next job was exactly what you’d expect from a successful career military officer.

She became a magazine editor.

Yes, years after the male Captain Marvel left the Florida missile base in comic book limbo, and Carol with it, Danvers re-surfaced in “Ms. Marvel” #1 as the newly hired EIC of New York-based “Woman” magazine. And the guy who hired her? J. Jonah Jameson.

One assumes this move was made to give the new book a Spider-Man connection to boost sales. Couldn’t hurt, right? Anyway, Jameson was at his braying, misogynist worst and when this inexplicable career move was later dropped, you could hear the sighs of relief all across Marveldom Assembled.

Oh please. Jameson was so often portrayed as an abusive jerk, with a vehement bias against - but not limited to - Spider-Man, that it would've been plausible enough to portray him as that biased when Carol worked for him. Besides, I think Robbie Robertson took her side by contrast. And what's wrong with Carol becoming a woman's magazine editor? Is the writer insinuating it's wrong for women to work on something...feminine?

Clearly, Marvel has made a lot of mistakes trying to make Carol Danvers more interesting. In 1980, though, they published a Ms. Marvel story so awful I’m actually loathe to bring it up.

In “Avengers” #200, Danvers was kidnapped by a cosmic being named Marcus, the son of a time-traveling, poorly defined character named Immortus. Marcus brainwashed Danvers, and somehow impregnated her with … himself. Danvers gave birth to baby Marcus days later, who grew to adulthood in record time, and convinced the still brainwashed Carol to date him.

I don’t even remember the point of all that. I do remember thinking, “OMG, she’s being raped!” And the Avengers? They did nothing. They thought she was in love, and celebrated her happy romance.

Ugh. The story didn’t last long — Marcus continued to age quickly and died an old man — but the ickiness still sticks.

Readers were, of course, outraged. Later stories tried to course correct. But there’s really no way to fix something so vile, so repugnant. Let’s all just pretend it didn’t happen.

Are we done? Rats — I haven’t even gotten to the story where the X-Men’s Rogue stole Carol’s powers and memory! (Don’t worry, she got better.)

Man, maybe we should just forget all of these stories, and pretend that Carol’s comic book history began in 2012. Better yet, let’s all go to the movies and see the character done right. God knows Marvel tried everything wrong to get there.

Maybe it'd be better if we forgot these stupid columns, because this was the same propagandist who tried over a decade ago to sugarcoat DC's Identity Crisis, and if he didn't think that was vile and repugnant to see an out-of-character Dr. Light anally raping Sue Dibny - much worse than what was seen in Avengers #200 - I don't see reason to believe he really means it when he claims he thought the Bronze Age story with Immortus was revolting. It sounds more like he's turning to "woke" virtue-signaling, without admitting he once fawned over a repellent product in more recent times. Such failure to admit mistakes does nothing to convince he's improved. It's also pretty apparent he doesn't thank Chris Claremont for at least trying to mend a sloppy story as he did with Avengers Annual #10 in 1981.

And how can the movie be done right when the heroine's portrayal is more like a whole Mary Sue?

Since we're on the subject, there was one more controversy related to the film that came up, that being whoever's in charge of the late Stan Lee's Twitter account using it to promote an awful movie, which didn't go over well with his fans. The ending of the article sums this up pretty well:

Even setting aside the tone-deafness of using a dead white male to promote a movie led by an actress who seems to despise white males, there’s just one word for it: distasteful.

I agree in full. It's a continuation of the exploitation Lee went through in the 2 decades prior to his death. Busloads of shady people trying to take advantage in every possible way of an old guy whose mental understandings deteriorated and couldn't understand everything going on about him. Now, even after his passing, they still take advantage of his good name for the sake of everything from bad ideologies to get-rich-quick schemes. Why will they not leave the poor guy alone? He was lucky he'd won that legal case against one of his former caretakers, and got to spend the last few months of his life in peace and quiet. And he had a good idea in mind to arrange for his funeral to be private. Now, however, his image has been shamelessly exploited again for the sake of a movie that denigrates him as much as any other white guy for the sake of identity politics. This has got to stop.

Labels: islam and jihad, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, politics, women of marvel