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A review by the_bard
Essential Captain Marvel, Vol. 1 by Stan Lee
4.0
The late '60s adventures of Captain Mar-Vell of the Kree starts out a bit slow and stuck in fairly typical superheroes, except for the novelty of the hero being an advanced scout for a militaristic, imperialist alien society who is caught between trying to fulfill his mission on Earth while also playing superhero while also dealing with intrigue from his commanding officer, who is doing his best to get Mar-Vell killed. For the most part, it's standard Marvel Comics Silver Age soap opera superheroes, until...
(HERE THERE BE SPOILERS)
...About halfway through the collection, the story suddenly becomes cosmic, psychedelic, and weird, and I fell madly in love with it. That storyline resolves and the comic switches again as Captain Marvel gets a new creative team (Roy Thomas, Gil Kane, and Dan Adkins), a new uniform (the red-and-blue outfit he's more known for), new powers, and immediately gets trapped in the void of the Negative Zone and becomes bonded to Marvel's perpetual sidekick, Rick Jones. I can't explain why, but I love Thomas' writing, especially the dialogue of stiff "squares" like Captain Marvel and his archenemy, Yon-Rogg, and of "hip teens" like Rick Jones. His writing is cheesy as hell, and yet I adore it. What started off as kind of bland became tremendously fun, trippy superheroics.
(HERE THERE BE SPOILERS)
...About halfway through the collection, the story suddenly becomes cosmic, psychedelic, and weird, and I fell madly in love with it. That storyline resolves and the comic switches again as Captain Marvel gets a new creative team (Roy Thomas, Gil Kane, and Dan Adkins), a new uniform (the red-and-blue outfit he's more known for), new powers, and immediately gets trapped in the void of the Negative Zone and becomes bonded to Marvel's perpetual sidekick, Rick Jones. I can't explain why, but I love Thomas' writing, especially the dialogue of stiff "squares" like Captain Marvel and his archenemy, Yon-Rogg, and of "hip teens" like Rick Jones. His writing is cheesy as hell, and yet I adore it. What started off as kind of bland became tremendously fun, trippy superheroics.