BHOC: MS MARVEL #23

Brevoort History of Comics

It’s something of a mystery to me why I picked up this issue of MS MARVEL, what would turn out to be the last one released. I know that I bought it at that far-off supermarket where I’d earlier purchased SHOGUN WARRIORS #3, and it’s possible that the smattering of comic books they had available for purchase was small enough that this wound up being my best option. Still, at 11 years old in 1978, I wasn’t so secure in my masculinity that I felt comfortable buying a series devoted to a female lead character. Which is sort of crazy–any contemporaries who would have given me crap about doing so would have given me crap just for buying comic books in general. But it was still a concern that was in my head somehow. Possibly, the fact that this would be paid for among groceries by my mother and with at least two siblings in tow obscured who the culprit would be enough for me to get by.

It’s also entirely possible, though unlikely, that I was attracted to this issue due to the presence of guest-star Vance Astro of the Guardians of the Galaxy. I wouldn’t have had much contact with Vance at this time, but I knew the Guardians from their recent appearances in AVENGERS, and so that might have helped to tip the scales somewhat. I had read only an issue or two of the series before this time, and so the overhaul that the character had been put through by writer Chris Claremont was all new to me. I wasn’t a huge aficionado of artist Mike Vosburg, but perhaps due to the inking of Bruce Patterson, I thought he did well on this issue. I don’t know that this issue would have made me any more likely to pick up future releases, but that was a question that I’d never have to answer. As I mentioned earlier, this wound up being the final issue of the series. It was one of a number of titles that Marvel axed around this time without any fanfare. I can remember n particular waiting for the #26th issue of NOVA for months, a book that would never exist.

This issue opens with Carol Danvers returning from a date with Sam Adams, a recent new figure in Carol’s orbit and a prospective love interest. Too wound up from her evening, Carol is thus still away when there’s a knock on her door, and it’s her best friend Salia Petrie, who is completely torn up. Salia was an astronaut who had been killed when her shuttle exploded and she drifted into re-entry. Carol feels guilty about this since, at the time, as Ms Marvel she was battling MODOK and his minions, and while she could have broken off to go save Salia, that would have allowed MODOK’s plan to succeed. So she made the hard choice. But now Salia is back, mysteriously, with no explanation as to how. And before Carol can figure it out. Salia zaps her with bolts from her eyes, knocking Carol unconscious.

When she wakes up, Carol finds herself in space, aboard the space station Drydock which the Guardians of the Galaxy have been using as a staging ground since coming back to this time. Her abductor reveals himself to be the Faceless One, an alien entity who once battled Doctor Doom in the Latverian monarch’s solo series. Unaware that Carol is Ms Marvel, the Faceless One tries to make her a mind-controlled slave as he’d previously done to Salia, but Carol is tough enough to escape the Enviro-chamber that she’s imprisoned in and to assume her costumed identity. Unfortunately, she runs across Vance Astro, who doesn’t recognize her in her new costume and attacks, assuming that she’s the source of the systems glitches that he detected earlier.

As this is a Marvel comic of the 1970s, Ms Marvel and Vance spend a page or two fighting with one another before working out that they’re on the same side. But by that point, Salia has found them, and she’s still juiced up and under the control of the Faceless One. So we move into another fight, one in which Carlo and Astro’s powers and punches seem to be having little effect. But at a certain point, Salia turns and retreats, even though she hasn’t really been injured. Carol is mystified about this, but she resuscitates Vance and the two give pursuit.

Salia has returned to the side of her master, and not wanting to fail her friend again, Ms Marvel careens headfirst into a battle with the two of them, supported by Vance Astro. At a certain point, Astro’s psychic force-bolts clobber Salia, sending her tumbling to the ground, while Ms M dukes it out with the Faceless One. But her blows have little effect, because as we know from that earlier Doctor Doom story, the Faceless One’s body is of android construction–he’s actually a buglike critter whose head is his entire body. As Ms Marvel gets the upper hand, the Faceless One separates his form from his android conveyance and moves to implant a control device into Carol’s neck, hoping to take her over just as he did Salia. But Vance is quick enough to sever the Faceless One’s encroaching limbs before he can get his control device into place.

Together, Ms Marvel and Vance Astro are able to destroy the Faceless One’s android body by freezing it solid with some liquid helium. At this point, outgunned, the Faceless One attempts to retreat through a handy teleportational portal, taking Salia with him. Vance and Carol are able to prevent Salia from being taken, but her mind is still pretty blitzed from Astro’s earlier attack on it. Vance, though, is able to destroy the implanted control device in her neck, so that when Salia regains consciousness, her will is her own again–and her friend Carol Danvers is ready to comfort her from her shock at coming out of her recent harrowing experiences. The next issue box promised a meeting with Sabretooth next issue, but that story, while completed, wouldn’t see print until the early 1990s when the material was burned off in one of those MARVEL SUPER-HEROES specials designs exactly for that purpose.

Published

24 thoughts on “BHOC: MS MARVEL #23”

  2. I just this week reread this series in order for the first time, having finally tracked down a reasonably priced copy of the Essential, the perfect format for this series IMHO. After the rockiest of starts from Conway, Claremont did his best, but sadly the title was beset by seemingly endless fill in artists. I think if Vosburg had become the regular penciller earlier the book may have survived. I’m also stunned by the strange restraint Claremont showed in that while he intertwined the book with the X-Men by having Death-Bird and Mystique show up he never had the actual X-Men set a toe in the book, only to add her to the X-Men after her travails in Avengers 200. Speaking of Avengers 200, while I understand the last minute plot change I still don’t understand why Ms. Marvel needed to be taken off the board in such a severe way. I wonder if the original story spirited her away is a similar fashion and for what reason.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. It was always David Michelinie’s intention to write Ms. Marvel out of THE AVENGERS with the pregnancy storyline.

      Which was for the best. He’d spent the better part of two years not knowing what to do with her. And the pregnancy storyline itself? Well, either version was awful, and reflected attitudes towards women that were backwards even at the time. I’m normally not a fan of comics creators offering commentary on their colleagues’ work in their assignments, but the dialogue in AVENGERS #199 and #200 was so gross that I’m glad Chris Claremont roasted it in AVENGERS ANNUAL #10.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  3. I’m s little shocked about waiting for issue #26 of Nova when they made a big deal of it being the last issue on the cover. We are around the same age, and I picked up Ms. Marvel because X-Men team was working on it (Claremont and Cockrum), and I had started reading it because of the Buscema artwork. The book always felt like it was about to kick into high gear after how big the push had been at the beginning, but it always seemed second tier.

    Like

    Reply

  5. This is a fairly run-of-the-mill tale, but its last page shows why Chris Claremont’s writing was such a breath of fresh air in its day. The appearance of the word “hysterical” at the time was usually a cue for a character, especially a woman, to get a couple of hard smacks across the face to “snap her out of it”. Instead, Carol, without a second thought, takes off her mask, exposing her secret identity, and reassures and comforts her traumatised friend. I found it touching back in 1979 and still do today.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Stan didn’t have a beard in 1979. And his toupee wasn’t that short, and he had white streaks at the temples. And would have been wearing sunglasses, if someone was trying to cameo him in the story. Chris had a beard, but if he was thinking of himself when he plotted the two issues Sam appeared in, Vosburg went another way with it.

      But there was some sort of specific reference involved — it’s established in the issue that Sam is an actor (possibly on a soap, since he’s doing something for a scripted network show in NYC), which is likely just a new character setup, but Carol mentions that he’s got musician friends named Pierce and Larry, and that stands out as odd, that she’d name them when they never appeared. That makes me think they’re references to actual musicians Chris knew, since he had a habit of throwing real-world musicians into stories.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. IIRC, “Pierce and Larry” also turned up in one of Claremont’s Dr. Strange stories. So yeah, probably based on folks he knew.

        Like

      2. “IIRC, “Pierce and Larry” also turned up in one of Claremont’s Dr. Strange stories.”

        Ah. Yes, they did, as “Wexford’s own Pierce and Larry,” which means they’re Pierce Turner and Larry Kirwan, who were playing New York clubs around then.

        Sam Adams is still likely just a fictional character, though in traditional comics fashion, if he’d become a regular character we’d eventually have found out he was a descendant of the historical Samuel Adams, Founding Father and (as he’s better known now) brewer.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. I am curious about the fascination of Marvel creators have for globe-headed bad guys: The Headless Man ( Kenyon, medical assistant -globe head, business suit & red tie ( exoskeleton – Dr. Bradley hollowed out a corpse, lined it with plastic & tried to make a mechanical robot of it ) ) [ Marvel Mystery Comics#76 ( September 1946 ) Sub-Mariner story “The Headless Killer” – Betty Dean, Dr. Rogers (dead ), Dr. Zodus (dead ) & Doctor Logan ( 3 Medical Commission doctors ), Helen Zodus ( daughter ) vs. Dr. Bradley ( unethical medical doctor ) ], Mysterio ( Quentin Beck ) [ The Amazing Spider-Man#13 ( June 1964 ) ], The Orb ( Drake Shannon ) [ Marvel Team-Up#15 ( November 1973 ) ], The Faceless One [ Astonishing Tales#2-3 ( October-December 1970 ) 2nd story ( Doctor Doom ) ], Ruby Thursday [ The Defenders#32-33 ( February-March 1976 ) ] & for some strange reason a second Orb [ Ghost Rider Vol.6#26 ( October 2008 ) was created. Did I miss anyone? I do have this issue of Ms. Marvel and I am not a fan of the artist ( Whose work here looks a little like Luke McDonnell’s ).

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Forgot the Chief Examiner [ Questprobe#1 ( May 1984 ) ]. FACELESS ONE ( a Kn’kn – semi-insectoid aliens ): Plus, I no Xenobiologist or exobiologist so I don’t know if it is possible for a lifeform to exist without a mouth unless it survives the way plants do, but I can’t help thinking that the Faceless One is really an Alien version of Doctor Sun & Brain Drain and his globe body with legs is just a mobile containment unit for his disembodied brain.

      Like

      Reply

  8. “I wasn’t a huge aficionado of artist Mike Vosburg, but perhaps due to the inking of Bruce Patterson, I thought he did well on this issue.”

    I was always a little puzzled by Vosburg. When he did work that he penciled and inked himself, as in his Linda Lovecraft stories for Star*Reach, his artwork looked terrific, but when he drew work for hire stories, which he didn’t ink, it was much less interesting (and far too often inked by Vince Colletta).

    I don’t know whether he just wasn’t as interested in the job if he couldn’t ink it, or if it was that he wasn’t plotting it, either — on his own stuff, the layouts are considerable more ambitious that his Marvel/DC stuff. I saw him comment in an interview somewhere that they didn’t let him ink at Marvel and DC, so maybe he wanted to, but they wanted to turn it into more standard-looking art? Whatever, it was a loss for them, since when he did full art the results were really sharp.

    Patterson gives the art a nice slick finish here, but it’s still not as good as those Star*Reach stories.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I agree that Vosburg’s stuff outside of Marvel shows some real chops.. but I think he did well at Marvel with certain inkers like Leialoha who were more lush and fluid. His best stuff seems to go heavy on connecting black lines and shapes… it wasn’t the type of inking that Marvel was doing in the late 70’s and 80’s generally… at least not on the titles where I saw his work.

      I might be wrong but It seemed to me that he was in competition with McDonnell for the Ironman assignment with Mitchell inking when Michelinie/Layton left the title the first time.

      Like

      Reply

  9. I notice that this is another story with the initial splash page lettering and story title done by an uncredited Gaspar Saladino rather than the credited letterer. (The story title is very Saladino, and the first page lettering is very different in style to that of the other pages.)

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. Earlier this year I read both this Ms. Marvel and Savage She-Hulk series. I found She-Hulk to have decent writing but not that great art and Ms. Marvel to have better art (although it was a mix of artists) and not that great writing. I hated how Claremont treated the character, making her weak, having her run away from fights and more. It seemed like he was unsure of how to deal with Ms. Marvel civilian/hero identity and it changed over the course of the series.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. Re the question of Ms. Marvel’s presence in the Avengers, pre-pregnancy– if Micheline didn’t want her in the group, and Shooter didn’t want her in the group– what forced them to keep her in the group?

    Re: Ms Marvel’s lack of success– well, more than fill-in artists, she was saddled for most of her run with that terrible costume. There was no particular reason, intrinsic or extrinsic, for Carol to wear a knock-off of the Gil Kane Cap Marvel costume. Intrinsically, Cap wasn’t that well known a hero to Earth people; extrinsically, he wasn’t an especially successful feature-star. And there was no particular reason that the “psyche-magnetron” couldn’t have imbued Carol with Mar-Vell’s powers while giving her a costume that came from her own psyche– preferably the same one Dave Cockrum came up with years later.

    Claremont was the best writer on the series and did a lot to give Carol her dominant “voice,” defining her as a former army brat with a lot of her father’s impatience and aggressiveness. But CC also takes some blame for lots of “menace of the month” stories. I forget when the series dropped the ridiculous idea of a former security chief running a women’s magazine, but I don’t think Carol Danvers picked up a new profession after that, did she? At least in Spider-Woman’s first series, the heroine consistently paid her bills through bounty hunting and related activities.

    Like

    Reply

    1. This is all from a sixty-three year old’s memory mind you but I recall Carol having been writing between Ms. Marvel #1 and her last appearance in Captain Marvel. It might’ve been all articles or even books (I don’t remember when her books are first mentioned. Couple that income with the stipend for being an Avenger and she had an income stream. Heck, they could claim she was still freelancing a well. We know she’s had at least one bestseller post-Binary. Both fiction and nonfiction writing in her years as Captain Marvel would bring in the bucks too.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    2. Carol got fired from the magazine in issue #22, and as of #23, she was still at loose ends. I imagine Claremont had some other job in mind for her, but never got the chance to set it up. I don’t think any specific occupation was ever mentioned in her Avengers appearances. Steve McB’s guess that she went back to writing sounds reasonable to me.

      Like

      Reply

  12. Interesting; I don’t recall anything about Carol Danvers having authorial chops in the original Capt Marvel run, but I can imagine someone working that idea into later stories as a retcon to justify the magazine assignment.

    As far as earning her daily bread, I was only thinking about the solo series, when she wasn’t yet an Avenger with a comfortable Stark stipend.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment