Monday 7 January 2013

Marvelling at Captain Marvel #7 (not #6)

Or how a comic can be both a kickass Superhero story and a feminist one.



Captain Marvel is the comic telling the ongoing adventures of Carol Danvers, who is in my opinion one of Marvel's more interesting heroes. The book is being written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and drawn/painted by the epically epic Dexter Soy. (The current arc also features the talents of Christopher Sebela on writing.) It's a beautiful written and drawn comic that solidly brings the Super in Superhero while also quietly providing ideas about female heroism. It's pretty great.

Take issue #6  #7 (EDIT: My mistake... (1))  which features Captain Marvel, and Monica Rambeau, a sometime Captain Marvel herself, fighting a giant robot comprised of sunken ships and crashed aircraft to protect the New Orleans levies. So you know, giant ridiculous Superhero action.

But on this backdrop we have our heroes saving a powerless civilian reporter in distress: and it's a dude:



Which, as refreshing as it is, is immediately followed by this little scene:



Look at this! We have the hero of the story being told to go and be amazing by a romantic interest from the sidelines. How many times have we seen the lady love interest of the leading man in a Superhero or Sports movie or comic egg on her man from the sidelines during some conflict or event she lacks the ability to participate in. In my experience, the answer is a lot. This is, as far as I can come up with, the only time I've seen this with a woman being the action star and a man being the supportive but passive one. And it's pretty great to see.

Of course, all of this happens between punching a giant Robot. 

1: As I was snapping pics for this post, I was lending my brother my stack of ~3 months of new comics (comics being one of our few common interests). It occurred to me just as I was handing him the pile of books at a family dinner that I lacked a cover photo. I hastily snapped a quick one of a cover that looked right and wrote the post without the issue in hand. My apologies for messing that up...

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