I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read.

“Okay. Let’s try this again.”

With lovely meta aptness, the Captain Marvel series that debuted in 2014 starts with the title titan saying those words. Writer Kelly Sue DeConnick had already presided over another series that handed the Captain Marvel mantle to Carol Danvers, a character who dated back to mighty Marvel’s rocketlike rise in the nineteen-sixties and was best known for her time fighting bad guys under the superhero identity of Ms. Marvel. Those comics were highly regarded and strong enough sellers that the publisher was committed to letting DeConnick continue to tell Captain Marvel stories. But the Marvel of the twenty-first century never let even the flimsiest opportunity for a relaunch with a new first issue go untapped, so Captain Marvel started anew. Luckily, DeConnick knew how to take full advantage of the situation. She wasn’t just going to continue Carol’s tale. She declared her intent with the title she gave to the first storyline: “Higher, Further, Faster, More.”

Working with artist David López, DeConnick sets Carol off on a big ol’ space epic. The Avengers decide they need someone on the outer space beat, and Carol volunteers. The impetus isn’t all that important, really. It’s just a way to get Captain Marvel where she most belongs, slicing across starscapes and blasting away at colossal spaceships with her megaton-level powers.

I’d argue that DeConnick’s best move is to bend the tone of the comic away from the ponderous space operas that defined Marvel’s cosmic heroes in the earlier eras. Her version of wars among the stars are brightly inventive and filled with personality. Four months before James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy convinced the moviegoing masses that heroes who did their duty in outer space could get a little zany, DeConnick and López brought a similar energy to Captain Marvel. In a happy act of synergy, the Guardians guest-starred in that initial arc.

Strong as that energy of cosmic cavorting is in these Captain Marvel stories, DeConnick balances it with more serious-minded points in the mode of classic science fiction. Carol gets caught up in societal conflicts on a distant planet. It is still a tale of good guys and bad guys, but DeConnick allows for the lines between right and wrong to be less sharply drawn. That use of carefully considered social structures and moral complexity brings Captain Marvel recalls the heights of Nexus, the indie comics masterpiece by writer Mike Baron and artist Steve Rude. That’s one of the highest compliments I can pay.

As was her evident mission throughout her lengthy, laudable run with the character, DeConnick imbues Carol with more truth, humanity, and distinctiveness than the character had ever had before. There a welcome feminist edge to the writing, sometimes in specific acts of empowerment (sometimes quite literally, given that Carols zings shooting energy blasts out of her hands) but mostly in the plain assertion of a totality of being. Carol was strong, but also funny, caring, klutzy, warm, caring, testy, bold, rash, strategically cunning, and introspective. In her batch of wholly relatable contradictions, Carol comes alive in these panels. The character who was brought winningly to the big screen a few years later had technically been around a long time, but the line from Brie Larson’s portrayal goes straight to what DeConnick created with López and other collaborators. These are the comics that made her a true marvel.

Previous entries in this series (and there are a LOT of them) can be found by clicking on the “My Misspent Youth” tag.