Issue(s): Marvel Super Heroes #12, Marvel Super Heroes #13, Captain Marvel #1
Cover Date: Dec 67 - May 68
Title: "The coming of Captain Marvel!" / "Where stalks the Sentry!" / "Out of the holocaust-- a hero!"
Credits:
Stan Lee / Roy Thomas - Writer
Gene Colan - Penciler
Frank Giacoia / Paul Reinman / Vincent Colletta - Inker

Review/plot:
Beginning with issue #12, the Golden Age reprint title Fantasy Masterpieces was renamed Marvel Super Heroes and began featuring new stories, starting with a new character called Captain Marvel.

The reason for this was at least partially due to the fact that Martin Goodman wanted to challenge the copyright holder of the Shazam! Captain Marvel. That character was originally owned by a company called Fawcett but was abandoned when DC sued over similarities to Superman. The copyright was now owned by a publisher named Myron Fass, who was attempting to compete with Marvel with stories produced by Carl Burgos (the character was a human-like android with blond hair and a red jumpsuit).

Obviously Marvel wouldn't want another company publishing a title featuring the word Marvel, hence the introduction of Marvel's Captain Marvel. As Sean Howe says in Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, "Goodman renamed the comic Marvel Super Heroes, and just in case anyone missed the point, it was all there on the cover: Marvel Super Heroes featuring Captain Marvel, published by the Marvel Comics Group."

From a story perspective, we see a formula that will more or less be repeated for the upcoming Silver Surfer series: take a wild cosmic Kirby concept and humanize the hell out of it until you just can't stand to hear anyone in the book talk any more. In this case the concept is the Kree, which we've seen via the Sentry, Ronan the Accuser, and the Supreme Intelligence. All spacy alien stuff, but we learn in this issue that those elements aren't really representative of the species; the regular Kree are annoying, mundane, petty, and sappy.

Captain Mar-vell is sent by his scheming boss, Colonel Yon-Rogg, to invade Earth all by himself. Yon-Rogg's motivation is that he's in love with the medic, Una, but Una and Mar-vell are a couple, so he's hoping Mar-vell will die on Earth.

The most high tech thing about Captain Marvel is his universal beam (or uni-beam) gun. It's basically a magic lightbulb. He's very impressed with it anyway, scoffing how humans have developed atomic energy but not this.

The uni-beam is moved from the gun to his wrist in the second issue.

Captain Marvel's other edge is that fact that gravity in the Kree galaxy is stronger than Earth's, which, like Superman, gives him superior strength, speed, and flight-like leaping abilities. Except that, weirdly, he'll lose those powers if exposed to Earth's atmosphere for too long. So he has to take potions or pills when he doesn't have his suit on.

The impression you'd get from Marvel's truncated mission statement...

...and the message he receives from Yon-Rogg's superiors...

...is that Mar-vell is supposed to punish the Earth, wreaking havoc for daring to have destroyed a Kree Sentry.

But that's not a sustainable remit for the protagonist of an ongoing series set in the Marvel Universe (although it woulda been hella cool). So by the next issue (with Roy Thomas taking over the writing chores), Mar-vell decides that he's only here to study Earth for the time being.

Mar-vell checks into a local hotel and signs his name Marvel. It was simple! All he did was Americanize Mar-vell! The Kree are clearly bonkers.

To distinguish from other Captain Marvels in the Marvel Universe (it'll always be you, Monica!), i use Mar-vell's non-"Americanized" name in the Characters Appearing section.

As for ideas, clearly there really weren't many. Nothing really happens in the first issue. Then, rather than explore anything in the theme of an alien invader living on Earth, Thomas does what he does best and brings in existing characters that have ties with the lead. So the next two issues (by the third issue, Mar-vell is moved to his own book with a full length story, even though you can see from the first scan below the story was intended to continue in MSH #14) are Captain Marvel fighting a revived Kree sentry. Boo.

Mar-vell stumbles into a secret identity when Yon-Rogg attempts to assassinate him but instead hits the plane of a reclusive scientist that was recently summoned to a nearby rocket base. Captain Mar-vell assumes the identity of the man. I hope i'm not getting anyone in trouble by revealing that the man's name was Walter Lawson.

Luckily Mar-vell seems to look a lot like Lawson.

Ronan the Accuser has a cameo in Captain Marvel #1.

MSH #13 also introduces Carol Danvers (later Ms. Marvel and much later, another Captain Marvel herself), the suspicious head of security at the rocket base.

And we also meet a General Bridges, who will appear in several early issues.

The fact that Mar-vell is now calling himself Lawson but signed in at his hotel as Marvel starts to cause him problems, as does the fact that people find his briefcase to be an odd shape.

Part of the problem with this book, i'm sad to say, is Gene Colan. My Essentials trade has some un-inked pencils of these early issues in the back of the book, and they really are beautiful. But Colan's art is suited for moody atmospheric stuff, not science-fiction, and his style really exacerbates the melodramatic soap opera nature of this story...

...and isn't a great fit for the giant robot fight.

Despite a really sad start, and despite the fact that this represents a real watering-down of the Kree, Mar-vell will have a decent run with some memorable moments, particularly when handled by Jim Starlin.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 8 - first Captain Marvel & Carol Danvers

Chronological Placement Considerations: As Don notes in the comments, issues #2-3 take place the same night as these issues.

References:

• The Kree Sentry appeared in Fantastic Four #64, and Ronan the Accuser in Fantastic Four #65.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Captain Marvel vol. 1

Marvel thought enough of the Mar-vell/Sentry battle to parody it in an issue of Not Brand Ecch(drawn by Colan).

Myron Fass, the sleaziest of sleazy publishers, didn't have the copyright. He just plain felt like doing it and hoped nobody would notice. Being a former 1950s Atlas artist, you'd think he woulda known better...

Dave Cockrum has a letter in #13.

Wow...nothing phallic AT ALL about that opening splash page, with Mar-Vell's legs spread wide and the rocket ship flying out from his crotch area. The caption of "The Coming of Captain Marvel" is just the icing on the cake...

Heh, the opening splash felt more like something out of 50s pulp novels or Flash Gordon honestly. But now that you mention it...

Admission: while it may feel repetitive that Mar-Vell is fighting the Kree Sentry again, I think it helped streamline things all the easier with the "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes" rendition, which more or less merge that story with the F4's first encounter with the Kree. (it also kept Mar-Vell blue and offered an easier explanation behind Carol becoming Captain Marvel herself...)

What Fass and then Marvel grabbed wasn't the copyright, but the trademark. DC licensed the original Captain Marvel from Fawcett when it revived him in the 70s. (It owns him now.) There's more on this at http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2012/02/10/comic-book-legends-revealed-353/2/ .

Dialogue in Captain Marvel #3 indicates that the first appearance of "Captain Marvel" at the Cape and his battles with the Sentry (in MSH #13/CM #1) and the Super-Skrull (CM #2) take place on the same night. This is after Bridges called Lawson (Mar-Vell) to tell him about the rampaging Sentry in MSH #13 and before "Lawson" (actually the Super-Skrull) finally returned to the base in CM #3. Plus, there's the fact that Mar-Vell's suitcase is equipped with that nuclear bomb that will detonate two hours after anyone tampers with it, so CM #2-3 takes place less than two hours after CM #1. Also, Mar-Vell's breathing potion only lasts for one hour.

On the other hand, the Skrull emperor (in the fifth quadrant of the Andromeda Galaxy) is able to view images of Mar-Vell and the Sentry which he had defeated, then summon the Super-Skrull to the palace imperial and send him on a mission to Earth -- ALL in the time that it takes Mar-Vell to return to his hotel room! I guess the Super-Skrull's ship can travel the two million light-years between galaxies VERY quickly.

@Don Campbell - It always drives me nuts when sci-fi and comic book writers misuse the word quadrant to describe an area of outer space. Quad is short for quadruple, which means consisting of four parts. So there are *four* regions in a quadrant, which means the line "the fifth quadrant of the Andromeda Galaxy" is total nonsense. What writers really should be using is "sector" to describe an area of outer space. You can divide something into as many sectors as you want. Of course, as you point out, writers also often forget just how freaking big our own Milky Way Galaxy is, much less the utterly immense distance between our galaxy and Andromeda, and often have characters zipping back & forth between them in a matter of hours. So I'm not too surprised that they also misuse a term like quadrant with such frequency.

Anyway, that concludes my quad rant :)

Thanks Don. I already had #2-3 relatively close to this entry and concurrency could explain the other issues in between, but i've now moved that entry to follow this one directly. As you say, we'll have to assume that the Skrulls have faster-than-light tech.

Something I just now noticed about the cover to MSH #12: why is that guy in the background shinnying up that drainpipe?

When the original art to MSH#13 was printed in Essential Captain Marvel #1, it showed that Carol Danvers was originally called "Miss Johnson".

The whole back story of the name Captain Marvel is as convoluted as any comic storyline ever was. The beginning of this series was weak but still strong enough to get the series going. The best thing is the introduction of Carol Danvers (whom I've wondered if she was modeled on Linda Danvers). I agree that Colan wasn't as suited to this series as he was Daredevil.

Back Issue #93 revealed that Stan Lee didn't want to write this character at all and only did so because Goodman ordered it; and that Roy Thomas suggested the green & white costume(which he immediately regretted).

The Captain Marvel series is the strangest out of all of Marvel's Sixties series for several reasons, and I always wondered how Stan & Co. decided to create this property when they already had a perfectly acceptable cosmic hero in the Silver Surfer. Seeing now that this series was dictated by Goodman makes a lot more sense. You can tell that nobody's heart was in it at this time.

Mark drummond, that shinnying troll on the drain pipe was the '60's artist rendition of a photo bomber

The ''take a wild Cosmic Kirby or Starlin concept and humanize the Hell out of it'' thing was also seen recently in Jason Aaron's Thanos Rising comic.

I respectfully disagree about Gene Colan's art here. I think it works very well for the Captain Marvel stories precisely because it doesn't look like typical SF comic art. The way he draws, which is both realistic and shadowy, along with the washed colouring, gives the action the feel of a black and white SF film or a TV series like The Invaders. Colan's art often went against type and worked for me for that very reason.

According to Yancy Street Gazette #19(6/68), Myron Fass did file a lawsuit against Martin Goodman over Captain Marvel. It ended with Fass selling the rights to the name for $4500 because Fass' version was selling horribly.

I bought 3 of the Fass Captain Marvels off the stands. It was juvenile, I was 10, and it amused my friends and me in that "so bad it's good" sort of way. It predated Captain Mar-Vell by about a year, so when Marvel's Captain Marvel comic hit the stands, we greeted it with even more inappropriate laughter and bad jokes. We already knew about the Shazam! Captain Marvel, because we watched Gomer Pyle, and I had a black and white magazine with some stills from the old Tom Tyler Captain Marvel serials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_(M._F._Enterprises)

Without the mask and with the silver hair, Captain Marvel resembles the actor Jeff Chandler, best known for his Oscar-nominated performance in the 1950 Universal western "Broken Arrow".With the heimet/mask and green-and-white motif, he resembles Sparty, the mascot for the Michigan State Spartans.