Issue(s): Captain Marvel #58, Captain Marvel #59, Captain Marvel #60, Captain Marvel #61, Captain Marvel #62
Cover Date: Sep 78 - May 79
Title: "A Destroyer-- denied!" / "The trouble with Titan..." / "Moon-traps and paradise" / "Chaos and the pit!" / "Earth skirmish"
Credits:
Doug Moench - Writer
Pat Broderick - Penciler
Bob McLeod / Bruce D. Patterson - Inker
Jim Salicrup - Assistant Editor
Roger Stern - Editor

Review/plot:
Captain Marvel returns to the space observatory to tell them that he's decided to quit since his presence there will only attract danger. The art shows the observatory scientists all huddled inside the still-smoking damaged building, which seems to imply that this takes place directly after issue #56.

Right after that, Captain Marvel decides to go to Denver, and he even creates some civilian clothes for himself using his Nega-Bands.

After that, we enter the final plot for Captain Marvel's series. It's a pretty long and meandering plotline with ISAAC, the computer mind of Titan, as the main bad guy. I was pretty surprised to see that, actually. I really like Roger Stern's Vision story in Avengers where he decides to take over the world's computer systems after he hooks up with ISAAC and sees how efficiently Titan is run. But knowing that ISAAC had gone crazy in the past should have made the Vision (and Eros/Starfox, who is present in this story and is the one who facilitates the Vision/ISAAC connection in Avengers) more cautious.

The story starts out by picking up the dangling plotline that is poor Drax the Destroyer, who was created to kill Thanos but missed out on the opportunity during both major Thanos events.

When he learns that Thanos is dead again, he seeks out Captain Marvel for "vengeance" for thwarting his mission (even though it was Adam Warlock that killed Thanos this time).

I would say that someone ought to seek out Mentor and take him to task for designing Drax in such a way that he wouldn't be happy if Thanos was dead, regardless of who killed him, or for not shutting him down after Thanos died, but as we'll see, Mentor is currently occupied.

During the fight between Captain Marvel and Drax, ISAAC contacts them and tells them that he is under attack by the remnants of Thanos' forces.

Drax considers this to be a task sufficiently within his parameters, and he puts off his fight with Captain Marvel and forms a truce, although he says that he still intends to kill him later.

But we learn that ISAAC is lying; he's not under attack by Thanos' forces. He was actually reprogrammed by Thanos prior to the Mad Titan's death, and he's captured all of the Titans (i don't think we've seen any of these guys before besides Mentor and Eros, and don't they look just like Eternals?).

ISAAC has a whole bunch of minions, including Stellarax, the first in a race of new men, designed by Thanos.

He leads an army of Thanos' former minions on an invasion of Earth while Captain Marvel and Drax are lured to Titan.

Another of ISAAC's minions is Elysius, a Titan herself and who seems to be more interested in cute guys than anything.

Then there's Lord Gaea. No relation to Thor's mom, despite his claim of being an Earth God.

And Dionysus. Not to be confused with Pip the Troll.

As we saw above, Elysius had her eye on Eros.

But ISAAC sends her out after Captain Marvel...

...and she ultimately decides Mar-vell tips the scales on the handsome men front, and so she switches sides.

But ISAAC has a replacement lined up: Chaos, who "contains... space itself".

Mar-vell manages to defeat all the minions on Titan, which just leaves Stellarax's invasion of Earth. Rick Jones cut his European tour short to deal with the invasion...

...but he and his girlfriend Gertie get themselves captured.

As Mar-vell leaves for Earth, he learns that Elysius has picked him over Eros.

Mar-vell manages to take out Stellarax's death-ray while Drax and Rick handle his goons.

Part of Stellarax's takeover strategy involved shutting down all of Earth's technology, leading to some quips between newspaper and TV reporters; an interesting insight into a now antiquated rivalry.

Those sequences stand out because they're pretty much the only non-plot driven dialogue in these issues. Moench is frustrating like that. His Master of Kung Fu is proof that he's a good writer that can bring a lot of depth, but a lot of his stuff is very straightfoward and basic.

Despite some decent and occasionally trippy art from Broderick...

...this is not a great storyline. It seems writers frequently need to be reminded that "epic" and "long" are not synonyms. These issues could have been improved by cutting out most of ISAAC's minions and devoting some of the extra time to developing Elysius' character better (and the rest of the extra time to cut the length of the story).

As it stands, this isn't actually the end of the story, because back on Titan, even though ISAAC has lost all his minions, he can still stop Eros and Mentor's attempts to fix his programming by shutting off Titan's life support systems.

This book is cancelled with issue #62, but this storyline will be immediately resumed in a new Marvel Spotlight, with the first issue not missing a beat on the bi-monthly schedule for these books. It's very odd to see a book cancelled with the story immediately picked up in another book with the same creative team. Did the book get cancelled before they realized that Broderick had several issues worth of finished pencils? Did a higher-up order the book cancelled but a supportive editor (Stern or Salicrup) find a way to keep the story going? The blurb in issue #62's lettercol says they haven't yet figured out what Marvel Spotlight would be about ("We'd tell you more about our wild and crazy plans for SPOTLIGHT, but - confidentially - we don't have them all figured out ourselves!"). Odd.

In any event, Rick and Gertie insist on being taken with Drax and Captain Marvel back to Titan, so that's where we leave off.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Elysius

Chronological Placement Considerations: The observatory sequence must take place soon after the end of issue #56. It's likely that Captain Marvel then spends a decent amount of time in Denver before Drax shows up. It's during that gap that a number of Captain Marvel appearances take place, including the Korvac saga and his appearance in Ms. Marvel #19. That's also when Rick Jones appears on Saturday Night Live in Marvel Team-Up #74 before going back to Europe. Only after all of that does the rest of this series occur. There are alternative options here - Captain Marvel is usually pretty context free when he appears in other books - but this seems to be in line with the MCP and works well enough. This story continues directly in Marvel Spotlight #1.

References:

• Captain Marvel got a job at the space observatory in Captain Marvel #55-56.
  
• Drax's origin, originally shown in Iron Man #55, is recapped.
  
• Drax says he's been searching for Thanos ever since he learned that Thanos was still alive, with a reference to Captain Marvel #43-44. I still interpret that statement such that he briefly encountered Thanos in Logan's Run #6 and then lost him again.
  
• Thanos died in Marvel Two-In-One annual #2.
  
• ISAAC was seen in "human form" previously in Captain Marvel #32-33.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A