Issue(s): Marvel Super Heroes #10 (Ms. Marvel story only)
Cover Date: Jul 92 / Summer 92
Title: "Sabretooth stalks the subway!"
Credits:
Chris Claremont - Writer
Mike Vosburg - Penciler
Mike Vosburg - Inker
Dan Cuddy - Assistant Editor
Rob Tokar - Editor

Review/plot:
This is the unfinished Ms. Marvel #24, which was finally completed for the 1992 Marvel Super Heroes "Summer" issue. I don't know how much of it needed to be finished in 1992. Vosburg was the original penciler; it's possible the entire issue was completed but just left in a drawer. Possibly just needed coloring. Even the cover (by Cockrum/Austin) is included.

However, the interior art doesn't quite look like it was drawn in 1979.

In any event, at this point Ms. Marvel is officially an Avenger and is getting some training time with Iron Man.

She then gets into a fight with Sabretooth, who has recently escaped from prison.

Meanwhile, Mike Barnett (Carol's psychiatrist and boyfriend) has been murdered.

Ms. Marvel knows that Sabretooth is Canadian from having read an old FBI security file. That would have been an interesting clue to the relationship between him and Wolverine had this issue been published.

"Lost issues" tend to raise expectations unfairly, but this one holds up OK. The Sabretooth fight isn't all that exciting - Ms. Marvel generally has the upper hand the whole time - but this was still a decent issue.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - death of Mike Barnett

Chronological Placement Considerations: This was published in 1992 but takes place soon after Ms. Marvel #23. It takes place after Ms. Marvel has joined the Avengers. There's no indication of where this takes place from Iron Man's perspective, but i've placed it after his bout with alcoholism.

The Vision & Scarlet Witch and Namor stories from this issue are in separate entries.

References:

• Iron Man says Ms. Marvel's hand-to-hand fighting style reminds him of Mantis, who, a footnote says, left the Avengers in Giant-Size Avengers #4.
  
• Iron Man also says that Jarvis told him that Ms. Marvel is good at poker. That's an un-footnoted reference to Marvel Two-In-One #51.
  
• Carol thinks to herself that she's had a lot of job offers since she was fired in Ms. Marvel #22, but she's not accepted them because of her super-responsibilities.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? Y - (unpublished issue of Ms. Marvel #24)

My Reprint: N/A

I think the issue was inked & lettered(at the very least) in 1992; Vosburg usually didn't do full art back then.

Note the last two pages of the story, not scanned here, look a lot more like Vosburg's Cloak and Dagger work: inkier and more angular.

"Psychiatrist and boyfriend"? Hopefully not at the same time...

Based on Carol's comments earlier in the series, Mike was her friend and boyfriend first, and she only started using his professional services after she became Ms. Marvel and needed his help dealing with the stress caused by the dual identity (back when it was a strange split personality situation).

The problem is that we never saw that pre-existing relationship before Carol started needed his professional help--Barnett's introductory scene is when Carol bursts into his office needing help. So in terms of what the reader saw on-panel he was both her therapist and her lover right from day one. But the way Carol introduced him or described him in the early issues does suggest they had a social relationship first.

I guess we can add Ms. Marvel to the long line of heroes who have kicked Sabretooth's butt with ease. (Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Spider-man, DD, Black cat, Misty Knight...) What a wimp.

Dermie, thanks for clarifying the odd Barnett/Danvers/Ms. Marvel relationship. The writers of her book (even the normally careful Claremont) were sometimes hazy on what they were to each other and when, but you're right; at the outset, it was established that his professional services came second. Then he just got creepier and creepier, vacillating from sounding like a potential blackmailer to wanting to turn her into a hausfrau. And, of course, in his last appearance in her original run, he had just earned the ominous attention of Mystique. Uh oh!