Issue(s): Marvel Super Heroes #11 (Ms. Marvel story only)
Cover Date: Oct 92 / Fall 92
Title: "Cry, vengeance!"
Credits:
Chris Claremont - Plot
Simon Furman - Script
Michael Gustovich & Mike Vosburg - Penciler
Michael Gustovich & Mike Vosburg - Inker
Dan Cuddy, Joe Andreani, & Anna Mazzarelli - Assistant Editor
Rob Tokar - Editor

Review/plot:
This unfinished story that would have been Ms. Marvel #25 is completed in the quarterly Marvel Super Heroes "Fall" edition from 1992. Unlike the previous issue, it seems this one was a lot further from completion, and Simon Furman has been brought in to provide the script while Michael Gustovich finalized the art. It's unclear exactly how much of this was the original script/plot/art and how much was added in 1992.

The story has Ms. Marvel following up on the murder of Mike Barnett (with the help of Iron Man), and the investigation leads her into confrontation with the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, in their retroactive first appearance (The Blob has not yet been recruited)...

...as well as the Hellfire club.

Mystique has been after Ms. Marvel because Destiny predicted that Danvers would cause Rogue harm; as is usually the case when trying to prevent a predicted future, Mystique's actions have just made Destiny's prediction inevitable. Mystique killed Barnett. The Hellfire Club, meanwhile, is involved because an arms dealer that Ms. Marvel traced to Mystique had been double-crossing them, selling the Brotherhood weapons intended for Shaw.

This story did not reach a conclusion, so the remainder of it outlines the series of events that occurred to Carol after the cancellation of her book, including her membership in the Avengers, 'marriage' to Kang's son and the subsequent fallout in Avengers annual #10 (actually bridging the gap between Avengers #200 and the annual)...

...and even her transformation into Binary.

Ms. Marvel tells Iron Man that she had a friend, whose catch-phrase was "I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn't very nice", who helped her learn to be "scary".

While the previous 'lost' Ms. Marvel story wasn't great but at least felt like a complete story, this one is kind of a mess. I'm not complaining; i think it's cool that they found a way to publish this. Just don't get your hopes up; that's all i'm saying.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Most of this issue takes place soon after (not necessarily directly after) Marvel Super Heroes #10 where Mike Barnett is murdered. Ms. Marvel is still an Avenger. But after a while it jumps forward a few weeks to after the Marcus incident in Avengers #200 when Ms. Marvel is no longer on speaking terms with the Avengers. And it ends with Rogue draining Ms. Marvel's powers and throwing her off the Golden Gate Bridge, which means it takes place just moments before Avengers annual #10. And then it goes into a montage scene covering events up until her transformation into Binary. Even ignoring the montage, it spans a decent period of time, making placement difficult. I've chosen to use the initial scenes with Iron Man to determine placement.

The Ghost Rider and Giant-Man stories from this issue are in separate entries.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? Y - (previously unpublished/incomplete issue of Ms. Marvel #25)

My Reprint: N/A

I'm guessing Chris Claremont hadn't even completed the plot to this when Ms. Marvel got cancelled, and finished/changed it in 1992.

Close to Ms. Marvel's cancellation, an announcement was made that future issues would include the Thing, Mr. Fantastic, and the Grandmaster.

According to FOOM#22(11/78), #25 was to feature Ms. Marvel fighting bootleg moonshiners in Arkansas(per Claremont).

In Amazing Heroes #39, it was announced that 4 issues of Marvel Fanfare would be devoted to what would have been Ms. Marvel 24-26 by Claremont/Vosburg. The first two issues were pretty much as you see in Marvel Super-Heroes, but #26 was to be a big Ms. Marvel/Mystique fight explaining why Mystique hates her--and it was over relationships that both had with Sebastian Shaw that nobody knew about(no Grandmaster, sorry). The 4th Fanfare was to be by Claremont/David Ross and explain why Ms. Marvel wasn't at Captain Mar-Vell's funeral in that Graphic Novel.

The Claremont/Ross story appeared in Marvel Fanfare 24 as a backup story. It takes place before Secret Wars. The explanation is that nobody told her Mar-Vell died until after Monica assumed the Captain Marvel identity, which really only works if you assume the X-Men are idiots or jerks.

I haven't read this in awhile...I was so disappointed in its quality when I finally tracked it down.

I can't remember why Rogue is so powerful during her first fight BEFORE she absorbs Carol's powers....and if Mystique is comforting Rogue on the bridge...who tossed Carol off?

Rogue just says "Figure these powers ah 'borrowed' should see the job done", but doesn't say who she borrowed them from. Mystique arrives on the bridge after Rogue throws Ms. Marvel off.

In Uncanny 209 ( or maybe 208), Rogue says Shaw almost punched her ticket when they first met, before she joined the X-Men. I don't think we see that in these salvaged Ms. Marvel issues, but this would presumably have been where the encounter would have taken place.

Thanks! I didn't see the rounded corners on the panel....I thought it was sequential...

Those stories never happened. Only #24-25 were finished (and as someone else has said, #26 would have originally been a breather one-off storyline). Aspects of what Claremont originally planned (due to the plans for the Marvel Fanfare arc which was announced in UXM #158) were later incorporated into the "From the Ashes" storyline when Rogue joined X-Men, as was references to Sebastian Shaw towards kicking Rogue's ass when they have their first on-panel meeting in UXM Annual #8.

As with everything related to Claremont and his original plans for Mystique, Claremont has REPEATEDLY changed the story of his original plans for her so often that the truth has been lost to the ages. But from what we saw in Ms Marvel #25/MSH #11 and the hints we saw in UXM later down the line, a rough outline emerged:

Carol would have infiltrated the Hellfire Club and Sebastian Shaw would begin grooming her to become the new Black Queen and that there would be a big moment where Carol would, in order to prove herself worthy of being the Black Queen, would kill Rogue.

Mystique and the Hellfire Club would clash when the Hellfire Club kidnap Rogue and that some BAD, REALLY BAD stuff happened between the Hellfire Club and Mastermind and Mystique and Rogue during the villain showdown. Mystique does something to Mastermind to get him expelled from the Hellfire Club and cause him to go after her in From the Ashes, when he goes on his revenge tear and Sebastian Shaw brutally beats Rogue up something fierce, to the point that Shaw brings it up several times when he fights Rogue again as part of the X-Men (with it being presumed that Rogue getting brutalized by Shaw ends up being what Mystique hints at being the reason she is utterly obsessed with destroying Carol).

Looking over this issue again, I'm fairly certain the Vosburg pages were plotted and scripted by Claremont. Vosburg's art looks like his style from '79, not the later Cloak and Dagger-era Vosburg. Note how perfunctory the plot of the definitely new Gustovich pages is: Coehlo is speedily killed off and Shaw gives us a straight up expository explanation if the Coehlo-Brotherhood-Hellfire Club connection. Then we move onto the setup for the Rogue-Carol showdown.

This is in contrast to the plotting of the Vosburg pages, in which new subplots--Coehlo, the seduction scene--are still being added, as if this was an ongoing series with subplots. The script, too, not only sounds rather Claremontian--"compeer," or the way Pyro announces his name and Avalanche's--but connects Coehlo with Moses Magnum's Deterrence Research Corporatuon, which figures in Claremont plots in Power-Man, Marvel Team-Up, and later Spider-Woman but otherwise has never been mentioned outside of Magnum's first appearance. It's a distinctively Claremont institution/subplot that was completely forgotten after about 1981. I don't think Furman would have known about it, let alone inserted it unnecessarily into the story.

Jesse Baker and Mark Drummond have both connected this with something I've heard Ckaremont allude to elsewhere: the Dark Phoenix Saga was originally a Ms. Marvel plot. Hence the mysterious seduction scene she imagines while she's on the flight across the Pacific: but in Carol's case, it's not Mastermind or anyone else projecting illusions into her mind, it's just her sixth sense giving her a precognitive flash. I suspect Claremont intended Shaw to be the seducer, and Mastermind wouldn't have been involved.

(Byrne has said that he was the one who prompted Claremont to include Blob in Mystique's Brotherhood, as a tie to past X-continuity, and I've heard, or just suspected, he was responsible for Mastermind's Dark Phoenix role as well.)

Then again, maybe the rumors of the Grandmaster appearing in the series were a mix-up for Mastermind...

There are other script clues in the Vosburg pages as well: the flight Carol boards at Kennedy is "Sovereign Airways Flight 007." Claremont makes reference to "Sovereign" this or that in several comics, and of course eventually does a series for DC called Sovereign Seven. I doubt that would have been even on the drawing board in 1992, though, so Furman couldn't be referring to it. It's Claremont, using some of his favorite tropes.

I think Walter Lawson is right on the money here—there is a pretty clear break in the issue both art-wise and story-wise. Plus, looking back at it now, that last Vosburg page actually looks a lot like it could be the cliffhanger final panel for the story—Pyro shows what he can do, and then there would be the standard "wanna know how Carol survives? Be sure to buy next month's issue to find out!" promo. That said, I'm not familiar enough with Vosburg's art to say whether this was done ~1979 or in the mid-80s for Marvel Fanfare and just not published then (that might actually explain why it was slightly longer than a typical story of the era—20 pages rather than 17).

Probably a bit of a lost cause at this point, but Chris Claremont is scheduled to be at a con near me in the spring, so I'll try to talk to him then and see if he can clear anything up. I doubt it, if for no other reason than it being decades ago, but maybe he can add something...

Claremont had Rogue, Carol & Shaw etc referring to previous events as if he'd already written the stories & they were just waiting to see print somewhere, but this bears little or no resemblance to the hints Claremont was dropping, and suggests the storyline wasn't even close to being finished, necessitating a quick wrap-up job by Furman.

Jesse outlines a number of the differences above. Another is that in Uncanny #182, Rogue mentions her attack on Carol is revenge for Carol nearly killing her in a previous fight "months" before, whereas here it's their first meeting.

If the stories had not in fact been completed, I wonder if Claremont thought he'd drop hints to drum up interest for a mini-series he intended to write in the future? During the period he was dropping hints about it, Claremont dropped a few other references to intended stories/mini-series (Cyclops in Paris, Rachel & Mojo etc) that never saw print, perhaps the whole Carol/Mastermind/Rogue stuff had never actualy been scripted & he intended to actually write the storyline in the future, but never did.

This is just a casual note, to clarify that, although this story pops up as Rogue's first chronological appearance, her first actual published appearance was in Avengers Annual #10. One can easily link to Avengers Annual #10 by clicking Rogue's linked name in the "Characters Appearing:" section just above this comments section.

When doing this, one notices that there are no less than three continuity implant stories (such as this one) which pop up before Rogue's actual first published appearance. That's not a problem, it's in fact the intended purpose and nature of this site to list continuity inserts in chronological order continuity-wise, as opposed to publication order-wise. But casual users should be aware of this feature. Or at least I should, because I'm so easily confused sometimes!:)

Silly question: Furman (in 1992) has scripted Claremont's plot, and Ms Marvel makes reference to a friend who says "I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn't very nice". And Furman knew that everyone reading would know who that was.

But if we are reading our Marvel comics in the correct order, it will I think be another 3 years before Wolverine debuts that catchphrase. So anyone unfamiliar with the phrase will read this, & it will take a further 3 years of reading all the Marvel titles in the correct order before they find out the answer to this mystery reference to an unidentified character who says that phrase (admittedly, that's actually quite quick for an X-mystery to be resolved).

So is this now retconned as the first appearance of Wolverine's catchphrase, or are there other continuity inserts where Wolverine uses the phrase before his solo series?