It’s official. Successful female superhero movies are a thing. Thanks to the success of “Wonder Woman,” the trauma left by the likes of “Catwoman” and “Elektra” can finally be laid to rest. Hollywood can no longer use those affronts to all things heroic, female, and shaped like boobs as an excuse to relegate lady superheroes to backup roles and eye-candy.
Chances are, with “Wonder Woman” being such a boon with critics and fans, we’re about to get bombarded with a bunch of movies that will try desperately to emulate her success. We saw it with “Die Hard.” Now, it’s time for the ladies to get their time as Hollywood’s go-to gimmick for fresh pools of money.
At the moment, though, there’s only one female superhero with a movie in active development and an official release date. That honor goes to “Captain Marvel,” who will attempt to do for the Marvel Cinematic Universe what “Wonder Woman” did for DC’s Extended Universe.
It’s a noble and entirely understandable goal. To this point, Marvel has upstaged DC in damn near everything involving superhero movies. Then, “Wonder Woman” happens and suddenly they can claim they made a successful female superhero movie before Marvel did. If you think there aren’t some bloated egos at Marvel who don’t like that, then you clearly underestimate the impact of money, press, and cocaine.
That hasn’t stopped some at Marvel from praising Wonder Woman. It is, somewhat, a relief that someone managed to do a good female superhero movie. There’s only so much cocaine can do to make Hollywood throw money at what they feel is a losing concepts. Now, “Wonder Woman” has established female superheroes as a viable part of the superhero genre.
On the surface, “Captain Marvel” looks like the perfect character with which to give the Marvel Cinematic Universe its own Wonder Woman. Talk to most Marvel fans not arguing about Thor’s hammer today and they’ll agree. Carol “Captain Marvel” Danvers is the closest thing Marvel has to Wonder Woman.
She definitely checks all the right boxes. She’s a fun, charismatic, badass fighter who regularly goes toe-to-toe with some of the Marvel universe’s biggest foes. She’s one of Marvel’s heaviest hitters. When someone like Thanos, Galactus, or the Red Skull comes to start something, she’s usually on the front lines.
However, there are some aspects to Captain Marvel that make her a challenging character for a movie. Some of them are more daunting than others. First and foremost, Captain Marvel is not Wonder Woman in terms of iconic status. That much is clear and few, even among die-hard Marvel fans, would claim otherwise.
For one, Carol hasn’t had nearly as much time to establish herself as an iconic hero compared to Wonder Woman. While she debuted as a character in 1968 in the pages of “Marvel Super Heroes,” she didn’t get her own series until 1977 and at the time, she went by “Ms. Marvel.” In fact, that’s the title she carried for most of her life.
Even with that title, a long list of potent powers, and undeniable sex appeal, most fans in those days probably wouldn’t have called her Marvel’s version of Wonder Woman. She would still be in the top five on anyone’s list of Marvel’s greatest female heroes. However, most fans would put characters like Storm of the X-men or the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four above her.
Despite this, Carol established herself as Ms. Marvel and was a powerhouse who could match Wonder Woman in terms of strength and grit. However, she never really established herself as Marvel’s premier female hero until recently, although the reasons for this are way more convoluted than most non-comic fans think.
This, in essence, is where Captain Marvel faces both some challenges and a few kinks. Yes, by the way, some of those kinks are of the sexual kind that will probably get skipped in any movie about her.
It’s the same challenge Wonder Woman faced, albeit in a different context. As I’ve discussed many times before, and will probably discuss again because it’s just too damn sexy, there were some very kinky BDSM undertones built into Wonder Woman’s character. For reasons that I assume involve exceedingly knotted panties, that kinky history has been purged from her history, although sometimes it pops up.
Carol Danvers’ history isn’t quite that kinky, but there is one element to it that’s kind of a headache for those who see her as Marvel’s version of Wonder Woman. It involves one of her earliest stories and includes elements such as abduction, brainwashing, rape, incest, and impregnation. Trust me, it’s even less kinkier than it sounds.
In that less-than-iconic story, Carol is abducted by a walking feminist nightmare named Marcus Immortus, the son of Kang the Conqueror, one of the Avengers’ greatest foes. He then proceeds to brainwash her into falling in love with him. They then do what people in love do. They get naked and they get frisky. That results in Carol getting pregnant.
Here’s where it gets even weirder and creepier. That kid she gives birth to isn’t exactly the apple of her and her brainwashing lover’s eye. That kid is just another version of Marcus. That means when he got her pregnant, he basically got her pregnant with himself. Trust me, it’s as confusing to the brain as it is to the genitals.
The reasons for this are too convoluted to explain, even to other comic book fans. Simply put, Marcus was aging rapidly and needed to be reborn so he just did what any deranged son of a villain would do. He found a beautiful woman, seduced her, and knocked her up with an infant version of himself. Who among us wouldn’t resort to something similar?
I’ll turn off the sarcasm for now because as the years have gone by, this part of Carol Davners’ story has become even more infamous than Wonder Woman’s BDSM past. At least with Wonder Woman, the BDSM was playful and kinky. The story involving Carol and Marcus is neither. Many, in fact, claim it counts as rape.
In some parts of the world, that claim would have some legal validity. In countries like the United States and Great Britain, there is something called “rape by deception.” It basically means that if someone lies, cheats, or gains sexual consent from someone under false pretense, then that counts as a form of rape.
Now this isn’t a universally held opinion, which is why not every country recognizes it. Some, especially those in the douche-bag pick-up artist community, would argue that consent under a false or half-false pretense is still consent. With a competent lawyer, that argument might actually hold up in court.
For Carol Danvers, though, it’s still a distressingly uncomfortable story. It also doesn’t help that it was one of her first major stories. She’d barely begun to establish herself at Marvel and this certainly didn’t set a very upbeat tone. Granted, comics had used brainwashing before, including the infamous Superman/Big Barda sex tape. However, it had never been taken this far before.
In defense of the writers at the time, this was 1980. It was long before the politically correct era where people get into fist fights over proper pronoun usage. While it wasn’t quite as bad as the world of “Mad Men,” you could still get away with making jokes about a woman’s skirt length. I also assume some were still recovering from disco, cocaine, and Quaalude binges.
Much like Wonder Woman’s BDSM origins, though, this part of Carol’s story has been subject to many “retcons,” as comic fans call it. It didn’t take years either. The process began in 1981 where Chris Claremont, the legendary X-men writer behind the famous Phoenix Saga, had Carol’s brainwashing undone, courtesy of the X-men.
From that point forward, Carol Danvers’ story underwent various forms of growth and development. She took on various titles along the way and worked with many teams, including the X-men, the Avengers, and the Guardians of the Galaxy. Like Wonder Woman, she made her presence felt on multiple fronts throughout the Marvel universe.
However, it wasn’t until a brilliant female writer named Kelly Sue DeConnick came along that Carol Danvers truly became Marvel’s Wonder Woman. If anyone wants a clear understanding of why Carol is getting her own movie starting Brie Larson, I urge them to read this series. It will make clear why she deserves to be on the same level as Wonder Woman.
It’s in this series where Carol Danvers becomes Captain Marvel. That title had been previously held by another character, an alien named Mar-Vell, no less. Unfortunately, Mar-Vell had died, as superheroes tend to do with frustrating regularity. While reluctant at first, Carol takes on that title and she’s wielded it brilliantly every since.
This is the Captain Marvel that the movie will portray. It’s also the one that has helped push Carol Danvers to the front of the lines in Marvel’s effort to appeal to a more diverse audience. While some of those efforts have been subject to a few setbacks, Captain Marvel’s status at Marvel has never been greater. The time is perfect for build on the foundation that Wonder Woman created.
Doing so, however, will be challenging in ways that even Wonder Woman never had to endure. Like Wonder Woman’s BDSM origins, it’s easier to just ignore some of those unpleasant elements of Carol’s early years. However, that won’t stop some from bringing it up.
Given the nature of the story, I can see it becoming one of those issues that certain people belabor for all the wrong reasons. If you think that’s being paranoid, remember that people actually made a big deal about Wonder Woman’s armpit hair in the movie. They’ll find a way to do something similar to Captain Marvel.
Whether or not the Marcus Immortus story becomes an issue remains to be seen. Unlike Wonder Woman’s BDSM history, it was not a major part of Carol’s development or growth as a character. If anything, it was an early obstacle that she had to overcome on her path towards becoming who she is now.
In the end, she overcame those early growing pains. She managed to carve her place in the world of comics as a great female hero in her own right. It took a while for Marvel go develop a clear plan for her, but that plan worked out in the end and I hope it works out in the movie as well. A world with a beautiful, blond, high-flying, kick-ass female superhero is objectively better for everyone.
Jack Fisher's Official Publishing Blog 