I don’t know when I became the type of person that is interested in superhero comics but here we are. I heard about this graphic novel from the Worst Bestsellers podcast (which you should definitely check out if you enjoy hearing snarky reviews about badly written books) end of year special, and the idea that Captain Marvel had a bad tempered cat that no one could stand so she had to take him into space with her – I was sold. That is only a very small part of the story arc in the 6 issues that are collected in this trade, but it is still one of my favorite parts.

Some prior knowledge of the Marvel Universe is necessary to understand certain parts. Since Parker is very much into superheroes, I had enough passing knowledge to make it through although there were some parts that I was thinking I could use some more context. For example, I knew that Rhodey Rhodes is a friend of Iron Man’s, but I didn’t know he was also the Iron Patriot. There was also an old woman at the beginning of the story who I didn’t know anything about, other than that she is an old woman. Captain Marvel meets up with the Guardians of the Galaxy shortly after going to space, and and I knew enough about them so that it wasn’t horribly confusing. (I did have to clarify a few things – “So, Groot just says ‘I am Groot’ all the time? Is that his thing?”) I also had no context for Star Lord and J’Son’s animosity toward each other, other than they are father and son and don’t agree on nebulous “things”.

But to the story. Captain Marvel finds an alien girl trapped in some kind of device that she initially thinks is some kind of nuclear weapon. She volunteers herself to go into space because she needs some “alone time”. On her way to return the girl to her home planet, she encounters some bad guys who inexplicably fire first and ask questions later. She is aided by the Guardians, who come on her ship to help fix it. Rocket Raccoon freaks out when seeing her cat and starts shooting his weapon at it, saying that it is a Flerken, which apparently is not good and lays eggs. After getting Rocket to stand down, they have exposition time about alien girl and her home planet which is apparently poisoned. Alien girl overhears and goes berserk, wanting to kill Star Lord after she learns that he is J’Son’s son. Once they get that misunderstanding sorted out (as Star Lord and J’Son are clearly not friends), Captain Marvel takes alien girl (who’s name is Tic) back home.

She is not greeted with open arms, as these people (which appear to be many different alien races) are sick and tired of the run around they are getting with the council or whatever the governing body is. They have sick people and so they don’t want to evacuate and leave them behind, they have no air force with which to defend themselves, and the space pirates that attacked Captain Marvel earlier are preventing supplies from reaching them. They are in dire straits. Captain Marvel assembles a rag tag team and they go off to figure out what goods there are that the pirates are preventing them from having. It turns out that the poisoned planet (Torfa, I think) has a giant vibranium mine and the off-gassing from the expedient removal of it is making everyone sick!

I really enjoyed this story arc and I am very interested in where it continues to go, especially since I think Chewie will figure prominently in the next trade. (Spoiler alert: Rocket was right.) It’s nice to see some kick butt ladies for a change. Captain Marvel’s team was mostly female, which was neat (3-2 ratio). This makes me pretty excited about the movie they are making about this character, and I can’t wait to see more.

5 stars.

This book fulfills the read in one day requirement for the challenge.