The Mighty Captain Marvel Vol. 3: Dark Origins

by Margaret Stohl

[Quirky Cat]

3 1/2 Stars

I read The Mighty Captain Marvel Vol. 3: Dark Origins as single issues.

This is the last of the Captain Marvel volumes to be released before the Marvel reboot starts affecting her series (presumably, I don’t actually know this for certain). We’ve been told her series will be sticking around, though I imagine we’ll be seeing plot changes based on the events happening in the larger universe around her. It’ll be nice to see her going back to her roots a bit more though, so in an odd way I’m actually looking forward to this.



I have a bit of a love/hate issue with this volume. I want to love it, because it’s Captain Marvel, but I keep finding myself mildly entertained more than anything. On an emotional level I’m enjoying it, but that’s mostly because I’m always happy to see my favorite characters continuing their series. Intellectually though? I feel like it’s missing something.
So anybody that knows me already knows that I’m a huge Captain Marvel fan. I’m still recovering from what Civil War II and everything the writers put her through, but I’ll get over it. Eventually. In a way I feel like her series is still recovering too. We keep seeing her fighting, trying to find her ground and confidence again. So maybe the authors are feeling it too?
The issues following the Civil War II are heavily affected by this, I believe. As are the issues in this volume. The plot is a fun one, but I feel like we’ve lost a little bit of what makes Carol so amazing here. Having been reading ahead in the issues, I feel confident that she’s going to find that rhythm again soon, but it’s still a bit hard to see at times, you know?
Now that I’ve gotten that ramble out of the way, I should probably actually talk about the volume, huh? This one is a bit weird. There are a surprising number of funny points, but they stem from some of the more absurd parts of the plot here.
Thanks to a convoluted series of events, Captain Marvel finds herself in another one of the universes, having swapped places with the Carol of that universe. As it turns out, like in many of the universes in Marvel, these two are both very different and very similar. Little things have been changed, that ultimately make the big picture look very different from the world we know and love. So it goes without saying that a character swap would cause a lot of havoc and mayhem.
The ending of this plot was pretty cool. It’s always fun to be reminded of just how powerful Captain Marvel actually is. I won’t say what happened, but it was impressive. That the solution actually required her to be compassionate though…that was the perfect balance to what was done with her character during Civil War II. Or at least that’s how I feel about it. Perhaps now we can move forward with a slightly cleaner slate.


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