Kelly Sue DeConnick to depart "Captain Marvel" post-"Secret Wars"

[Darth Weevil]

Boy, wouldn't I love to know what your reading list is for Marvel Comics. It is hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that DeConnick on Captain Marvel was better than anything I have read at Marvel over the past 10 years. I understand we all have different taste, but that is a head-scratcher.

Especially since 10 years would include Brian Reed's Ms. Marvel run... Kelly Sue did a great job of revitalizing the character, and I love her run, but there were definitely some storylines that dragged (at least when reading month-to-month—I suspect the prolonged "oh, no, I can't fly!" story in her first volume reads *much* better in trade, but I haven't revisited it). On the bright side, though, it didn't have those awful cheesecake covers most of Reed's run had.

[randomengine]

My guess is Kelly Thompson, since she's co-writing the Secret Wars mini with Kelly Sue and is developing quite the reputation based on Jem (and other things). But, I would also not be shocked if we saw a short 6-issue run by Warren Ellis before someone else takes over. Marvel clearly thinks Captain Marvel can be one of its big franchises, so there'll be some internal desire to put a big creative team on it, but they'll also not want to piss off the current readers by changing the tone too much, which militates for someone like Thompson.

As for Slott, while I enjoy his writing on Spider-Man and Silver Surfer, many current readers would not react well to his writing Captain Marvel, based on the perception that he does not write women particularly well. (That's oversimplifying a bit—it's more that his women tend to be secondary to the men around them, but in fairness it's hard to say what his writing would be like on a female-led title.)

See She-Hulk. The title that made his reputation and gave him Amazing Spider-Man for years.

[Darth Weevil]

Slott's She-Hulk was, in my opinion, one of the best female-led books Marvel ever did.

Fair enough. That's been on my list of stuff to read and for some reason was just thinking about what Slott had done recently, plus GLA (which is just insanely funny). I really like Slott, but I don't think his tone is quite right for the series, since it doesn't give the same space for humor.

[billee0918]

Looking forward to learning who's taking over. While KSD is talented and clearly passionate about CM, the book never clicked with me as I'd hoped.

[randomengine]

Fair enough. That's been on my list of stuff to read and for some reason was just thinking about what Slott had done recently, plus GLA (which is just insanely funny). I really like Slott, but I don't think his tone is quite right for the series, since it doesn't give the same space for humor.

Slott is one of their most progressive writers and does justice to women. The fact that he gave the Spider-Man universe Anna Maria Marconi, a little person who is a genius and more capable than Spider-Man and was at one time a love interest, I think is a testament to his ability to do females justice.

[t hedge coke]

This is interesting. Carol Danvers has been Marvel's token female lead for quite some time now. They have kept the book and used every strategy they could muster - a very large number of relaunches, adversiting in Tumblr, Twitter, etc - despite how the book always sold poorly.

Now that Marvel has other books with female leads selling well - at least Spider-Gwen and Miss Marvel, with the latter's popularity probably going to last - there isn't any need for Carol Danvers to act as the token female lead. Marvel could just let the book fall down in sales without further relaunches and cancel it...

...But with the movie coming? Nah. They will likely try to push her even more. I'm surprised Captain Marvel isn't in the Avengers; I'm guessing they will add her back to the Guardians of the Galaxy.

So... you really like Spider-Gwen or something. Fine.

But the "token" bs is just bs.

Let's not start throwing that term around just because they advertised a book that got good press, good reviews, has a diehard fanbase, and an upcoming movie just because it's not your thing.

She's no more the "token _____ lead" and the comic was no more a token comic than any other at Marvel. That's insulting to the talent who worked on the comics, it's degrading to their efforts and the fans who enjoyed it, and based in no actual reality.

Was it kept afloat despite low sales because of other reasons? Yeah. And, that's not unordinary for any publisher when a product generates good press, garners great reviews, and has a loyal and vocal fanbase.

[Darth Weevil]

This is interesting. Carol Danvers has been Marvel's token female lead for quite some time now. They have kept the book and used every strategy they could muster - a very large number of relaunches, adversiting in Tumblr, Twitter, etc - despite how the book always sold poorly.

Now that Marvel has other books with female leads selling well - at least Spider-Gwen and Miss Marvel, with the latter's popularity probably going to last - there isn't any need for Carol Danvers to act as the token female lead. Marvel could just let the book fall down in sales without further relaunches and cancel it...

...But with the movie coming? Nah. They will likely try to push her even more. I'm surprised Captain Marvel isn't in the Avengers; I'm guessing they will add her back to the Guardians of the Galaxy.

While I agree Carol doesn't need to be a "token", her sales numbers haven't been as absolutely atrocious as you suggest. They've been above the ~20k mark that seems to be Marvel's cutoff for cancellation on titles with lower tier creative teams (the recent cancelled titles with higher sales have been by much higher profile creative teams that they've wanted to use elsewhere). And, as I mentioned above, there really is a widespread belief that Captain Marvel is selling much better digitally and in trades that the monthly sales would suggest, though no one knows for sure because we don't have even the quasi-suspect Diamond numbers for those. Even if the sales were terrible, though, Carol has a history of selling better—the first part of Brian Reed's series sold quite well (I think in the 50k range through the first 10 issues or so), and only dropped when Carol acted like a total jerk in Civil War; after that, sales slowly dropped to the 25k range, absent tie-ins, when they would shoot back up. She's a character a lot of people potentially like, but they haven't always liked what creators have done with her.

[Darth Weevil]

So... you really like Spider-Gwen or something. Fine.

But the "token" bs is just bs.

Let's not start throwing that term around just because they advertised a book that got good press, good reviews, has a diehard fanbase, and an upcoming movie just because it's not your thing.

She's no more the "token _____ lead" and the comic was no more a token comic than any other at Marvel. That's insulting to the talent who worked on the comics, it's degrading to their efforts and the fans who enjoyed it, and based in no actual reality.

Was it kept afloat despite low sales because of other reasons? Yeah. And, that's not unordinary for any publisher when a product generates good press, garners great reviews, and has a loyal and vocal fanbase.

Said much better than me.

[gurkle]

But the "token" bs is just bs.

Let's not start throwing that term around just because they advertised a book that got good press, good reviews, has a diehard fanbase, and an upcoming movie just because it's not your thing.

"Token" is an insulting word, but there was something a bit off-putting about the way Marvel and the comics press promoted the book, as if Carol had suddenly vaulted into huge popularity from nowhere, even though there was no evidence that she was more popular than she'd ever been. It seemed very much like Marvel was promoting the character heavily, the press was publicizing her heavily, and then turning around to tell us she must be popular because she was getting so much promotion and press attention.

Maybe that's too cynical, but it's hard not to be a little cynical about the way comics are marketed. And very cynical about comics journalism, which is mostly very compliant.

And while you can't blame a book for the way it's marketed, the off-putting stuff about the marketing found its way into the book. It never felt like her popularity in-universe was organic; it's like those TV shows that hype a character by having all the other characters talk about how great he or she is. There are fans who liked Carol since the Claremont days (like myself) who just felt that this was a classic case of telling, not showing, her greatness.

[Agent Z]

"Token" is an insulting word, but there was something a bit off-putting about the way Marvel and the comics press promoted the book, as if Carol had suddenly vaulted into huge popularity from nowhere, even though there was no evidence that she was more popular than she'd ever been. It seemed very much like Marvel was promoting the character heavily, the press was publicizing her heavily, and then turning around to tell us she must be popular because she was getting so much promotion and press attention.

Maybe that's too cynical, but it's hard not to be a little cynical about the way comics are marketed. And very cynical about comics journalism, which is mostly very compliant.

And while you can't blame a book for the way it's marketed, the off-putting stuff about the marketing found its way into the book. It never felt like her popularity in-universe was organic; it's like those TV shows that hype a character by having all the other characters talk about how great he or she is. There are fans who liked Carol since the Claremont days (like myself) who just felt that this was a classic case of telling, not showing, her greatness.

Personally I thought it was a welcome change from how Marvel get treated like dirt by even their own peers. And it's not like it wasn't overdue for Carol.

[Darth Weevil]

Slott is one of their most progressive writers and does justice to women. The fact that he gave the Spider-Man universe Anna Maria Marconi, a little person who is a genius and more capable than Spider-Man and was at one time a love interest, I think is a testament to his ability to do females justice.

Mostly agree, and would probably 100% agree after I get around to reading She-Hulk. But, I've definitely read complaints about him in this respect, specifically coming from the Captain Marvel fanbase, so was just mentioning it.

Again, though, I don't think Slott's tone is right for CM, as much as I like him. That said, I'm absolutely expecting him to also be off Spider-Man come the end of Secret Wars, so I'm very interested in seeing what his marquee book will be (he and Allred have sort of suggested Silver Surfer is continuing). Honestly, I think he'd be amazing on Guardians. Now that's a book where humor and insane storylines are appreciated.

[sifighter]

I have to say I'm kind of sad to see her go as well, I did enjoy her run and I have to say that she did a great job when it came to interacting with Captain Marvel's fan base. Whoever takes over post-Secret Wars better be prepared to bring their A game since they've got some big shoes to fill, not to mention the upcoming movie.

As for who could take over, I agree that both Dan Slott and G. Willow Wilson would be great choices to take over. Wilson's been killing it in Ms. Marvel and has a chance to try out Captain Marvel in both her last days story and A-Force. As for Slott, he's done a good job with marvel's other big name character Spiderman, and has shown that he can write fun adventure stories such as Silver Surfer, She-Hulk, and the Mighty Avengers. Although there could be other writers better for the role, but those two come to mind at the moment.

[Darth Weevil]

And while you can't blame a book for the way it's marketed, the off-putting stuff about the marketing found its way into the book. It never felt like her popularity in-universe was organic; it's like those TV shows that hype a character by having all the other characters talk about how great he or she is. There are fans who liked Carol since the Claremont days (like myself) who just felt that this was a classic case of telling, not showing, her greatness.

I honestly don't understand what the complaints about the in-book stuff are. There was literally one issue—#17 of Kelly Sue's first volume—that was about people in the 616 celebrating Carol, right after she'd saved NYC from Yonn-Rog's Kree Sentries (though the publication order makes it unclear what exactly they were celebrating, since the two Infinity tie-ins came out first). Is it shocking that the city would throw her or other heroes a parade every now and then? No. Sure, the "I am Spartacus" thing was a bit tropey, but it made sense in story. The one real complaint I could see someone having about the issue is that they give her an apartment in the Statue of Liberty after she's evicted. Yeah, that's probably a bit much. But otherwise, it's nothing really too out there.

Aside from that issue—which was potentially Kelly Sue's final issue, and was expressly made as a love letter to the Carol Corps—I can't really think of anything else that pushed the idea of Carol being some superfabulous hero down our throats. We see precisely two other fans—Kit, who lives in her building (and seriously, if a superhero lived in your building while you were a kid, wouldn't you be all overexcited?), and Kamala, who doesn't even really appear in Captain Marvel except for one or two one panel cameos (one of which in that same Carol Corps issue). So... Did you just really not like that issue? Or did I miss something else in the run?

[t hedge coke]

Prior to DeConnick, I can't think of too many writers (well, just Hama, honestly) who seemed to acknowledge, fully, what being publisher of a major magazine, a ranking officer in the Air Force, and former head of security at NASA who ran two-person missions with the likes of Nick Fury, etc really meant.

You'd never see Nick Fury or Captain America get shoved to the back when planning strategy or picking leaders, but even when she was leader of the Avengers, it was as a front for Tony who made all the real calls. You'd never see a male character with her experience, her work history, treated that way or wearing the legless/armless costumes all the time. And, Nick could totally rock a legless costume.

[Myetche]

Meh, the first volume was alright, but blanking Carol's memories again and throwing her in space without at least following up on that plot-thread kind of hurt KSD in the long run. Hopefully, the next writer (fingers crossed for G. Willow Wilson) makes her past and her life on Earth important again.

The only bad thing I can see from this is Grace Valentine vanishing. Carol REALLY needs more of her own villains, and Grace fit the Lex Luthor-type super-genius pretty well.