Marvel Super-Heroes - Captain Marvel Arrives!

Getting their mitts on the "Captain Marvel" name was quite the coup by the Marvel Bullpen back in the day. Fawcett's "Big Red Cheese" had been driven from the comics stands by a faltering market and a lawsuit from the boys at DC Comics and since that time the name was part of the lore of comics. Appropriated by Myron Fass for his notorious break-apart android in the previous year, the name was out there for Stan Lee to snag and snag it he did. But what to do with it? Well there was always the Kree, a mysterious gang of aliens which had been giving the Fantastic Four trouble in their magazine and Stan decided to introduce us to a hero from their ranks, a man of worthy character who was poised to become a hero.

"The Coming of Captain Marvel" in MSH #12 is a story told with as much speed as it was concocted. A spaceship descends to Earth and a man named "Mar-Vell" is saying farewell to the woman he loves, a medical officer named Una. His superior officer, Colonel Yon-Rogg is harassing him to be about his mission and we learn in short order that Yon-Rogg has designs on the lovely Una himself and that in all likelihood Captain Marv-Vell is being sent to his doom on an impossible mission. Out he pops onto the landscape of Earth and we learn that cannot breathe Earth's air or be without his helmet for more than an hour. He is stronger on Earth but it's suggested his uniform is somewhat responsible for that. And to complicate matters further he's surprised to find he's been dropped off in the middle of a United States military testing ground and a missile is just about to launch. The radiation from his uniform is enough to cause it to fail and also that same radiation leads troops right to him despite his mighty leaps to cover the territory. Only his "Universal Beam Blaster" can save the day when he uses black light to blind his pursuers and hops into the night and relative safety. He hitchhikes to an unnamed town and checks into a hotel under a variation of his real name "C. Marvel". Almost immediately he is frozen in a beam from his own spacecraft and Yon-Rogg beams down a wrist monitor through which Mar-Vell can be tracked and communicated with at any time and sure enough a message comes through from the Kree Imperial Minister of the Supreme Intelligence wishing him well reminding him he will die if he fails. With that the hour is up and our hero must don his helmet again to breathe as looks out onto the night sky and ponders his fate.

With artwork by Gene Colan and Frank Giacoia this one looks good enough, but does have a feel of having been done under a gun, but then that was almost the norm at Marvel. It's the story which always startles me a little. Stan was famous for giving his heroes weaknesses and that was a key to his storytelling, but with Captain Marvel it's almost like he gets a new weakness or limitation every other page, and as a spy he is a great big bust making mistake after mistake. Still and all he does wear a nifty uniform (I like it a lot even if most folks don't) and that counts for something. He gets another try-out in the next issue and that's up tomorrow.

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