Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel Reading Order: From Mar-Vell to Carol Danvers

by Fabien
Updated on December 5, 2025

There are several characters known as Captain Marvel. We are not here to talk about Shazam, but we have to start the story with him. As you may know, Fawcett’s Captain Marvel was enormously popular in the 1940s, outselling even Superman, becoming one of the most successful superheroes of the Golden Age of Comics. His popularity, however, brought legal trouble. In 1941, DC Comics filed a lawsuit against Fawcett Publications, claiming that Captain Marvel was an infringement on Superman. The case dragged on for over a decade, with multiple appeals and shifting rulings.

Ultimately, in 1953, Fawcett agreed to cease publication of its superhero comics, citing declining sales and the high cost of litigation. Captain Marvel disappeared from newsstands for nearly twenty years. DC Comics would later license and eventually purchase the character from Fawcett, reintroducing him in the early 1970s under the title “Shazam!” since by that time, Marvel Comics had legally claimed the trademark “Captain Marvel.”

Marvel’s claim to the name began in 1967, when writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Gene Colan introduced their own Captain Marvel in Marvel Super-Heroes #12. This version, a Kree military officer named Mar-Vell, was created largely to secure the trademark and prevent others from using it. To maintain ownership, Marvel was required to publish a comic featuring the name “Captain Marvel” periodically. As a result, readers have seen a long succession of characters (Mar-Vell, Monica Rambeau, Genis-Vell, Phyla-Vell, Noh-Varr, and Carol Danvers) take up the mantle in various ongoing series, limited runs, team books, and one-shots from the late 1960s to the present day.

Best 1980s Marvel Comics: The Stories That Defined a Decade

by Carole
April 28, 2025

These were good years for the comic book industry. Actually, they were great years. The 1980s were a period of tremendous financial and creative growth that transformed the medium. The emergence of the Direct Market, with specialty comic book stores, created more opportunities for creators and led to a wider range of publications.

It was during this decade that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus were published, breaking new comic book narrative ground for future writers. It was also during this decade that DC Comics was rebooted with Crisis on Infinite Earths and started its Renaissance with the British Invasion of creators.

The comic book industry rose and fell during the 1980s, including Marvel Comics. The House of Ideas evolved in those years, embracing darker storytelling, launching new comic book series, trying new formats, hiring new talents, and releasing some of the most celebrated and iconic stories in its history.

Maybe one of the most important decades on the creative front, the 1980s helped redefine Marvel’s superheroes by pushing boundaries and going where the industry had never been before. Today, we explore the best Marvel stories of the decade!

Revenge of the Brood Reading Order, The X-Men and Captain Marvel Crossover

by Fabien
Updated on January 21, 2023
13 Comments

Back in the Chris Claremont days, Carol Danvers and the X-Men fought alongside each other in the original Brood Saga, a famous story that ended with Carol becoming Binary, and the X-Men making sacrifices.

The Broods are back for a double-story arc, “Revenge of the Brood” and “Lord of the Brood.” Captain Marvel is joined once again by the X-Men to fight the parasitic predators known as the Brood. They plan to infect the cosmos and the heroes must stop them.

Here is how Marvel officially introduces the stories:

In “Lord of the Brood,” the X-Men get a distress call from deep space and find that the galaxy’s Brood problem is not as solved as they’d thought! When the X-Men’s close friend Broo became the Brood King, he gained the ability to control the savage alien race he was both a part of and so different from. Now he is experiencing his own nightmare scenario—the Brood are killing his friends, and there is nothing he can do to stop it! Rogue Brood factions have begun running wild, and it’s up to the X-Men to get to the bottom of why!

In “Revenge of the Brood,” Carol Danvers is on an X-press elevator to her own personal hell! And the Brood Empress is determined to ensure the Captain and all of her friends make it to their destination. Rescuing their team and getting out alive has always been the goal, but the odds are more deeply stacked against her team than Carol can even imagine. Overwhelmed and trapped in the Brood’s backyard, Captain Marvel and her team are forced to sacrifice one of their own. But the Brood let Carol through their clutches once before, and in so doing, created one of their worst enemies. They won’t make that mistake again.

This Captain Marvel/X-Men epic cosmic story is coming from Kelly Thompson, writer of Captain Marvel, with art by Juan Frigeri, and Gerry Duggan, writer of X-Men, with art by Stefano Caselli.

Carol Danvers Reading Order, From Mrs. to Captain Marvel

by Fabien
Updated on June 26, 2024
2 Comments

Created by Roy Thomas and Gene Colan in Marvel Super-Heroes #13 (March 1968), Carol Danvers was originally an officer in the United States Air Force and a colleague of the Kree superhero Mar-Vell, the original Captain Marvel—you can see our Captain Marvel Reading Order to know more about all the incarnations of the famous superhero.

It wasn’t until 1977 that Carol got her powers and became known as Ms. Marvel (created by writer Gerry Conway and artist John Buscema). At that time, she resurfaced as the editor of Women Magazine, a spin-off of the Daily Bugle. We then discovered that the energy exposure from the explosion of a “Psyche-Magnetron” was behind the melding of Carol’s genetic structure with Captain Marvel’s. She technically became a human-Kree hybrid.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Mrs. Marvel was the victim of bad writing before being mixed up with the X-Men—and especially with Rogue who absorbs her abilities and memories. This story led her to become known as Binary, the superhero capable of generating the power of a star. During the 1990s, after some cosmic adventures, she reverted to her original Ms. Marvel powers and later rejoined the Avengers as Warbird.

When Brian Michael Bendis took over the Avengers, he introduced the idea of Carol Danvers becoming Captain Marvel. This didn’t become a reality immediately as she reclaimed her place in the hero community as Ms. Marvel, playing significant roles in major events. In fact, it was in July 2012 that Carol Danvers finally assumed the mantle of Captain Marvel in an ongoing series written by Kelly Sue DeConnick with art by Dexter Soy. And now, she got her own movies!