15 Captain Marvel comics you need to read before seeing the movie

Ms. Marvel #1 (Cover image via Marvel)

10. Ms. Marvel #1 (1977)

After all that, you probably need a serious palate cleanser. Perhaps the first Ms. Marvel book, where she discovers her powers and starts building her story, will be a good place to start.

This issue was co-written by Chris Claremont (along with Jim Mooney), who happens to be one of the best writers hired by Marvel and, as we saw earlier, one of Carol’s defenders.

It begins as Carol Danvers, plain old human, arrives in New York City after stepping away from her work as NASA’s chief of security. She’s got a new job working for none other than J. Jonah Jameson, Spider-Man’s intense newspaper boss. Danvers is set to be an editor for a woman’s magazine, but things start going awry pretty quickly. She has to deal with riotously bad headaches and occasional blackouts, for one.

Neurological issues like Carol’s are enough to make anyone pretty concerned, but things start getting stranger for her after that. As readers, we learn that she’s actually Ms. Marvel. At one point, her new boss is captured by a villain known as the Scorpion. Danvers blacks out yet again and emerges as Ms. Marvel, who goes about saving the day. Jameson, naturally enough, doesn’t recognize that yet another one of his employees is a superpowered being. In fact, he is generally a huge grump about the entire process. He isn’t exactly enlightened about female superheroes, either.

At the end of the issue, Carol is still relatively unaware that she is the superhero in all of the news stories, despite the fact that she’s writing some of the news items herself. It may not be the most satisfying ending, but this particular origin story is an important part of the comic book persona that would eventually become Captain Marvel.