Captain Marvel #1

History

By late 1989, Monica Rambeau had been stripped of her energy-transformation powers in Avengers #294 and left in narrative limbo after Roger Stern's departure from that title; this one-shot was Marvel's vehicle to both reintroduce her and satisfy the company's ongoing need to publish under the Captain Marvel trade name. Dwayne McDuffie, then still a Marvel staffer and early-career writer fresh off Damage Control, scripted the story, while penciller Mark Bright — with whom McDuffie would later collaborate on Icon at Milestone — provided the artwork; inkers Stan Drake (pages 1–11) and Frank Bollé (pages 12–42) completed the interior. Editor Tom DeFalco oversaw the package, which was formatted as a Giant-Size Special at 43 pages, giving the creative team room to tell a self-contained adventure that also laid narrative groundwork for Monica's revised power set.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First solo title for Monica Rambeau as Captain Marvel — she had appeared in team books and co-features but had never headlined her own issue before this one-shot.
• Published November 1989 as a Giant-Size Special (43 pages), Vol. 2 #1; written by Dwayne McDuffie, pencilled by Mark Bright, inked by Stan Drake and Frank Bollé, colored by Paul Becton, lettered by Ken Lopez; editor Tom DeFalco.
• First appearance of Powderkeg (Frank Skorina), a super-strong villain with explosive punches, who serves as the issue's opening antagonist during a ship hijacking.
• Directly follows the continuity of Avengers #294, in which Monica lost her ability to transform into energy; this issue depicts her discovering she retains altered versions of her powers — flight, enhanced strength, and impact resistance — which Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) analyzes in the story.
• Part of Marvel's ongoing trademark-maintenance publishing strategy: Marvel was obligated to keep a Captain Marvel comic in print periodically to protect its registered trademark from lapsing, preventing DC Comics (which licensed the original Fawcett Captain Marvel) from claiming the name.
• Moonstone (Karla Sofen) and a villain in stolen Guardsman armor (Kristina Ramos) appear as additional antagonists; Jim Rhodes (War Machine) makes a supporting cameo.
• Dwayne McDuffie wrote the issue while still a Marvel staffer; it was one of his earliest scripting credits and predates his 1992 co-founding of Milestone Media, where he and artist Mark Bright would collaborate again on the series Icon.
• Reprinted in the 2019 Marvel trade paperback Captain Marvel: The Saga of Monica Rambeau (collecting key Monica appearances from 1982 to 1995), and again in Captain Marvel: Monica Rambeau (also 2019), making the story newly accessible to readers drawn in by the MCU films.

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Variants (1)