Review: Ms. Marvel (1977) #8 - 10
Key topics:
Carol's poor taste in men
Tracy Burke!!
Killing and Maiming
Carol's poor taste in men
Pictured: Carol on a date with her therapist.
Oh, I'm sorry. This was supposed to be a date, not a therapy session.
Boo, Mike. It feels weird to call Carol a vulnerable person (and she would be insulted lol), but there is a reason that therapists are not meant to date their patients. At this point in the comic, Carol has recently been forced out of a job that meant a lot to her, had some major health issues and memory problems, and has been experiencing "periods of depression".
Not to mention that based on information we learn about her under Claremont, she almost definitely already suffers from PTSD.
lmao Mike KNOWS she's Ms. M and she still just ditches him "without a word". ("Sure, Mike.")
I actually love this shot of her scaling a cliff and crawling under a fence in her bathing suit. And in the last panel there, Carol giving her qualified opinion as NASA's ex-Chief of Security.
Pictured: Carol kissing her... teacher??
"Colonel Michael Rossi, USAF. Carol had been Air Force, too, in those days. Rossi had been teacher, friend... lover."
Not sure what their professional relationship was, but leading with "teacher" before friend or...... lover is... uh, something. We will see more of Michael Rossi.
Anyway, Carol's apartment burns down. I would be more upset over the manuscripts she said burned; I'd be a puddle. Holy hell.
Side note: Carol has a hard time keeping a home, historically. Off the top of my head: leaving her parents house "without a word", the fire in this issue, in her upcoming Avengers run she suddenly abandons her apartment, Rogue attacks her at home in SF and she never returns, leaving the X-Men mansion, her apartment gets destroyed in Ms Marvel (2006), she gets evicted during the KSD era, she leaves Alpha Flight and has to share a room with Gerry Drew (baby)..... there's probably another instance.
Frank is the most normal, but Carol doesn't actually like him so that doesn't matter. Maybe if you'd been HER boss, Frank. Ha ha. Sorry, Carol.
So close to adding a "punches someone she shouldn't" point to the pinned-post scoreboard, but Frank wisely got the fuck out of there. I liked the flow of this sequence; we transition immediately from a scene with SHIELD to Frank rolling up, then we're interrupted by AIM.
In addition to her date with Mike, we see Carol on another date, with this random guy. It was probably pretty progressive of Carol to be non-exclusively dating multiple men in short order, in 1977.
A lot happens after this scene, so Carol pretty much just leaves this man here and forgets about him. Maybe if you'd been her Doctor or something, Paul. Ha ha. Sorry, Carol. Try dating better men. Or Salia.
Tracy Burke!!
In #8, we meet Tracy Burke, the most relevant of Carol's supporting cast from this series. She returns first in Iron Man (1998), then in Captain Marvel (2012), and then in Captain Marvel (2014).
(I did a quick fact-check to make sure I didn't forget any appearances, and apparently she also makes a cameo in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man (1976) #21, as Ms. Marvel's hype-man.)
We're introduced to Tracy as a recovering alcoholic...
And her next appearance, after Ms Marvel (1977), is in Iron Man (1998), during Carol's arc where she is struggling with alcoholism. Pictured is issue #11, but she appears before this as well.
Interesting note: Jameson refers to Tracy in these issues as "Miss Burke", indicating she's unmarried, and Carol uses her own preferred "Ms. Burke".
Carol is more correct (being neutral), because, as we learn in Captain Marvel (2014) #15... Tracy was married! (To a woman, named Teddy; we can assume Tracy was not out at work.) It's fun they made Tracy masc. I like her younger design a lot.
So to recap, we learn Tracy was an alcoholic in (1977), that Carol is an alcoholic in (1998). Then we learn Tracy was gay in (2014) and we learn that Carol is-- (oh what she's not out? ok nvm) uhm, completely straight I guess.
Killing and Maiming
OK new analogy: Ms. Marvel represents Carol pretending to be a normal person for the first time in her entire adult life, after a lifetime of violence.
We will learn, under Claremont, that Carol worked closely with Wolverine for many years, a man whose catchphrase is: "I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn't very nice." (She says something to a similar effect at some point, but I can't remember which issue (in Uncanny X-Men?).)
Really, really fun fight sequence. Carol slips very easily back into her old line of work. She's like a retired badass from an action movie.
The explanation here, of course, is that Ms. Marvel's absorbed Kree training is taking over, but speaking of Carol's own experience, Nick Fury is referenced in issue #8:
Carol has worked with Fury and SHIELD in the past, which is not yet revealed to us, but is probably why she has this connection to SHIELD in the first place.
Tracy watches as Carol singlehandedly takes out 2 very dangerous men, and almost beats one to death. Then Tracy reports for her first day of work, on Monday. 🫡 I bet she had a fun story to tell Teddy when she got home.
Grotesk appears again, and Carol judo-throws him into a laser, exploding him. Grotesk is not seen again for another 10 years in real-world time, after this. Carol, at minimum, believes she killed him, and is upset that it came to that, but the comic's reference to "another universe / dimension" leaves an out for him surviving the encounter.
I may make a tracker at some point for the number of times Carol explicitly kills 1 or more people. Tracking the number of people would be inaccurate and laborious, but instances is doable. Would I count this one? I'd say a death still counts even if a future series retcons them to be alive again (eg the Master), but this is a bit open-ended. Though Carol thinks he's dead, so maybe.
So far, she's almost killed: the Scorpion, a bar thug, MODOK, & Grotesk. Deathbird almost dies, but it's not Carol's fault. She ends issue #10 by threatening to kill MODOK for real this time.
There were a ton of super cool fights in these issues, so I want to pause and appreciate them a little.
Carol says fuck Ms. Marvel (her "cursed Kree alter-ego"), and tries to take out Deathbird on her own. Carol then refers to her OWN "skills, training, value", separate from Ms. M, and that she nearly allowed herself to be "taken like an amateur".
She does manage to impress Deathbird, who calls her "worthy", but Ms. Marvel takes over forcibly, worried Carol will get them killed.
P.S. we see Deathbird again, over the years; she's in Carol's kind of weakly-established rogues gallery. Pictured above is an appearance in the Starjammers (while Carol is on the team as Binary) and in Captain Marvel (2012).
Last note just to capture the parallel: Carol plays dead in issues #8 and #9.
Villains don't underestimate her much these days, but there have been fun moments over the years where she's taken advantage of them doing so; I can't find the cap rn, but there's a good moment in one of the New Avengers runs where a villain blasts her, taunting her for being the one who has to take a painful hit for the team. He's pretty surprised that she's more than fine, afterwards, and she takes him out.
Review: Would recommend for really fun fight scenes!
#8 is my favorite issue so far: Carol kicking ass in the bar & almost beating a man to death in front of a writing inspiration of hers (Tracy!!), scaling a wall in her bathing suit, and yelling at Frank Gianelli is a great combo.
Thanks for reading!
