Fallen Friend: The Death of Ms. Marvel

[deh_tommy]

And now, a special “post-issue” teaser MARVEL released on their website...

Comments

[tcampbell1000]

I've gone on before about tribute covers that are too busy imitating their forebears to have any sort of internal logic. The "Ms. Marvel in the arms of death" cover is an especially weird example.

You're right that it's grounded in Christian Renaissance art, but it's also a riff on the standard cover of The Death of Captain Marvel, (featuring the character Mar-Vell) which was highly lauded in its day for dealing with death in an honest, uncompromising way. Unlike virtually every other major superhero death in the entire history of comics, Mar-Vell's death has basically stuck. I can see the thinking behind trying to connect Ms. Marvel to it, since she's part of that same Watsonian-Marvel legacy.

But I'm not sure Kamala ever mentioned Mar-Vell once in her career, so invoking him now seems off. Plus, the original cover was appropriate because (1) Death was an actual character in the story and (2) it was a story primarily about Mar-Vell dealing with his last days and accepting his end. Neither of those things are true here: Kamala's death took place in another comic entirely, this is just a memorial service. (At least they didn't call it "Funeral for a Friend," though I know somebody was dying to.)

So yeah, you're right, the covers are 0 for 3. At least the contents of the issue are pretty much on target.

[deh_tommy]

You could argue there was some degrees of separation in that he was Kree and she was Inhuman, but chances are this is being done to do away with her Inhumanity anyway so there goes that connection. So so far the only cover that kind of works is this one.

The contents are fine, if a little expected, but it’d probably hit harder if this felt like a natural storytelling beat at all, wasn’t such a clearly corporate mandated shakeup to bring her in with the MCU and if it wasn’t surrounded by creepiness (like keeping her family in the dark or seemingly hiding her body, or to go out of the book for a second that scene in Amazing Spider-Man where Peter Parker seemingly stole her mask and sleeps next to it).