Post by Captain Marvel on Feb 8, 2014 18:53:10 GMT -5
Bio is from Comic Vine.
Super Name : Captain Marvel
Real Name : Carol Susan Jane Danvers
Aliases: Binary, Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, Warbird
Publisher: Marvel
Creators: Roy Thomas, Gene Colan
Gender: Female
Character Type: powers via radiation
First Appearance: Marvel Super-Heroes #13 - Where Stalks the Sentry!
Appears in: 2,353 issues
Birthday: n/a
Died: Ms. Marvel #37 - The Death Of Ms. Marvel, Part 3; The Avengers #177 - The Hope and the Slaughter
Height: 5' 11"
Weight: 124 lbs (56 kg)
Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Blue
Status
Citizenship: American
Place of Birth: Boston, Massachusetts
Marital status: Single
Occupations: Current Avenger; former Agent of SHIELD, Chief of Tactical Operations and Superhuman Liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, freelance writer and magazine editor, NASA Chief of Security, CIA Agent, U.S. Air Force Colonel
Known relatives: Joseph Danvers Sr. (father, deceased), Marie Danvers (mother), Joseph Danvers Jr. (brother), Steven Danvers (brother, deceased), Mar-Vell a.k.a. Captain Marvel (partial genetic template, deceased), Marcus Immortus ("son," deceased)
Personality
Carol is a brilliant and fiercely independent woman with a strong personality and indomitable willpower. She pursues her goals and dreams to the fullest, battling her way through any adversity and allowing nothing to get in her way. Going against gender typing as well as the wishes of her domineering father, she dreamed of becoming an ace fighter pilot, and quickly achieved this goal through sheer determination and hard work, learning an unusual degree of self-reliance in the process. This lead to remarkable success in many other professions, including becoming a top CIA agent, an editor-in-chief of a well-known New York magazine, and a successful novelist. From being editor-in-chief, she has proven to become successful in the male dominated industry of journalism and through this, has proven to be able to manage a newspaper team. In this sense, she is a feminist and has challenged many men, including Captain America in his views and is quite confrontational if someone crosses her line. Through this ability of hers to achieve, she is strong willed and this is why she has been able to achieve her career as a pilot and an editor, even though she has had many tragedies that could easily break down someone without a will like hers. She will fight to the end and has a warrior’s will and because of tragedies, she has proven to be quite resistant to mental domination. However, she has resorted to alcohol when her life had gone down the drain. Events like Captain Mar-vell’s death and losing her powers to Rogue have turned her to become an alcoholic. Because Rogue had absorbed all her powers, this included the absorbing of memories with her friends and family. She still knew who her friends and family were, but felt nothing for them. It was then Professor X who has restored her memories and finds it difficult and awkward to talk with those who she was once close with. To note, this kind of emotional disconnection is not because of her independence, but her memory loss because of Rogue. However, her military training will say otherwise. Sometimes she has had to make choices that were seen as cold and uncaring. Through this though, she has been trained to think fast in how to deal with emergency situations. She is perhaps seen as outspoken as she is very direct and assertive.
Powers and Abilities
Ms. Marvel's powers were originally derived from those of Captain Marvel, though they have since diverged and increased to become uniquely her own. This has made her one of the most powerful female heroes in the Marvel Universe. Due to being a unique Kree/human genetic hybrid, Carol also possesses the potential to wield vast cosmic power, which was fully realized during the period when she became Binary and which she can still attain under the right circumstances.
Super Strength: When she originally became Ms. Marvel, Carol's strength level was such that she could lift approximately 50 tons under normal conditions. This made her many times stronger than heroes such as Spider-Man, but not as strong as others such as the Thing. Ms. Marvel was shown easily lifting and hurling cars and tanks, tearing through five-inch steel with her bare hands, and shattering reinforced concrete with her fists. It was this strength level that the mutant Rogue acquired after stealing Carol's original Ms. Marvel powers.
Being captured and experimented on by the Brood awakened an almost godlike level of power in Carol due to her unique Kree/human genetic configuration, causing her to become Binary. As Binary, Carol could tap into the energy of a white hole, giving her class-100 strength, meaning she could easily lift well over 100 tons under normal conditions. Her strength level became so great that it was never accurately quantified.
After losing her Binary powers and reverting back to Ms. Marvel, Carol's strength dropped much closer to its original level, though it was still greater than before. She could now lift 75 tons under normal conditions, making her approximately fifty percent stronger than she was prior to losing her powers to Rogue. Under extreme circumstances Carol has shown the ability to tap into her cosmic Binary powers once again, allowing her to reach class-100 strength levels for brief periods. She has also shown an ability to achieve class-100 strength if she has absorbed a great deal of external energy.
Recent tests by Avengers scientist Hank Pym have shown that Ms. Marvel's base strength level is still increasing. Even when not augmented by any additional energy, Carol can now lift 92 tons and strike with a similar level of force, and Pym has theorized that this is likely not her limit.
Super Speed: Ms. Marvel has the ability move at supersonic speeds, making her literally too fast for the human eye to follow. She can achieve speeds of at least Mach-3 during atmospheric flight and has shown the ability to hit even greater velocities when the need arises. At her Binary power level, she could achieve faster-than-light speed and journey across the galaxy under her own power.
Super Agility: Ms. Marvel possesses great superhuman agility and reflexes to compliment her superhuman speed. She can perform acrobatic feats far beyond that of the finest human athlete and easily evade bullet-speed projectiles. During the period after Rogue took her powers, but before she regained them, she was stated to have been in peak physical condition - again the result of being a Kree/Human hybrid.
Super Stamina: Ms. Marvel can exert herself at maximum effort for up to 24 hours before tiring. During the Skrull Empire's assault on New York, Ms. Marvel single-handedly fought off a massive Skrull invasion force for an entire day without rest, successfully keeping the city out of enemy hands until reinforcements arrived.
Flight: As previously mentioned, Ms. Marvel can fly at speeds of at least Mach-3 in the atmosphere. She is a highly agile flier and can turn on a dime in midair, even while traveling at great velocity. Since she is also a talented and highly-trained fighter pilot, Carol's advanced knowledge of flight mechanics and aerial combat allows her to easily outmaneuver most opponents in the air.
Invulnerability: Ms. Marvel is impervious to most forms of damage and can absorb a tremendous amount of punishment without injury. She can survive unharmed in the cold vacuum of space. She is bullet-proof and such attacks merely bounce off her skin on contact. More powerful attacks such as rockets, mortar shells, and bombs are only slightly more effectual, due to the fact that she can absorb their explosive energy. She is unfazed by blows delivered from opponents weaker than her and can withstand blows even by those who are stronger, though continuous and repeated hits by opponents of such great strength can eventually wear her down. She is also impervious to most forms of energy attack, and in fact such attacks can make her stronger (see Energy Absorption, below).
Energy Absorption: Ms. Marvel has the ability to absorb a wide variety of energy and utilize it to further augment her own super-strength, speed, invulnerability, energy projection, and other powers. This ability was not present before Carol became Binary, and could be an after-effect of having once been Binary (as Binary, Carol could absorb and wield energy equivalent to that of a binary star system). Extremely high-energy attacks may eventually overload Carol's absorbing ability, but she has shown that she can absorb and utilize energy up to the magnitude of a nuclear explosion. Carol has also shown an ability to absorb magical energy (though not without consequence), recently demonstrated when she helped Doctor Strange defeat a formidable magic-wielding villain named Warren Traveler.
Energy Projection: Ms. Marvel can generate extremely powerful photon blasts, which are roughly equal in force to Iron Man's full-strength repulsor blasts. If she has absorbed a great amount of energy, Carol can generate even stronger energy blasts. Like her energy absorption power, Carol did not originally possess this ability prior to becoming Binary, though it has now become one of her signature powers.
Regeneration: In the event that Ms. Marvel suffers an attack that is actually powerful enough to overload both her invulnerability and her energy absorption power, she possesses a super-healing factor and is able to quickly regenerate from almost any injury. Her healing rate is accelerated even further if she is able to absorb and utilize external energy to aid in the process. She has fully recovered from nuclear explosions and attacks of similar magnitude in a matter of hours.
Danger Sense: One of Ms. Marvel's original powers was a precognitive sense, called her "seventh sense," which allowed her to subconsciously recognize danger before it occurred. It was this sense that triggered her early transformations from Carol Danvers to Ms. Marvel. Her seventh sense also allowed her to subconsciously predict an opponent's attacks before they made them, greatly enhancing her fighting and tactical prowess in battle. After Carol's original powers were stolen by Rogue, her seventh sense was lost, and because it was a subconscious power, Carol was uncertain whether it had returned even after regaining her powers. Eventually, certain incidents left no doubt that her seventh sense had since been restored.
Minor Molecular Control: Ms. Marvel possesses a limited degree of molecular control, which she can use to transform regular clothing into her Ms. Marvel costume and vice versa. This power works almost instantaneously, and has the effect of changing her from Carol Danvers to Ms. Marvel in much the same way that Clark Kent can become Superman in the blink of an eye.
Cosmic Awareness: As Binary, Carol possessed cosmic awareness, much like that of the Silver Surfer. She could visually perceive all types of energy patterns and was instantly aware of any significant disruptions in space. She seemingly lost her cosmic awareness after losing her Binary powers, though like her other Binary abilities, her cosmic awareness can re-emerge under the right circumstances.
Other abilities
Apart from her powers, Ms. Marvel possesses many other skills and abilities that she developed on her own. Her advanced military training along with her Kree warrior skills naturally makes her a very dangerous hand-to-hand fighter. When used in combination with her many superhuman powers, she becomes a truly formidable adversary. As a CIA agent, Carol developed highly advanced espionage skills, including infiltration, surveillance, interrogation, and disguise. Traveling around the world as an intelligence agent she learned to speak several other languages, such as German and Japanese, as if they were her first language. After her time in the Air Force she became a renowned fighter pilot in the Marvel Universe, and is also skilled at flying aircraft and spacecraft built by the Kree. Her advanced flying knowledge is used to great effect when fighting enemies in the air.
Because Carol's genetic structure was merged with Captain Mar-Vell's by the Kree Psyche-Magnitron, she has intimate knowledge of all aspects of the Kree race, including their language, culture, customs, politics, and technology. Though she is virtually half-Kree, she has never been emotionally tied to them, and sometimes has gone against Kree authority on certain matters. During her time as Binary she spent considerable time away from Earth, gathering valuable knowledge on other advanced alien races such as the Brood and the Shi’ar.
A more artistic ability Carol possesses is her writing talent. She had been a freelance journalist for some time and was also a magazine editor in New York. She is an accomplished author and has published several books, including a popular science-fiction novel based on her deep space adventures with the Starjammers.
Though it is understated Carol is an extremely attractive woman. Blond haired, blue eyed, and full figured, she conforms to many peoples standard of beauty, though she is often drawn as more muscular and solidly built than the thinner bodies of most other heroines (fitting with her military background of physical fitness and training). Her beauty combined with her strength, intelligence, and willpower has earned her loyalty and affection from many people in the Marvel Universe (as well as a few crushes), though this same beauty can lead some to underestimate her (to their detriment). Though she conforms to most peoples ideas of beauty, the fact that she is more solidly built than many of her thinner female heroines (or enemies) has led to some of her enemies making scathing remarks about her being fat (most notably Moonstone during their more recent battles- though this was used as a distraction).
Current Events
Ms. Marvel has adopted the mantle of Captain Marvel. Remembering her late friend and mentor, Helen Cobb, she undertakes the vast legacy of Captain Marvel with a renewed vigor.
Origin
In the 1960's, Carol Danvers made her comic book debut as a beautiful and highly capable young woman who had managed to overcome gender-typing and excel in challenging military occupations normally dominated by men. She was already an ace fighter pilot, a former officer in the U.S. Air Force, and a former CIA agent when she was hired as the head of security of NASA headquarters at Cape Canaveral. One of Carol's co-workers at NASA was a Dr. Phillip Lawson, who was secretly the alien Kree super-agent named Mar-Vell.
When a dormant Kree Sentry robot that NASA had been studying activated and went berserk, Mar-Vell defeated the rampaging robot and saved Carol's life in the process, with the press dubbing the mysterious new superhero " Captain Marvel." Carol became drawn to Mar-Vell and a romance developed between the two. A Kree enemy of Mar-Vell's named Yon-Rogg soon learned of the relationship and kidnapped Carol as bait to lure Mar-Vell into a trap. When Mar-Vell came to the rescue, Yon-Rogg deployed forbidden Kree technology called the Psyche-Magnitron in an attempt to destroy his enemy. During the battle the Psyche-Magnitron, which had the power to turn thoughts into reality, exploded and Captain Marvel shielded Carol from its radiation with his own body, causing Carol to absorb much of his own genetic template. Carol's wish to stand with Mar-Vell as an equal rather than a helpless victim completed the process, and her DNA became a perfect synthesis of Kree and human genes.
After Carol recovered from the explosion, she had gained superhuman powers much like those of Captain Marvel and her alter-ego even wore a costume patterned after that of the Kree hero. She became known as Ms. Marvel, and soon established herself as a powerful superhero in her own right.
Creation
The originally non-powered Carol Danvers was created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gene Colan in 1968, for a Captain Marvel story in the 13th issue of Marvel Super-Heroes. She became a supporting character in Captain Marvel's own title, where the idea was born that Carol had the potential to one day play a starring role. Writers Roy Thomas and Archie Goodwin laid the groundwork for what eventually became Ms. Marvel's superhero origin. By the mid-1970's, Marvel decided that it wanted a powerful new female superhero who could carry her own title and who represented the modern liberated woman. This came to fruition in 1977 when Carol Danvers, now fully powered as Ms. Marvel, finally made her debut as the heroine of her own title, the first issue of Ms. Marvel which was written by Gerry Conway and drawn by John Buscema. Writer Chris Claremont took over and further developed her character as the series progressed, and was responsible for writing many of the key events that ultimately defined her character. Towards the end of Ms. Marvel's original series, artist Dave Cockrum designed a distinctive new costume for her that became her signature look.
Character Evolution
Silver Age
In her early comic appearances of the late 1960's, Carol Danvers was portrayed as a tough and independent career woman who excelled in martial occupations normally dominated by men. After meeting Captain Marvel she took on a more typical 'feminine' role of the era, developing a crush on the dashing hero and being rescued by him on more than one occasion. Carol's involvement with Captain Marvel eventually led to her gaining super-powers of her own (Captain Marvel vol. 1 #18).
Bronze Age
After seldom appearing for several years, Carol Danvers made a dramatic return to comics during the Bronze Age of the 1970's as the super-heroine Ms. Marvel. Her alter-ego was conceived to be Marvel's most powerful female superhero, one who could truly slug it out with super-villains and defeat them with her fists as well as her intellect. As Carol Danvers she became Marvel's most liberated woman, holding down a diverse and successful career and rarely having time for a boyfriend. Her costume was originally derived from the red-and-blue Kree uniform of Captain Marvel, but after emerging from under his shadow she was given a distinctive new black-and-gold costume with a lightning bolt motif, which she still wears to this day. Upon the cancellation of her original title (which ran 23 issues), Ms. Marvel joined Marvel's premiere super-team, the Avengers, and served them with distinction for a number of issues. However, in a pregnancy storyline that generated considerable controversy, her character was literally exiled to Limbo by Marvel's writers in Avengers #200.
Modern Age
The character began the Modern Age with a tragic turn. Carol Danvers finally escaped from Limbo only to have a fateful encounter with the female mutant known as Rogue, who stole Carol's Ms. Marvel powers as well as her memory (Avengers Annual #10). Carol's memories were restored by Professor X, but she had permanently lost the emotions connected with them. Now with no super-powers, Carol joined the Professor's X-Men as their ace pilot and intelligence operative. Her adventures with the X-Men led to her being captured by an alien race that inadvertently unlocked the full potential of her unique Kree/human genetic configuration, causing her to gain godlike power as Binary (Uncanny X-Men #164).
As the cosmically-powered Binary, Carol journeyed the galaxy with the Starjammers for many years. After a fateful conflict in outer space, Carol's cosmic link to her Binary powers was severed and she returned to Earth, but with her original Ms. Marvel powers fully restored and augmented by having once been Binary. She changed her code name to Warbird and re-joined the Avengers, having forgiven them for abandoning her to Limbo during her first stint with the team. But then more tragedy struck, as all of the trauma of her recent career caught up with her and she turned to alcohol in order to cope. Her struggle with alcoholism led to her being expelled from the team, after which she did some serious soul-searching and eventually cured herself of her addiction.
During the House of M storyline in 2005, Carol realized her full potential as a superhero and became one of Earth's greatest champions. Though that reality was eventually reversed, Carol was one of the few heroes to remember her House of M self, and it inspired her to change her name back to Ms. Marvel and become the best hero she could possibly be. This led to the return of her own comic book title in 2006, nearly 30 years after the debut of her original title. Ms. Marvel vol. 2 ran 50 issues and firmly re-established her character as one of Marvel's premiere super-heroines. After the events of Avengers vs X-Men, Carol undergoes another name change; this time taking up the legacy of Captain Marvel-the hero who was the cause of her original power manifestation.
Major Story Arcs
Early Years
Carol Danvers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, as the only girl among three children. Despite the fact that Carol was extremely bright and capable, more so than either of her brothers, her chauvinistic father refused to pay for her to attend college, preferring to spend the money on his sons instead. He insisted that Carol merely find a good husband to take care of her, a sexist notion that the fiercely independent Carol refused to accept.
Carol had always loved the idea of flying, and after she graduated from high school she decided to defy her father's wishes and joined the United States Air Force. She excelled in the Air Force, her skill as a jet fighter pilot so remarkable that her colleagues nicknamed her "Ace," and she quickly rose to the rank of Colonel.
Carol's exemplary performance in the Air Force brought her to the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency, who actively recruited her and trained her to become an elite field agent. As an agent of the CIA, Carol often teamed up with fellow agent Michael Rossi, and the two became romantically involved. She also teamed up with a Canadian agent named Logan (before he became Wolverine) and the two became good friends, saving each others lives during several dangerous missions, and it was even implied that they may have become more than friends at some point.
On one of her most important CIA missions, Carol had to infiltrate Soviet airspace alongside Logan and an American test pilot named Ben Grimm (before he became the Thing and a member of the Fantastic Four). The mission almost failed when they were intercepted by Soviet forces (led by the Black Widow) and forced to the ground. With a good amount of luck, the three managed to escape and succeeded in retrieving the mysterious metal which they had been sent to obtain. In the process, the trio formed a bond that would live on into their super-hero careers.
During what would prove to be her final CIA mission, Carol was captured by the KGB and held in Lubyanka prison, where she endured interrogation and torture. In defiance of government orders, Logan and Michael Rossi infiltrated Russia, broke into Lubyanka, and rescued Carol. The ordeal extinguished Carol's enthusiasm for being a CIA agent, so she decided to resign in order to pursue a different career.
Birth of a Superhero
Carol's impressive resume landed her a position as the head of security of NASA headquarters in Cape Canaveral. There she unexpectedly made the acquaintance of the Kree superhero Mar-Vell (known on Earth as Captain Marvel) and hints of a romance developed between the two. Carol's CIA background made her quite unafraid to put herself in potentially dangerous situations, and while on the job she found herself caught in the middle an epic battle between Captain Marvel and his Kree arch-enemy Yon-Rogg. Carol, who until then had always felt herself capable of handling anything, was a mere pawn in the struggle between the two super-powered combatants, and she hated feeling so helpless. During the conflict, Carol was exposed to the explosive radiation of an otherworldly Kree device called the Psyche-Magnitron, which had the power to turn thoughts into reality but whose radiation was lethal to humans. Captain Marvel shielded Carol from the bulk of the radiation with his own body, causing Carol's DNA to absorb much of his own genetic template. Carol's lifelong dreams of flight and her sudden wish to have powers like those of Captain Marvel completed the process, and her DNA was transformed into that of a superhuman member of the Kree race.
The result was that Carol emerged from the explosion with superhuman strength and durability, the ability to fly, fighting skills equal to that of a trained Kree warrior, and a precognitive "seventh sense" that allowed her to sense beforehand when danger or a crisis was about to occur. Carol become the super-heroine known as Ms. Marvel, and her first costume was based on the red-and-blue Kree uniform worn by Captain Marvel. Initially, Carol was not even aware of her superhuman alter-ego: When her seventh sense detected a crisis, she would fall unconscious and transform into Ms. Marvel in a burst of energy. As Ms. Marvel, she had no recollection of being Carol Danvers and was convinced that she had amnesia. In turn, Carol retained no memory of being Ms. Marvel, and believed that she had merely been unconscious during that time. Eventually Carol would discover that she was in fact Ms. Marvel and her two personas became of one mind, allowing Carol to have full control over when she became Ms. Marvel and vice versa.
As Ms. Marvel, Carol quickly gained the reputation of being a formidable super-hero in her own right. She fought and defeated many super-powered villains, including Scorpion, Grotesk, MODOK and AIM, Tiger Shark, Destructor, the Doomsday Man, and others. She also acquired some persistent enemies due to her super-heroics, including the renegade Shi'ar warrior known as Deathbird and the shape-shifting mutant villainess known as Mystique. The latter plotted to destroy Ms. Marvel in secret, which eventually led to Mystique's adopted mutant daughter, Rogue, entering a fateful battle with Carol that would emotionally scar both women forever.
New Costume
After a battle that briefly reunited Carol with her old flame Captain Marvel, her original Ms. Marvel costume was badly damaged. Carol decided that she had finally come into her own as a superhero, and wanted a new costume that was uniquely hers rather than being a reflection of Captain Marvel's. With some help from her friend Janet Van Dyne (the fashion-conscious super-heroine known as the Wasp), Carol designed a new black one-piece uniform with a gold lightning bolt across the chest, accented by high black boots and gloves. She kept the red scarf as a reminder of her original costume, though she now wore it as a sash tied around her waist. The costume became Ms. Marvel's signature look, and though Carol would set it aside on certain occasions (once when she became Binary, and another time when she changed her code name to Warbird), she has always gone back to this costume.
Respect for Ms. Marvel in the super-hero community grew to the point where she was asked to join the renowned super-team the Avengers, since an opening had became available with the departure of the Scarlet Witch. Carol gratefully accepted, and though the Avengers eventually became the team that she would be most closely associated with throughout her superhero career, her first stint with them would not end well.
Initially Ms. Marvel fit right in with the Avengers and proved to be a valuable team member, helping defeat a number of super-villains, including the Absorbing Man, Chthon, the Grey Gargoyle, the Elements of Doom, and the Taskmaster. She also single-handedly took down the mutant villain Sabretooth after he had escaped from SHIELD custody. During this time she forged friendships with the other Avengers and truly enjoyed becoming part of the team. Little did she know that these would prove to be her final relatively care-free days as a superhero.
Personal Tragedy
The first tragedy struck when Carol's boyfriend and psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Barnett, was found brutally beaten to death in his office and all of his files on Carol Danvers stolen. Barnett had been instrumental in helping Carol come to terms with her dual identity of Ms. Marvel, and the two had grown very close. With the help of her Avengers teammate, Iron Man, Carol was able to determine that Barnett had been murdered by someone posing as Carol herself, and with further detective work, she discovered that the murderer was a mutant shape-shifter known as Mystique. A grief-stricken Carol vowed revenge on Mystique, but was unable to locate her. Mystique then sent her super-powered henchmen Pyro and Avalanche to kill Carol when she was out patrolling as Ms. Marvel. The evil mutants initially took Carol by surprise, but once she realized they had been sent by Mystique, she flew into a rage and defeated them easily.
The Unnatural Pregnancy
Carol's quest for revenge on Mystique was put on indefinite hold when she was suddenly hit with a bizarre and completely unexpected condition: In less than a day, she had somehow become several months pregnant. Having not been intimate with anyone for some time, a distraught Carol explained the impossibility of her situation to her Avengers teammates, but was further upset when they merely offered their congratulations as though the pregnancy were normal. Her pregnancy progressed at a pace far faster then normal, and within a few days she had given birth to a baby boy. As he had in Carol's womb, the boy aged at a fantastically accelerated rate, growing to manhood in the course of a single day.
Calling himself Marcus, he revealed to Carol and the other Avengers that he was the son of the time-lord Immortus, and that he had been trapped alone in another dimension called Limbo after his father had disappeared. Marcus claimed that his only means of escape from Limbo was to teleport an Earth woman into Limbo with him and impregnate her with his essence, where he could be "reborn" on Earth after he sent the woman back. After much observation of Earth using his father's technology, he chose Carol for her strength, beauty, and other exemplary qualities, and had teleported her into Limbo and attempted to woo her. But Carol had initially rejected him, so Marcus admitted to using a "subtle boost" from Immortus' mind-controlling technology to make her fall in love with him, after which he coupled with her. He then wiped her mind of the memory and teleported her back to Earth at the exact time she had been abducted, so that no one, not even Carol herself, had known what had happened. The plan had worked, except that Marcus' presence on Earth was now causing unforeseen and dangerous fluctuations in the time stream. The only way to stop these fluctuations from causing irreparable harm to reality would be if Marcus returned to Limbo.
Carol found herself strangely drawn to Marcus despite all of this, and for some reason she could not bear the idea of him returning to Limbo alone. Announcing that she loved Marcus, she agreed to leave Earth to be together with him in Limbo. The Avengers cluelessly took Carol at her word and told her she was free to be with her "new love" with their blessing. Only Iron Man made an attempt to question if Carol really knew what she was doing, but he was told that all was well. Thor used his mystical hammer to open an extra-dimensional portal to Limbo and sent Carol and Marcus on their way.
Marcus now had Carol where he wanted her, but he had made a fatal error in his scheme: He had not made provisions to halt the super-aging of his new body after it reached adulthood. He continued to age at a hyper-accelerated rate and within a matter of hours had died of old age, leaving Carol alone in Limbo. Once Marcus was dead, Carol realized that she had still been under his mind control the entire time and had not been acting of her own free will when she claimed to love him or left Earth with him. Even worse, her own friends and teammates had actually helped Marcus and never once questioned his true nature or motives, despite the fact that he had essentially admitted to using mind control on Carol. With no one to help her, Carol called upon all of her ingenuity and resourcefulness to master the technology Marcus had left behind and eventually succeeded, using it to escape Limbo and return to Earth.
Once back, Carol avoided all contact with the Avengers. Still traumatized by Michael Barnett's death and her subsequent abduction and rape by Marcus Immortus, Carol decided that she simply wanted to start a brand new life, so she left the East Coast entirely and settled in San Francisco.
The Battle with Rogue
Unfortunately, Carol's old enemy, Raven Darkholme (Mystique), had not forgotten her vow to destroy Ms. Marvel. Mystique learned from her precognitive partner, Destiny, that Carol had returned to Earth, so she discussed the possibility of Mystique's adopted daughter, Rogue, killing Carol. Rogue was a mutant with the ability to temporarily absorb the mind and powers of whomever she touched, and therefore was Mystique's ultimate weapon.
But Destiny foretold that Ms. Marvel could destroy Rogue, so Mystique vowed to protect Rogue by finding another way to kill Ms. Marvel. As fate would have it, Rogue overheard their conversation and, anxious to prove herself, decided to go fight Ms. Marvel anyway. Rogue ambushed Carol at her San Francisco apartment, where Carol was returning from grocery shopping. Carol fought back furiously, and their battle raged all across the city. Carol fought Rogue so long and hard that Rogue's ability to absorb powers and memories became permanent in this case, rather than temporary. Once Carol was entirely drained she fell into a catatonic state, while Rogue's mind was suddenly assaulted by Carol's personality and emotions competing with her own. Desperately hoping that killing Carol would silence the unwelcome presence inside her head, Rogue threw Carol's lifeless body off the Golden Gate Bridge.
But the epic struggle had drawn the attention of the super-heroine known as Spider-Woman, who arrived just in time to witness its conclusion. Spider-Woman retrieved Carol, who was still barely alive, from the water and immediately brought her to Professor X and the X-Men. They were able to save Carol’s life and Xavier helped her recover her memories, but could not reconnect Carol to any of her past feelings. A distraught Carol realized that she had to go on with her life without her powers or her emotional connection to her memory.
Though Rogue had technically won the battle and now had all of Ms. Marvel's powers at her disposal, Destiny's prediction that Ms. Marvel would destroy Rogue proved true, in the sense that Rogue was never the same person afterward. Carol's competing personality, emotions, and memories inside Rogue's head threatened to drive Rogue insane. Because Carol was now an intimate part of her mind, Rogue also felt catastrophic guilt over what she had done to the other woman. Even her foster mother Mystique did not know what to do, so in desperation Rogue eventually turned to Mystique's enemies, the X-Men, for a solution to her condition. After many years of their help, a fully reformed and repentant Rogue would finally purge the Carol Danvers persona from her mind, but the process would be a long, hard, and often life-threatening road.
Life Without Powers
While Carol was recovering, Professor X contacted the Avengers and let them know what had happened to her. The Avengers, who had not seen or heard from Carol since she had left Earth with Marcus, came to visit Carol at her bedside, expecting to cheer her up. Instead, Carol angrily told the team off for abandoning her to a man who had mind-controlled her and violated her, even after he had essentially admitted to doing so. The Avengers left the visit hanging their heads, finally aware that they had failed to protect one of their own when she had needed them most.
Carol's recovery time spent with Professor X and the X-Men made her feel like she belonged somewhere again. Her bonding with the team was made even easier by the presence of her old friend Logan, who was now Wolverine and a member of the X-Men. Though Carol's powers were gone, she still had her considerable intellect and fighting experience, so she offered to stay and help the X-Men in any way she could. Serving as the team's ace pilot and intelligence operative, she went on various adventures with the team, including space missions.
On one mission, the knowledge of Xavier's Institute had been compromised, so Carol helped them erase their files from the Pentagon by using her previous affiliation with the military, even going so far as to dust off her old her uniform and rank to aid in the infiltration. While in the Pentagon the team came across Rogue (not yet reformed) and Mystique, who were after the same files. The Ms. Marvel-powered Rogue fought the X-Men while Carol was busy deleting the files. Mystique attempted to kill Carol once and for all, believing that her now-powerless enemy was easy prey. Instead, Carol took down Mystique with sheer anger and old-fashioned fighting skill. Once Mystique lay unconscious at Carol's feet, Carol realized that she could now take her ultimate revenge on her hated enemy, but decided to spare Mystique's life.
Binary
On a later mission in space, Carol was kidnapped by the alien race called the Brood, who performed agonizing experiments on her due to her unique genetic configuration. Logan, as he had back in Carol's CIA days, eventually rescued Carol from imprisonment and torture once again. After Carol recovered, she and the X-Men discovered that the Brood's experimentation (however unwelcome) had allowed her to attain nearly godlike power. She now possessed super-strength far greater than before, the ability to survive unharmed in outer space, and the ability to manipulate cosmic energy by tapping into a white hole.
To reflect her new power level, which was the equivalent of a binary star system, Carol adopted the new code name of Binary. She took on a completely new look, wearing a red and white costume with a pair of stars on the chest. When her Binary powers were activated her skin took on a deep red color, her hair transformed into a corona of energy, and the edges of her boots and gloves resembled flame. Since Carol now had the ability to travel the stars entirely on her own, she took a temporary leave from the X-Men to in order to explore her vast new powers before returning to Earth.
When Carol decided to rejoin the X-Men a while later, she came across Rogue, who at that moment was alone inside the X-Men's mansion. Thinking that Rogue was still a villain and had broken into the mansion, Carol immediately attacked, her first blow literally sending Rogue into orbit. Rogue, in possession of Carol's former Ms. Marvel powers and not fully realizing how much more powerful Carol now was, recovered and flew back to continue the fight. Carol's next blow sent Rogue crashing through several hundred yards of landscape. Carol might have gone on to kill Rogue in the unequal struggle, had the other X-Men not intervened and explained that Rogue was trying to reform and had recently joined the team. Carol was shocked. She could not believe that the X-Men, knowing what Rogue had done to her, would embrace her old enemy this way. Carol felt that yet another team she trusted and counted on had betrayed her. Dismayed by these events, Carol cut all ties with the X-Men and left, just as she had previously done when she'd felt betrayed by the Avengers.
Since Carol had no emotional connection with anyone, she decided to not only leave the X-Men, but to leave Earth altogether. While journeying alone through space she met and joined the Starjammers, a group of space pirates. The Starjammers came into conflict with the Shi'ar Empire and Carol defeated her old enemy Deathbird, who had returned to the Shi-ar, and even successfully took on the might of Gladiator and the Shi'ar Imperial Guard. She had now adventured all across the galaxy and had defeated so many powerful adversaries with her vast powers that she began to feel bored and alienated from all other life.
Desperate for a challenge, she later came across Quasar, who was trying to save the Earth from a crisis involving the sun expanding at an unnatural rate, and immediately leaped to his aid. The task proved incredibly dangerous even for a being of Carol's power level, and though she and Quasar ultimately prevailed, Carol was severely injured in the process. Quasar carried her back to Avengers Mansion on Earth and she spent many months recovering there, though she was unable to recover her link to her cosmic Binary powers. The Avengers, still painfully aware of how badly they had failed Carol the last time she was with the team, made every effort to do what they could for her this time around, and Carol decided to forgive them. Even after she had fully recovered, the Avengers invited her to stay. The Starjammers also visited Carol and invited her to join them once more, but it conflicted with her schedule with the Avengers, so she decided to remain on Earth.
Alcoholism
Though Carol had lost her cosmic link to her Binary powers, she was able to regain her original Ms. Marvel powers of super-strength, resistance to injury, flight, and enhanced senses. In addition, she now had the ability to manipulate and project energy, which may have been a residual after-effect of her powers as Binary. For her second stint with the Avengers, Carol decided to change her code name to Warbird, though she kept wearing her signature Ms. Marvel costume.
Unfortunately, all of the trauma Carol had been through up until this point – her boyfriend's murder at the hands of Mystique, her abduction and rape by Marcus, the stealing of her powers and memories by Rogue, her capture and torture by the Brood, and gaining and then losing godlike power as Binary – had caught up with her and was taking a heavy toll on her psyche. True to her independent nature, she never spoke of her emotional distress to her friends or teammates, and unwisely turned to alcohol as a means of coping instead. Carol went on Avengers missions while intoxicated and often made simple and inexcusable mistakes. After a couple of near-catastrophes due to Carol's uncontrolled behavior, the Avengers eventually had no choice but to expel her from the team. Iron Man, a former alcoholic himself, then helped Carol overcome her alcoholism and stabilized her powers, and in the process their friendship deepened considerably.
After her recovery, the Avengers invited Carol back again, and she accepted. Later, she voluntarily left the team to join SHIELD and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. During this time, she set aside her Ms. Marvel costume and wore a militaristic-looking uniform with armor plating on the chest and shoulders, a costume which became associated with her Warbird code name. She also employed her expertise with dealing with super-villains to become a parole officer for the new Thunderbolts.
House of M
After the Scarlet Witch tragically went insane, she used her vast probability-altering powers to create the House of M – an alternate reality where mutants became the ruling class of humanity, while normal humans became the oppressed class. Earth's heroes were eventually able to reverse what the Scarlet Witch had done and, after reality had reverted back to normal, Carol was among the few heroes who could remember what had happened during her time in the House of M. There, she had truly realized her full potential as Ms. Marvel and had become one of Earth's most renowned and universally admired heroes, essentially becoming that reality's version of Wonder Woman. Inspired by her House of M self, Carol decided to revitalize her superhero career and become the best hero she could be. She quit her Homeland Security job and even turned down an offer to join the New Avengers. Deciding to operate as an independent superhero once again, she changed her code name back to Ms. Marvel and resumed wearing her signature Ms. Marvel costume.
Civil War
During the Civil War, Ms. Marvel decided to become pro-registration, out of loyalty to the U.S. government and also to her longtime friend Iron Man, who had offered to lead the pro-registration forces. She joined a team to help enforce the Super-Human Registration Act alongside Iron Man. She worked with Wonder Man and Arachne to help train new superheroes while also hunting down anti-registration heroes.
Carol soon learned that Arachne was a double agent who was using her position to secretly feed vital information to the anti-registration forces. Carol felt that she had no choice but to turn Arachne in. As Ms. Marvel, she hunted down Arachne, defeated her in front of Arachne’s own daughter, and took her into custody. The friendship between the two women was destroyed by this encounter, and Carol had considerable regrets afterward. Arachne eventually escaped custody, returned to her daughter, and moved to Canada to become a member of Omega Flight.
Later, Carol paid a visit to a young Hispanic superheroine named Araña to convince her to register. Because Araña idolized Ms. Marvel she was happy to comply, after which Carol trained Araña to be a superhero. Unfortunately, Araña was badly injured during a mission, causing Araña's father to forbid Carol from seeing Araña again.
The Alternate Earth Warbird
Rogue later paid Carol an unexpected visit. The animosity between the two women had subsided at this point, since they were now both well aware of each other's impressive super-hero careers and realized that they should be allies. However, Carol's emotional scars ran deep and she still did not fully trust her old adversary. Rogue informed Carol of a problem -- there was now another Carol, a much more belligerent one, that was being detained at the Xavier Institute. This Carol, first encountered by Beast, was an alternate-Earth version of Carol who still called herself Warbird and wore the armor-plated Warbird uniform. It was revealed that on her own Earth, Warbird became a serious alcoholic because of what Rogue did to her, and her world eventually was destroyed while she was incapable of saving it. Warbird would then be tossed to different universes before landing in Marvel's main reality (also known as Earth-616).
After meeting Warbird herself, Carol quickly became disgusted with her alternate-Earth counterpart's uncompromising and hostile attitude. A violent battle between Carol and Warbird soon broke out. Rogue tried to help, but Carol, in the heat of battle subconsciously thinking of the mutant as her old enemy again, lashed out at Rogue and broke her ribs. After Rogue was incapacitated, Warbird informed Carol of her true intentions -- that she had already traveled to many different Earths, killing both the Rogue and Carol of each Earth. Carol, appalled at how evil her alternate-Earth version had become, attacked Warbird again and defeated her. Warbird was taken into custody and imprisoned in a maximum-security facility. Meeting the alternate-Earth Warbird caused Carol to do some serious soul-searching, and she wondered if she ever truly forgave Rogue for what the mutant had done to her years ago.
Old and New Enemies
Ms. Marvel then took on a familiar foe from her past, A.I.M., as M.O.D.O.K.'s son tried to blow up Seattle by using his father as a bomb. Ms. Marvel was caught in the explosion when she attempted to stop it, but completely regenerated from it.
Afterward, it came to Ms. Marvel's attention that super-powered women were disappearing around the world, with colleagues like Tigra , Stature, Dusk, Silverclaw, and even Araña included among the missing. Carol took this personally and began an intense investigation in order to locate and rescue the women. She eventually discovered that they were being held on a remote island and mind-controlled by the Puppet Master in order to build himself a slave army. Ms. Marvel attacked his stronghold, but had to battle and defeat Tigra and the other mind-enslaved women when the Puppet Master ordered them to kill her. After Ms. Marvel dismantled the Puppet Master's operation and freed his captives, he took his own life by blowing himself up. Ms. Marvel realized that she could have stopped him, but was so angered by what he had done that she had allowed the bomb to go off. She regenerated from the explosion and lied to her team about not being able to prevent the Puppet Master's suicide.
The alien being called Cru then appeared at the end of this arc, and revealed that 'she' was the reason that Ms. Marvel was regenerating, because a part of her was inside Ms. Marvel. It actually turned out that the Brood destroyed Cru's home planet, not the other way around. Cru unlocked Ms. Marvel's old Binary powers, giving her a chance to battle and defeat an old enemy, the Brood Queen. The Brood Queen killed Cru, but Ms. Marvel smartly used a bomb to make the Brood Queen explode.
Mighty Avengers
Iron Man asked Ms. Marvel to lead a new government-sanctioned team of Avengers, which she accepted; the two picked a team together. During their first mission, the Mighty Avengers fought the new incarnation of Ultron. Ms. Marvel absorbed energies from Ultron during their battle; after having SHIELD scientists examine the energies, she stopped missiles from hitting New York by diverting them upwards. She then used the energy she absorbed from the missiles to stop the Sentry when he went crazy.
When the Mighty Avengers and SHIELD launched an attack on Doctor Doom, Ms. Marvel was again team leader, along with Iron Man. When the Sentry and Iron Man returned from the past, she flew to them, urging them to take cover before the place exploded. They survived the explosion and continued with the invasion. In the end, they prevailed and Doom was taken into custody.
Secret Invasion: the Infiltration
On a mission to Japan (in which Ms. Marvel did not participate), the Avengers discovered that the assassin known as Elektra had been replaced by an agent of the shape-shifting alien race known as the Skrulls. They soon learned that many more Skrull agents, in disguise as other Earth heroes, were spearheading an imminent invasion of Earth by the Skrull Empire. It was nearly impossible to determine who might be a Skrull, resulting in Earth's heroes, already paranoid from the recent Civil War, viewing each other with great suspicion. Iron Man, as the head of SHIELD, observed secret surveillance footage showing Carol Danvers seemingly being in two different places at the same time. Iron Man told SHIELD Agent Sum that one of the Carols must be a Skrull in disguise, and had surveillance intensified on Ms. Marvel.
Back in New York, Ms. Marvel was still investigating AIM and was unaware that she had fallen under SHIELD scrutiny. She performed a routine check-up which unexpectedly yielded the location of a hidden AIM base. After a suspicious delivery truck with unknown cargo left the base, she decided to follow it rather than attack. It turned out that the truck contained a hostile alien life form, and after she intervened, she discovered that it was a Super-Skrull with the combined powers of several of the X-Men. She battled the Super-Skrull, who teleported away using Nightcrawler's teleportation power after noting that Ms. Marvel "smelled of his true prey," which was enough to help him continue on his "true mission."
Ms. Marvel thought through the people she had seen earlier that day and grew concerned that the Super-Skrull's actual target may have been an associate named William Wagner, with whom she recently had a brief romantic relationship. She urgently called him via cell phone and a surprised-sounding William answered, but before the conversation went anywhere Ms. Marvel heard him scream and drop the phone. She flew at top speed to his apartment, only to find William sprawled dead in the bedroom. As she checked William's body, Agent Sum arrived, armed with a SHIELD weapon designed to take down superhumans and threatening to shoot her if she did not surrender.
Realizing that she had been set up, Ms. Marvel thought fast and managed to escape Agent Sum, but was confronted by more of her own SHIELD colleagues, the super-powered agents Sleepwalker and Machine Man. Unable to convince them of the truth and not wanting to attack her own teammates, she flew away but was followed by Machine Man, who gave her no choice but to turn and fight. Ms. Marvel reluctantly tore Machine Man to pieces, knowing that he could easily reconstruct himself later, but was then attacked by a duplicate Ms. Marvel, resulting in much confusion. The elite SHIELD unit known as Operation: Lightning Storm arrived and, unable to distinguish which Ms. Marvel was Carol Danvers and which was a Skrull agent, apprehended both of them and took them into custody.
Carol (the true Ms. Marvel) was later freed from her cell by Agent Sum, but then her danger sense kicked in and she struck him down, believing him to be a Skrull. When he fell and didn't revert to Skrull form, she thought that she had made a mistake. But at that point the real Agent Sum entered the room, and the fallen "Agent Sum" reverted to his Skrull form -- the same X-Men-powered Super-Skrull that Ms. Marvel had fought earlier. Ms. Marvel, Agent Sum, and other SHIELD agents all attacked the Super-Skrull, eventually knocking him into the area where the second Ms. Marvel was being detained. That "Ms. Marvel" finally reverted to her true Skrull form, and revealed that William Wagner was still alive and that she had merely disguised herself as William's body in Carol's apartment in order to frame Carol. William himself later appeared and revealed that he was actually a Kree agent sent to Earth to investigate the recent activities of the Skrulls, as the two races were long-time mortal enemies.
Secret Invasion
In the core Secret Invasion storyline, Ms. Marvel flew with the Mighty Avengers to the Savage Land. Iron Man's armor became infected with a Skrull virus, so Ms. Marvel pulled Tony Stark out of the armor and flew him away to the base where the fugitive New Avengers (composed entirely of non-registered heroes) were captured on their first mission. Stark told her to leave and return to the mainland in order to gather the Initiative so they could be ready for the Skrull invasion. However, it was too late and the Initiative was scattered. Ms. Marvel, the only hero left in Manhattan to face the invasion, made the decision that the city would not be taken as long as she was alive.
The battle ensued, and Ms. Marvel fought the entire Skrull invasion force harder than she ever fought a battle in her life. In addition to the countless Skrull soldiers, she had to contend with numerous Super-Skrulls, including an unprecedented giant version that could adopt virtually any power it wanted. Despite the overwhelming odds, Ms. Marvel prevailed, almost single-handedly preventing the Skrulls from taking the city before their ultimate defeat at the hands of Earth's heroes.
Dark Reign
Afterward, the government made Tony Stark the scapegoat of the invasion and forced him to step down as head of SHIELD. The organization was re-named HAMMER and restructured from top to bottom. Norman Osborn, a former super-villain who was now seen as a hero after the invasion, was put in charge of both HAMMER and the new government-sanctioned team of Avengers. Osborn issued a warrant for Stark's arrest, forcing Tony into hiding. Osborn then summoned Ms. Marvel to his headquarters in Avengers Tower and gave her an ultimatum: Join his new Avengers team under his command, or be considered a criminal like Stark and placed under arrest. Ms. Marvel, knowing Osborn for what he truly was, rejected the offer and blasted free of the Tower before she could be apprehended. She then joined the renegade New Avengers and was elected the team's second-in-command.
Osborn realized that the fugitive Carol Danvers, like Tony Stark, was very dangerous to his future plans. He recruited the terrorist Ghazi Rashid, an old enemy of Carol's from her CIA days, to kill Ms. Marvel. Osborn used a super-drug known as 'Ascension' to give Rashid superhuman powers formidable enough to succeed in the task. Only a short time later, Ms. Marvel encountered Rashid, who attacked with lethal force. Though she was experiencing power burnout at the time, Ms. Marvel overcame the attack and managed to defeat the villain. In the process, however, she overloaded, and it seemed that the original Ms. Marvel was now dead ( Ms. Marvel vol. 2 #37).
War of the Marvels
Satisfied that Carol had been eliminated, Osborn hand-picked his own team of Avengers, mostly choosing former Thunderbolts. This team became known as the Dark Avengers, since it was both composed of and led by former super-villains in the guise of heroes. He placed Karla Sofen, formerly the villainess Moonstone, in the guise of Ms. Marvel. A stunning blonde similar in appearance to Carol, Karla was suited in a variation of Carol's original red-and-blue Kree-oriented costume and became the version of Ms. Marvel that was exposed to the public eye. She took on a more brutal role of crime enforcer, killing rather than apprehending dangerous criminals. The public reaction to this new Ms. Marvel was mixed.
Some time after the apparent demise of Carol Danvers, there were various world sightings of several brightly-colored feminine energy beings, seeking special genetically engineered creations of AIM. Wherever the beings appeared, they left death in the wake of their search. While this was happening, Karla Sofen, in the guise of Osborn's Ms. Marvel, used the weapon of an AIM splinter cell against itself. In the process, she rescued an assembly of multiple telepathic genetic fetuses, engineered from both the MODOC and Storyteller protocols. She discovered that both she and the energy beings sought the "babies," and ended up doing battle with one of them.
Later, when Wolverine, Spider-Man, and even Deadpool became involved in the fight for possession of the "babies," it was revealed that these energy beings were actually Carol Danvers herself, split into all of her various Kree energy patterns. After the New Avengers helped her gather enough of the "babies" and put them together, their combined power was used to fuse Carol back into a single being, paving the way for a fateful final encounter between Carol Danvers and Karla Sofen. In the ensuing battle, Carol decisively defeated Karla and reclaimed her rightful name and role as Ms. Marvel.
Siege
Ms. Marvel later fought in the climactic struggle against Osborn's Dark Avengers during the Siege of Asgard. She arrived at the battlefield set up on the Asgardian ruins and helped Spider-Man defeat his arch-enemy Venom, who was on Osborn's side of the conflict. But during the fight, Venom's alien symbiote suit latched onto Ms. Marvel and tried to turn her into a brand new host for itself. Spider-Man helped Ms. Marvel free herself from the symbiote, which then re-joined with its human host Mac Gargan. Venom then revealed that while in connection with Ms. Marvel, it had sensed that she harbored a secret affection for Spider-Man. Angered and embarrassed, Ms. Marvel took down Venom herself and flew Spider-Man to the Asgardian battlefield to join with the other heroes. The Siege ended with the total defeat of Osborn's forces thanks to the combined efforts of all of the heroes involved, led by Captain America (Steve Rogers, back from the dead after seemingly being assassinated after the Civil War), Iron Man, and Thor.
Heroic Age
The defeat of Osborn and his Dark Avengers ushered in a new era of Marvel history, known as the Heroic Age. The Superhuman Registration Act was repealed, and the original "Big Three" of the Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor) decided to establish three separate teams of Avengers in order to better serve and protect the public. Ms. Marvel was once again elected second-in-command of the latest New Avengers team, led by Luke Cage and headquartered in the restored Avengers Mansion. The team's current roster includes Carol's longtime friends Wolverine, Spider-Man, and the Thing.
Avengers vs. X-Men
With the new Marvel event, Ms. Marvel became part of the Secret Avengers and was part of the group who were sent into space to try to stop the Phoenix Force from reaching Earth. Her teammates were Thor, Noh-Varr, War Machine, Captain Britain, Vision and Beast. The first time they went straight up against the Phoenix Force, they failed but the second time, Thor was able to send the Phoenix away for a time. Afterwards, Captain Marvel made his return and Ms. Marvel went with him and Noh-Varr to the Kree Empire. She showed that she is still in love with him and they kissed but also that she does not know he is not the real Captain Marvel.
Captain Marvel
During a battle with the Absorbing Man, Captain America urged Carol (who was dressed in a new costume) to take on the mantle of Captain Marvel. Hesitant, she decided to initially decline his offer. Whilst pondering her life on the fringes of the Earth's atmosphere, Carol remembered Helen Cobb; a late friend, mentor and fellow pilot who had recently passed away. Helen had emphasized the idea of being the best you could be, and not allowing anything to hold you back. With this in mind, Carol chose to take the mantle of Captain Marvel. Whilst trying to break Helen's previous flight record, Carol encountered engine failure. During her attempt to regain control of the aircraft by utilizing her powers, she lost consciousness. Upon awakening, she found herself to be in a forested area, with no memory of how she got there - or, indeed, whether she managed to avoid crashing the plane (she was unable to find a landing site). She soon encountered enemy forces, who briefly held her prisoner. Before long the enemy forces encountered the all-female Banshee Squadron—a small camaraderie of World War II soldiers—and it became apparent to Carol that she was certainly not in the present day. After escaping back to her own time, Carol was invited by Monica Rambeau, another Avenger who has gone by the name Captain Marvel over the years, to uncover the mystery which surrounded the disappearance of various ships and planes. After finding an underwater graveyard of the missing vehicles, a huge robot emerged from the water, building itself from the wreckage. After a short battle, and with the robot not yet defeated, Carol absorbed Monica in her energized state. Using the excess energy, Carol unleashed a powerful energy blast at the robot, and it was defeated.
Back in New York, Carol went about her daily routine, still tormented with painful headaches. After running a few errands, as dictated by Tony Stark, Carol goes to her doctor's appointment and is told that she has a brain lesion. As a result, she can no longer use her power of flight. (Presumably, the excess air pressure would aggravate the damage caused.) After promptly ignoring the doctor's orders when she confronted the villain Deathbird, and being knocked unconscious as a result, Carol woke up in hospital and was told that if she continues to use her ability to fly she could sustain permanent brain damage, in particular permanent and irreparable long and short term memory loss. Undeterred and eager for a rematch with Deathbird, Carol went in search of the villain, helped by Captain America's upgraded motorbike.
--Karen
Super Name : Captain Marvel
Real Name : Carol Susan Jane Danvers
Aliases: Binary, Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, Warbird
Publisher: Marvel
Creators: Roy Thomas, Gene Colan
Gender: Female
Character Type: powers via radiation
First Appearance: Marvel Super-Heroes #13 - Where Stalks the Sentry!
Appears in: 2,353 issues
Birthday: n/a
Died: Ms. Marvel #37 - The Death Of Ms. Marvel, Part 3; The Avengers #177 - The Hope and the Slaughter
Height: 5' 11"
Weight: 124 lbs (56 kg)
Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Blue
Status
Citizenship: American
Place of Birth: Boston, Massachusetts
Marital status: Single
Occupations: Current Avenger; former Agent of SHIELD, Chief of Tactical Operations and Superhuman Liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, freelance writer and magazine editor, NASA Chief of Security, CIA Agent, U.S. Air Force Colonel
Known relatives: Joseph Danvers Sr. (father, deceased), Marie Danvers (mother), Joseph Danvers Jr. (brother), Steven Danvers (brother, deceased), Mar-Vell a.k.a. Captain Marvel (partial genetic template, deceased), Marcus Immortus ("son," deceased)
Personality
Carol is a brilliant and fiercely independent woman with a strong personality and indomitable willpower. She pursues her goals and dreams to the fullest, battling her way through any adversity and allowing nothing to get in her way. Going against gender typing as well as the wishes of her domineering father, she dreamed of becoming an ace fighter pilot, and quickly achieved this goal through sheer determination and hard work, learning an unusual degree of self-reliance in the process. This lead to remarkable success in many other professions, including becoming a top CIA agent, an editor-in-chief of a well-known New York magazine, and a successful novelist. From being editor-in-chief, she has proven to become successful in the male dominated industry of journalism and through this, has proven to be able to manage a newspaper team. In this sense, she is a feminist and has challenged many men, including Captain America in his views and is quite confrontational if someone crosses her line. Through this ability of hers to achieve, she is strong willed and this is why she has been able to achieve her career as a pilot and an editor, even though she has had many tragedies that could easily break down someone without a will like hers. She will fight to the end and has a warrior’s will and because of tragedies, she has proven to be quite resistant to mental domination. However, she has resorted to alcohol when her life had gone down the drain. Events like Captain Mar-vell’s death and losing her powers to Rogue have turned her to become an alcoholic. Because Rogue had absorbed all her powers, this included the absorbing of memories with her friends and family. She still knew who her friends and family were, but felt nothing for them. It was then Professor X who has restored her memories and finds it difficult and awkward to talk with those who she was once close with. To note, this kind of emotional disconnection is not because of her independence, but her memory loss because of Rogue. However, her military training will say otherwise. Sometimes she has had to make choices that were seen as cold and uncaring. Through this though, she has been trained to think fast in how to deal with emergency situations. She is perhaps seen as outspoken as she is very direct and assertive.
Powers and Abilities
Ms. Marvel's powers were originally derived from those of Captain Marvel, though they have since diverged and increased to become uniquely her own. This has made her one of the most powerful female heroes in the Marvel Universe. Due to being a unique Kree/human genetic hybrid, Carol also possesses the potential to wield vast cosmic power, which was fully realized during the period when she became Binary and which she can still attain under the right circumstances.
Super Strength: When she originally became Ms. Marvel, Carol's strength level was such that she could lift approximately 50 tons under normal conditions. This made her many times stronger than heroes such as Spider-Man, but not as strong as others such as the Thing. Ms. Marvel was shown easily lifting and hurling cars and tanks, tearing through five-inch steel with her bare hands, and shattering reinforced concrete with her fists. It was this strength level that the mutant Rogue acquired after stealing Carol's original Ms. Marvel powers.
Being captured and experimented on by the Brood awakened an almost godlike level of power in Carol due to her unique Kree/human genetic configuration, causing her to become Binary. As Binary, Carol could tap into the energy of a white hole, giving her class-100 strength, meaning she could easily lift well over 100 tons under normal conditions. Her strength level became so great that it was never accurately quantified.
After losing her Binary powers and reverting back to Ms. Marvel, Carol's strength dropped much closer to its original level, though it was still greater than before. She could now lift 75 tons under normal conditions, making her approximately fifty percent stronger than she was prior to losing her powers to Rogue. Under extreme circumstances Carol has shown the ability to tap into her cosmic Binary powers once again, allowing her to reach class-100 strength levels for brief periods. She has also shown an ability to achieve class-100 strength if she has absorbed a great deal of external energy.
Recent tests by Avengers scientist Hank Pym have shown that Ms. Marvel's base strength level is still increasing. Even when not augmented by any additional energy, Carol can now lift 92 tons and strike with a similar level of force, and Pym has theorized that this is likely not her limit.
Super Speed: Ms. Marvel has the ability move at supersonic speeds, making her literally too fast for the human eye to follow. She can achieve speeds of at least Mach-3 during atmospheric flight and has shown the ability to hit even greater velocities when the need arises. At her Binary power level, she could achieve faster-than-light speed and journey across the galaxy under her own power.
Super Agility: Ms. Marvel possesses great superhuman agility and reflexes to compliment her superhuman speed. She can perform acrobatic feats far beyond that of the finest human athlete and easily evade bullet-speed projectiles. During the period after Rogue took her powers, but before she regained them, she was stated to have been in peak physical condition - again the result of being a Kree/Human hybrid.
Super Stamina: Ms. Marvel can exert herself at maximum effort for up to 24 hours before tiring. During the Skrull Empire's assault on New York, Ms. Marvel single-handedly fought off a massive Skrull invasion force for an entire day without rest, successfully keeping the city out of enemy hands until reinforcements arrived.
Flight: As previously mentioned, Ms. Marvel can fly at speeds of at least Mach-3 in the atmosphere. She is a highly agile flier and can turn on a dime in midair, even while traveling at great velocity. Since she is also a talented and highly-trained fighter pilot, Carol's advanced knowledge of flight mechanics and aerial combat allows her to easily outmaneuver most opponents in the air.
Invulnerability: Ms. Marvel is impervious to most forms of damage and can absorb a tremendous amount of punishment without injury. She can survive unharmed in the cold vacuum of space. She is bullet-proof and such attacks merely bounce off her skin on contact. More powerful attacks such as rockets, mortar shells, and bombs are only slightly more effectual, due to the fact that she can absorb their explosive energy. She is unfazed by blows delivered from opponents weaker than her and can withstand blows even by those who are stronger, though continuous and repeated hits by opponents of such great strength can eventually wear her down. She is also impervious to most forms of energy attack, and in fact such attacks can make her stronger (see Energy Absorption, below).
Energy Absorption: Ms. Marvel has the ability to absorb a wide variety of energy and utilize it to further augment her own super-strength, speed, invulnerability, energy projection, and other powers. This ability was not present before Carol became Binary, and could be an after-effect of having once been Binary (as Binary, Carol could absorb and wield energy equivalent to that of a binary star system). Extremely high-energy attacks may eventually overload Carol's absorbing ability, but she has shown that she can absorb and utilize energy up to the magnitude of a nuclear explosion. Carol has also shown an ability to absorb magical energy (though not without consequence), recently demonstrated when she helped Doctor Strange defeat a formidable magic-wielding villain named Warren Traveler.
Energy Projection: Ms. Marvel can generate extremely powerful photon blasts, which are roughly equal in force to Iron Man's full-strength repulsor blasts. If she has absorbed a great amount of energy, Carol can generate even stronger energy blasts. Like her energy absorption power, Carol did not originally possess this ability prior to becoming Binary, though it has now become one of her signature powers.
Regeneration: In the event that Ms. Marvel suffers an attack that is actually powerful enough to overload both her invulnerability and her energy absorption power, she possesses a super-healing factor and is able to quickly regenerate from almost any injury. Her healing rate is accelerated even further if she is able to absorb and utilize external energy to aid in the process. She has fully recovered from nuclear explosions and attacks of similar magnitude in a matter of hours.
Danger Sense: One of Ms. Marvel's original powers was a precognitive sense, called her "seventh sense," which allowed her to subconsciously recognize danger before it occurred. It was this sense that triggered her early transformations from Carol Danvers to Ms. Marvel. Her seventh sense also allowed her to subconsciously predict an opponent's attacks before they made them, greatly enhancing her fighting and tactical prowess in battle. After Carol's original powers were stolen by Rogue, her seventh sense was lost, and because it was a subconscious power, Carol was uncertain whether it had returned even after regaining her powers. Eventually, certain incidents left no doubt that her seventh sense had since been restored.
Minor Molecular Control: Ms. Marvel possesses a limited degree of molecular control, which she can use to transform regular clothing into her Ms. Marvel costume and vice versa. This power works almost instantaneously, and has the effect of changing her from Carol Danvers to Ms. Marvel in much the same way that Clark Kent can become Superman in the blink of an eye.
Cosmic Awareness: As Binary, Carol possessed cosmic awareness, much like that of the Silver Surfer. She could visually perceive all types of energy patterns and was instantly aware of any significant disruptions in space. She seemingly lost her cosmic awareness after losing her Binary powers, though like her other Binary abilities, her cosmic awareness can re-emerge under the right circumstances.
Other abilities
Apart from her powers, Ms. Marvel possesses many other skills and abilities that she developed on her own. Her advanced military training along with her Kree warrior skills naturally makes her a very dangerous hand-to-hand fighter. When used in combination with her many superhuman powers, she becomes a truly formidable adversary. As a CIA agent, Carol developed highly advanced espionage skills, including infiltration, surveillance, interrogation, and disguise. Traveling around the world as an intelligence agent she learned to speak several other languages, such as German and Japanese, as if they were her first language. After her time in the Air Force she became a renowned fighter pilot in the Marvel Universe, and is also skilled at flying aircraft and spacecraft built by the Kree. Her advanced flying knowledge is used to great effect when fighting enemies in the air.
Because Carol's genetic structure was merged with Captain Mar-Vell's by the Kree Psyche-Magnitron, she has intimate knowledge of all aspects of the Kree race, including their language, culture, customs, politics, and technology. Though she is virtually half-Kree, she has never been emotionally tied to them, and sometimes has gone against Kree authority on certain matters. During her time as Binary she spent considerable time away from Earth, gathering valuable knowledge on other advanced alien races such as the Brood and the Shi’ar.
A more artistic ability Carol possesses is her writing talent. She had been a freelance journalist for some time and was also a magazine editor in New York. She is an accomplished author and has published several books, including a popular science-fiction novel based on her deep space adventures with the Starjammers.
Though it is understated Carol is an extremely attractive woman. Blond haired, blue eyed, and full figured, she conforms to many peoples standard of beauty, though she is often drawn as more muscular and solidly built than the thinner bodies of most other heroines (fitting with her military background of physical fitness and training). Her beauty combined with her strength, intelligence, and willpower has earned her loyalty and affection from many people in the Marvel Universe (as well as a few crushes), though this same beauty can lead some to underestimate her (to their detriment). Though she conforms to most peoples ideas of beauty, the fact that she is more solidly built than many of her thinner female heroines (or enemies) has led to some of her enemies making scathing remarks about her being fat (most notably Moonstone during their more recent battles- though this was used as a distraction).
Current Events
Ms. Marvel has adopted the mantle of Captain Marvel. Remembering her late friend and mentor, Helen Cobb, she undertakes the vast legacy of Captain Marvel with a renewed vigor.
Origin
In the 1960's, Carol Danvers made her comic book debut as a beautiful and highly capable young woman who had managed to overcome gender-typing and excel in challenging military occupations normally dominated by men. She was already an ace fighter pilot, a former officer in the U.S. Air Force, and a former CIA agent when she was hired as the head of security of NASA headquarters at Cape Canaveral. One of Carol's co-workers at NASA was a Dr. Phillip Lawson, who was secretly the alien Kree super-agent named Mar-Vell.
When a dormant Kree Sentry robot that NASA had been studying activated and went berserk, Mar-Vell defeated the rampaging robot and saved Carol's life in the process, with the press dubbing the mysterious new superhero " Captain Marvel." Carol became drawn to Mar-Vell and a romance developed between the two. A Kree enemy of Mar-Vell's named Yon-Rogg soon learned of the relationship and kidnapped Carol as bait to lure Mar-Vell into a trap. When Mar-Vell came to the rescue, Yon-Rogg deployed forbidden Kree technology called the Psyche-Magnitron in an attempt to destroy his enemy. During the battle the Psyche-Magnitron, which had the power to turn thoughts into reality, exploded and Captain Marvel shielded Carol from its radiation with his own body, causing Carol to absorb much of his own genetic template. Carol's wish to stand with Mar-Vell as an equal rather than a helpless victim completed the process, and her DNA became a perfect synthesis of Kree and human genes.
After Carol recovered from the explosion, she had gained superhuman powers much like those of Captain Marvel and her alter-ego even wore a costume patterned after that of the Kree hero. She became known as Ms. Marvel, and soon established herself as a powerful superhero in her own right.
Creation
The originally non-powered Carol Danvers was created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gene Colan in 1968, for a Captain Marvel story in the 13th issue of Marvel Super-Heroes. She became a supporting character in Captain Marvel's own title, where the idea was born that Carol had the potential to one day play a starring role. Writers Roy Thomas and Archie Goodwin laid the groundwork for what eventually became Ms. Marvel's superhero origin. By the mid-1970's, Marvel decided that it wanted a powerful new female superhero who could carry her own title and who represented the modern liberated woman. This came to fruition in 1977 when Carol Danvers, now fully powered as Ms. Marvel, finally made her debut as the heroine of her own title, the first issue of Ms. Marvel which was written by Gerry Conway and drawn by John Buscema. Writer Chris Claremont took over and further developed her character as the series progressed, and was responsible for writing many of the key events that ultimately defined her character. Towards the end of Ms. Marvel's original series, artist Dave Cockrum designed a distinctive new costume for her that became her signature look.
Character Evolution
Silver Age
In her early comic appearances of the late 1960's, Carol Danvers was portrayed as a tough and independent career woman who excelled in martial occupations normally dominated by men. After meeting Captain Marvel she took on a more typical 'feminine' role of the era, developing a crush on the dashing hero and being rescued by him on more than one occasion. Carol's involvement with Captain Marvel eventually led to her gaining super-powers of her own (Captain Marvel vol. 1 #18).
Bronze Age
After seldom appearing for several years, Carol Danvers made a dramatic return to comics during the Bronze Age of the 1970's as the super-heroine Ms. Marvel. Her alter-ego was conceived to be Marvel's most powerful female superhero, one who could truly slug it out with super-villains and defeat them with her fists as well as her intellect. As Carol Danvers she became Marvel's most liberated woman, holding down a diverse and successful career and rarely having time for a boyfriend. Her costume was originally derived from the red-and-blue Kree uniform of Captain Marvel, but after emerging from under his shadow she was given a distinctive new black-and-gold costume with a lightning bolt motif, which she still wears to this day. Upon the cancellation of her original title (which ran 23 issues), Ms. Marvel joined Marvel's premiere super-team, the Avengers, and served them with distinction for a number of issues. However, in a pregnancy storyline that generated considerable controversy, her character was literally exiled to Limbo by Marvel's writers in Avengers #200.
Modern Age
The character began the Modern Age with a tragic turn. Carol Danvers finally escaped from Limbo only to have a fateful encounter with the female mutant known as Rogue, who stole Carol's Ms. Marvel powers as well as her memory (Avengers Annual #10). Carol's memories were restored by Professor X, but she had permanently lost the emotions connected with them. Now with no super-powers, Carol joined the Professor's X-Men as their ace pilot and intelligence operative. Her adventures with the X-Men led to her being captured by an alien race that inadvertently unlocked the full potential of her unique Kree/human genetic configuration, causing her to gain godlike power as Binary (Uncanny X-Men #164).
As the cosmically-powered Binary, Carol journeyed the galaxy with the Starjammers for many years. After a fateful conflict in outer space, Carol's cosmic link to her Binary powers was severed and she returned to Earth, but with her original Ms. Marvel powers fully restored and augmented by having once been Binary. She changed her code name to Warbird and re-joined the Avengers, having forgiven them for abandoning her to Limbo during her first stint with the team. But then more tragedy struck, as all of the trauma of her recent career caught up with her and she turned to alcohol in order to cope. Her struggle with alcoholism led to her being expelled from the team, after which she did some serious soul-searching and eventually cured herself of her addiction.
During the House of M storyline in 2005, Carol realized her full potential as a superhero and became one of Earth's greatest champions. Though that reality was eventually reversed, Carol was one of the few heroes to remember her House of M self, and it inspired her to change her name back to Ms. Marvel and become the best hero she could possibly be. This led to the return of her own comic book title in 2006, nearly 30 years after the debut of her original title. Ms. Marvel vol. 2 ran 50 issues and firmly re-established her character as one of Marvel's premiere super-heroines. After the events of Avengers vs X-Men, Carol undergoes another name change; this time taking up the legacy of Captain Marvel-the hero who was the cause of her original power manifestation.
Major Story Arcs
Early Years
Carol Danvers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, as the only girl among three children. Despite the fact that Carol was extremely bright and capable, more so than either of her brothers, her chauvinistic father refused to pay for her to attend college, preferring to spend the money on his sons instead. He insisted that Carol merely find a good husband to take care of her, a sexist notion that the fiercely independent Carol refused to accept.
Carol had always loved the idea of flying, and after she graduated from high school she decided to defy her father's wishes and joined the United States Air Force. She excelled in the Air Force, her skill as a jet fighter pilot so remarkable that her colleagues nicknamed her "Ace," and she quickly rose to the rank of Colonel.
Carol's exemplary performance in the Air Force brought her to the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency, who actively recruited her and trained her to become an elite field agent. As an agent of the CIA, Carol often teamed up with fellow agent Michael Rossi, and the two became romantically involved. She also teamed up with a Canadian agent named Logan (before he became Wolverine) and the two became good friends, saving each others lives during several dangerous missions, and it was even implied that they may have become more than friends at some point.
On one of her most important CIA missions, Carol had to infiltrate Soviet airspace alongside Logan and an American test pilot named Ben Grimm (before he became the Thing and a member of the Fantastic Four). The mission almost failed when they were intercepted by Soviet forces (led by the Black Widow) and forced to the ground. With a good amount of luck, the three managed to escape and succeeded in retrieving the mysterious metal which they had been sent to obtain. In the process, the trio formed a bond that would live on into their super-hero careers.
During what would prove to be her final CIA mission, Carol was captured by the KGB and held in Lubyanka prison, where she endured interrogation and torture. In defiance of government orders, Logan and Michael Rossi infiltrated Russia, broke into Lubyanka, and rescued Carol. The ordeal extinguished Carol's enthusiasm for being a CIA agent, so she decided to resign in order to pursue a different career.
Birth of a Superhero
Carol's impressive resume landed her a position as the head of security of NASA headquarters in Cape Canaveral. There she unexpectedly made the acquaintance of the Kree superhero Mar-Vell (known on Earth as Captain Marvel) and hints of a romance developed between the two. Carol's CIA background made her quite unafraid to put herself in potentially dangerous situations, and while on the job she found herself caught in the middle an epic battle between Captain Marvel and his Kree arch-enemy Yon-Rogg. Carol, who until then had always felt herself capable of handling anything, was a mere pawn in the struggle between the two super-powered combatants, and she hated feeling so helpless. During the conflict, Carol was exposed to the explosive radiation of an otherworldly Kree device called the Psyche-Magnitron, which had the power to turn thoughts into reality but whose radiation was lethal to humans. Captain Marvel shielded Carol from the bulk of the radiation with his own body, causing Carol's DNA to absorb much of his own genetic template. Carol's lifelong dreams of flight and her sudden wish to have powers like those of Captain Marvel completed the process, and her DNA was transformed into that of a superhuman member of the Kree race.
The result was that Carol emerged from the explosion with superhuman strength and durability, the ability to fly, fighting skills equal to that of a trained Kree warrior, and a precognitive "seventh sense" that allowed her to sense beforehand when danger or a crisis was about to occur. Carol become the super-heroine known as Ms. Marvel, and her first costume was based on the red-and-blue Kree uniform worn by Captain Marvel. Initially, Carol was not even aware of her superhuman alter-ego: When her seventh sense detected a crisis, she would fall unconscious and transform into Ms. Marvel in a burst of energy. As Ms. Marvel, she had no recollection of being Carol Danvers and was convinced that she had amnesia. In turn, Carol retained no memory of being Ms. Marvel, and believed that she had merely been unconscious during that time. Eventually Carol would discover that she was in fact Ms. Marvel and her two personas became of one mind, allowing Carol to have full control over when she became Ms. Marvel and vice versa.
As Ms. Marvel, Carol quickly gained the reputation of being a formidable super-hero in her own right. She fought and defeated many super-powered villains, including Scorpion, Grotesk, MODOK and AIM, Tiger Shark, Destructor, the Doomsday Man, and others. She also acquired some persistent enemies due to her super-heroics, including the renegade Shi'ar warrior known as Deathbird and the shape-shifting mutant villainess known as Mystique. The latter plotted to destroy Ms. Marvel in secret, which eventually led to Mystique's adopted mutant daughter, Rogue, entering a fateful battle with Carol that would emotionally scar both women forever.
New Costume
After a battle that briefly reunited Carol with her old flame Captain Marvel, her original Ms. Marvel costume was badly damaged. Carol decided that she had finally come into her own as a superhero, and wanted a new costume that was uniquely hers rather than being a reflection of Captain Marvel's. With some help from her friend Janet Van Dyne (the fashion-conscious super-heroine known as the Wasp), Carol designed a new black one-piece uniform with a gold lightning bolt across the chest, accented by high black boots and gloves. She kept the red scarf as a reminder of her original costume, though she now wore it as a sash tied around her waist. The costume became Ms. Marvel's signature look, and though Carol would set it aside on certain occasions (once when she became Binary, and another time when she changed her code name to Warbird), she has always gone back to this costume.
Respect for Ms. Marvel in the super-hero community grew to the point where she was asked to join the renowned super-team the Avengers, since an opening had became available with the departure of the Scarlet Witch. Carol gratefully accepted, and though the Avengers eventually became the team that she would be most closely associated with throughout her superhero career, her first stint with them would not end well.
Initially Ms. Marvel fit right in with the Avengers and proved to be a valuable team member, helping defeat a number of super-villains, including the Absorbing Man, Chthon, the Grey Gargoyle, the Elements of Doom, and the Taskmaster. She also single-handedly took down the mutant villain Sabretooth after he had escaped from SHIELD custody. During this time she forged friendships with the other Avengers and truly enjoyed becoming part of the team. Little did she know that these would prove to be her final relatively care-free days as a superhero.
Personal Tragedy
The first tragedy struck when Carol's boyfriend and psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Barnett, was found brutally beaten to death in his office and all of his files on Carol Danvers stolen. Barnett had been instrumental in helping Carol come to terms with her dual identity of Ms. Marvel, and the two had grown very close. With the help of her Avengers teammate, Iron Man, Carol was able to determine that Barnett had been murdered by someone posing as Carol herself, and with further detective work, she discovered that the murderer was a mutant shape-shifter known as Mystique. A grief-stricken Carol vowed revenge on Mystique, but was unable to locate her. Mystique then sent her super-powered henchmen Pyro and Avalanche to kill Carol when she was out patrolling as Ms. Marvel. The evil mutants initially took Carol by surprise, but once she realized they had been sent by Mystique, she flew into a rage and defeated them easily.
The Unnatural Pregnancy
Carol's quest for revenge on Mystique was put on indefinite hold when she was suddenly hit with a bizarre and completely unexpected condition: In less than a day, she had somehow become several months pregnant. Having not been intimate with anyone for some time, a distraught Carol explained the impossibility of her situation to her Avengers teammates, but was further upset when they merely offered their congratulations as though the pregnancy were normal. Her pregnancy progressed at a pace far faster then normal, and within a few days she had given birth to a baby boy. As he had in Carol's womb, the boy aged at a fantastically accelerated rate, growing to manhood in the course of a single day.
Calling himself Marcus, he revealed to Carol and the other Avengers that he was the son of the time-lord Immortus, and that he had been trapped alone in another dimension called Limbo after his father had disappeared. Marcus claimed that his only means of escape from Limbo was to teleport an Earth woman into Limbo with him and impregnate her with his essence, where he could be "reborn" on Earth after he sent the woman back. After much observation of Earth using his father's technology, he chose Carol for her strength, beauty, and other exemplary qualities, and had teleported her into Limbo and attempted to woo her. But Carol had initially rejected him, so Marcus admitted to using a "subtle boost" from Immortus' mind-controlling technology to make her fall in love with him, after which he coupled with her. He then wiped her mind of the memory and teleported her back to Earth at the exact time she had been abducted, so that no one, not even Carol herself, had known what had happened. The plan had worked, except that Marcus' presence on Earth was now causing unforeseen and dangerous fluctuations in the time stream. The only way to stop these fluctuations from causing irreparable harm to reality would be if Marcus returned to Limbo.
Carol found herself strangely drawn to Marcus despite all of this, and for some reason she could not bear the idea of him returning to Limbo alone. Announcing that she loved Marcus, she agreed to leave Earth to be together with him in Limbo. The Avengers cluelessly took Carol at her word and told her she was free to be with her "new love" with their blessing. Only Iron Man made an attempt to question if Carol really knew what she was doing, but he was told that all was well. Thor used his mystical hammer to open an extra-dimensional portal to Limbo and sent Carol and Marcus on their way.
Marcus now had Carol where he wanted her, but he had made a fatal error in his scheme: He had not made provisions to halt the super-aging of his new body after it reached adulthood. He continued to age at a hyper-accelerated rate and within a matter of hours had died of old age, leaving Carol alone in Limbo. Once Marcus was dead, Carol realized that she had still been under his mind control the entire time and had not been acting of her own free will when she claimed to love him or left Earth with him. Even worse, her own friends and teammates had actually helped Marcus and never once questioned his true nature or motives, despite the fact that he had essentially admitted to using mind control on Carol. With no one to help her, Carol called upon all of her ingenuity and resourcefulness to master the technology Marcus had left behind and eventually succeeded, using it to escape Limbo and return to Earth.
Once back, Carol avoided all contact with the Avengers. Still traumatized by Michael Barnett's death and her subsequent abduction and rape by Marcus Immortus, Carol decided that she simply wanted to start a brand new life, so she left the East Coast entirely and settled in San Francisco.
The Battle with Rogue
Unfortunately, Carol's old enemy, Raven Darkholme (Mystique), had not forgotten her vow to destroy Ms. Marvel. Mystique learned from her precognitive partner, Destiny, that Carol had returned to Earth, so she discussed the possibility of Mystique's adopted daughter, Rogue, killing Carol. Rogue was a mutant with the ability to temporarily absorb the mind and powers of whomever she touched, and therefore was Mystique's ultimate weapon.
But Destiny foretold that Ms. Marvel could destroy Rogue, so Mystique vowed to protect Rogue by finding another way to kill Ms. Marvel. As fate would have it, Rogue overheard their conversation and, anxious to prove herself, decided to go fight Ms. Marvel anyway. Rogue ambushed Carol at her San Francisco apartment, where Carol was returning from grocery shopping. Carol fought back furiously, and their battle raged all across the city. Carol fought Rogue so long and hard that Rogue's ability to absorb powers and memories became permanent in this case, rather than temporary. Once Carol was entirely drained she fell into a catatonic state, while Rogue's mind was suddenly assaulted by Carol's personality and emotions competing with her own. Desperately hoping that killing Carol would silence the unwelcome presence inside her head, Rogue threw Carol's lifeless body off the Golden Gate Bridge.
But the epic struggle had drawn the attention of the super-heroine known as Spider-Woman, who arrived just in time to witness its conclusion. Spider-Woman retrieved Carol, who was still barely alive, from the water and immediately brought her to Professor X and the X-Men. They were able to save Carol’s life and Xavier helped her recover her memories, but could not reconnect Carol to any of her past feelings. A distraught Carol realized that she had to go on with her life without her powers or her emotional connection to her memory.
Though Rogue had technically won the battle and now had all of Ms. Marvel's powers at her disposal, Destiny's prediction that Ms. Marvel would destroy Rogue proved true, in the sense that Rogue was never the same person afterward. Carol's competing personality, emotions, and memories inside Rogue's head threatened to drive Rogue insane. Because Carol was now an intimate part of her mind, Rogue also felt catastrophic guilt over what she had done to the other woman. Even her foster mother Mystique did not know what to do, so in desperation Rogue eventually turned to Mystique's enemies, the X-Men, for a solution to her condition. After many years of their help, a fully reformed and repentant Rogue would finally purge the Carol Danvers persona from her mind, but the process would be a long, hard, and often life-threatening road.
Life Without Powers
While Carol was recovering, Professor X contacted the Avengers and let them know what had happened to her. The Avengers, who had not seen or heard from Carol since she had left Earth with Marcus, came to visit Carol at her bedside, expecting to cheer her up. Instead, Carol angrily told the team off for abandoning her to a man who had mind-controlled her and violated her, even after he had essentially admitted to doing so. The Avengers left the visit hanging their heads, finally aware that they had failed to protect one of their own when she had needed them most.
Carol's recovery time spent with Professor X and the X-Men made her feel like she belonged somewhere again. Her bonding with the team was made even easier by the presence of her old friend Logan, who was now Wolverine and a member of the X-Men. Though Carol's powers were gone, she still had her considerable intellect and fighting experience, so she offered to stay and help the X-Men in any way she could. Serving as the team's ace pilot and intelligence operative, she went on various adventures with the team, including space missions.
On one mission, the knowledge of Xavier's Institute had been compromised, so Carol helped them erase their files from the Pentagon by using her previous affiliation with the military, even going so far as to dust off her old her uniform and rank to aid in the infiltration. While in the Pentagon the team came across Rogue (not yet reformed) and Mystique, who were after the same files. The Ms. Marvel-powered Rogue fought the X-Men while Carol was busy deleting the files. Mystique attempted to kill Carol once and for all, believing that her now-powerless enemy was easy prey. Instead, Carol took down Mystique with sheer anger and old-fashioned fighting skill. Once Mystique lay unconscious at Carol's feet, Carol realized that she could now take her ultimate revenge on her hated enemy, but decided to spare Mystique's life.
Binary
On a later mission in space, Carol was kidnapped by the alien race called the Brood, who performed agonizing experiments on her due to her unique genetic configuration. Logan, as he had back in Carol's CIA days, eventually rescued Carol from imprisonment and torture once again. After Carol recovered, she and the X-Men discovered that the Brood's experimentation (however unwelcome) had allowed her to attain nearly godlike power. She now possessed super-strength far greater than before, the ability to survive unharmed in outer space, and the ability to manipulate cosmic energy by tapping into a white hole.
To reflect her new power level, which was the equivalent of a binary star system, Carol adopted the new code name of Binary. She took on a completely new look, wearing a red and white costume with a pair of stars on the chest. When her Binary powers were activated her skin took on a deep red color, her hair transformed into a corona of energy, and the edges of her boots and gloves resembled flame. Since Carol now had the ability to travel the stars entirely on her own, she took a temporary leave from the X-Men to in order to explore her vast new powers before returning to Earth.
When Carol decided to rejoin the X-Men a while later, she came across Rogue, who at that moment was alone inside the X-Men's mansion. Thinking that Rogue was still a villain and had broken into the mansion, Carol immediately attacked, her first blow literally sending Rogue into orbit. Rogue, in possession of Carol's former Ms. Marvel powers and not fully realizing how much more powerful Carol now was, recovered and flew back to continue the fight. Carol's next blow sent Rogue crashing through several hundred yards of landscape. Carol might have gone on to kill Rogue in the unequal struggle, had the other X-Men not intervened and explained that Rogue was trying to reform and had recently joined the team. Carol was shocked. She could not believe that the X-Men, knowing what Rogue had done to her, would embrace her old enemy this way. Carol felt that yet another team she trusted and counted on had betrayed her. Dismayed by these events, Carol cut all ties with the X-Men and left, just as she had previously done when she'd felt betrayed by the Avengers.
Since Carol had no emotional connection with anyone, she decided to not only leave the X-Men, but to leave Earth altogether. While journeying alone through space she met and joined the Starjammers, a group of space pirates. The Starjammers came into conflict with the Shi'ar Empire and Carol defeated her old enemy Deathbird, who had returned to the Shi-ar, and even successfully took on the might of Gladiator and the Shi'ar Imperial Guard. She had now adventured all across the galaxy and had defeated so many powerful adversaries with her vast powers that she began to feel bored and alienated from all other life.
Desperate for a challenge, she later came across Quasar, who was trying to save the Earth from a crisis involving the sun expanding at an unnatural rate, and immediately leaped to his aid. The task proved incredibly dangerous even for a being of Carol's power level, and though she and Quasar ultimately prevailed, Carol was severely injured in the process. Quasar carried her back to Avengers Mansion on Earth and she spent many months recovering there, though she was unable to recover her link to her cosmic Binary powers. The Avengers, still painfully aware of how badly they had failed Carol the last time she was with the team, made every effort to do what they could for her this time around, and Carol decided to forgive them. Even after she had fully recovered, the Avengers invited her to stay. The Starjammers also visited Carol and invited her to join them once more, but it conflicted with her schedule with the Avengers, so she decided to remain on Earth.
Alcoholism
Though Carol had lost her cosmic link to her Binary powers, she was able to regain her original Ms. Marvel powers of super-strength, resistance to injury, flight, and enhanced senses. In addition, she now had the ability to manipulate and project energy, which may have been a residual after-effect of her powers as Binary. For her second stint with the Avengers, Carol decided to change her code name to Warbird, though she kept wearing her signature Ms. Marvel costume.
Unfortunately, all of the trauma Carol had been through up until this point – her boyfriend's murder at the hands of Mystique, her abduction and rape by Marcus, the stealing of her powers and memories by Rogue, her capture and torture by the Brood, and gaining and then losing godlike power as Binary – had caught up with her and was taking a heavy toll on her psyche. True to her independent nature, she never spoke of her emotional distress to her friends or teammates, and unwisely turned to alcohol as a means of coping instead. Carol went on Avengers missions while intoxicated and often made simple and inexcusable mistakes. After a couple of near-catastrophes due to Carol's uncontrolled behavior, the Avengers eventually had no choice but to expel her from the team. Iron Man, a former alcoholic himself, then helped Carol overcome her alcoholism and stabilized her powers, and in the process their friendship deepened considerably.
After her recovery, the Avengers invited Carol back again, and she accepted. Later, she voluntarily left the team to join SHIELD and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. During this time, she set aside her Ms. Marvel costume and wore a militaristic-looking uniform with armor plating on the chest and shoulders, a costume which became associated with her Warbird code name. She also employed her expertise with dealing with super-villains to become a parole officer for the new Thunderbolts.
House of M
After the Scarlet Witch tragically went insane, she used her vast probability-altering powers to create the House of M – an alternate reality where mutants became the ruling class of humanity, while normal humans became the oppressed class. Earth's heroes were eventually able to reverse what the Scarlet Witch had done and, after reality had reverted back to normal, Carol was among the few heroes who could remember what had happened during her time in the House of M. There, she had truly realized her full potential as Ms. Marvel and had become one of Earth's most renowned and universally admired heroes, essentially becoming that reality's version of Wonder Woman. Inspired by her House of M self, Carol decided to revitalize her superhero career and become the best hero she could be. She quit her Homeland Security job and even turned down an offer to join the New Avengers. Deciding to operate as an independent superhero once again, she changed her code name back to Ms. Marvel and resumed wearing her signature Ms. Marvel costume.
Civil War
During the Civil War, Ms. Marvel decided to become pro-registration, out of loyalty to the U.S. government and also to her longtime friend Iron Man, who had offered to lead the pro-registration forces. She joined a team to help enforce the Super-Human Registration Act alongside Iron Man. She worked with Wonder Man and Arachne to help train new superheroes while also hunting down anti-registration heroes.
Carol soon learned that Arachne was a double agent who was using her position to secretly feed vital information to the anti-registration forces. Carol felt that she had no choice but to turn Arachne in. As Ms. Marvel, she hunted down Arachne, defeated her in front of Arachne’s own daughter, and took her into custody. The friendship between the two women was destroyed by this encounter, and Carol had considerable regrets afterward. Arachne eventually escaped custody, returned to her daughter, and moved to Canada to become a member of Omega Flight.
Later, Carol paid a visit to a young Hispanic superheroine named Araña to convince her to register. Because Araña idolized Ms. Marvel she was happy to comply, after which Carol trained Araña to be a superhero. Unfortunately, Araña was badly injured during a mission, causing Araña's father to forbid Carol from seeing Araña again.
The Alternate Earth Warbird
Rogue later paid Carol an unexpected visit. The animosity between the two women had subsided at this point, since they were now both well aware of each other's impressive super-hero careers and realized that they should be allies. However, Carol's emotional scars ran deep and she still did not fully trust her old adversary. Rogue informed Carol of a problem -- there was now another Carol, a much more belligerent one, that was being detained at the Xavier Institute. This Carol, first encountered by Beast, was an alternate-Earth version of Carol who still called herself Warbird and wore the armor-plated Warbird uniform. It was revealed that on her own Earth, Warbird became a serious alcoholic because of what Rogue did to her, and her world eventually was destroyed while she was incapable of saving it. Warbird would then be tossed to different universes before landing in Marvel's main reality (also known as Earth-616).
After meeting Warbird herself, Carol quickly became disgusted with her alternate-Earth counterpart's uncompromising and hostile attitude. A violent battle between Carol and Warbird soon broke out. Rogue tried to help, but Carol, in the heat of battle subconsciously thinking of the mutant as her old enemy again, lashed out at Rogue and broke her ribs. After Rogue was incapacitated, Warbird informed Carol of her true intentions -- that she had already traveled to many different Earths, killing both the Rogue and Carol of each Earth. Carol, appalled at how evil her alternate-Earth version had become, attacked Warbird again and defeated her. Warbird was taken into custody and imprisoned in a maximum-security facility. Meeting the alternate-Earth Warbird caused Carol to do some serious soul-searching, and she wondered if she ever truly forgave Rogue for what the mutant had done to her years ago.
Old and New Enemies
Ms. Marvel then took on a familiar foe from her past, A.I.M., as M.O.D.O.K.'s son tried to blow up Seattle by using his father as a bomb. Ms. Marvel was caught in the explosion when she attempted to stop it, but completely regenerated from it.
Afterward, it came to Ms. Marvel's attention that super-powered women were disappearing around the world, with colleagues like Tigra , Stature, Dusk, Silverclaw, and even Araña included among the missing. Carol took this personally and began an intense investigation in order to locate and rescue the women. She eventually discovered that they were being held on a remote island and mind-controlled by the Puppet Master in order to build himself a slave army. Ms. Marvel attacked his stronghold, but had to battle and defeat Tigra and the other mind-enslaved women when the Puppet Master ordered them to kill her. After Ms. Marvel dismantled the Puppet Master's operation and freed his captives, he took his own life by blowing himself up. Ms. Marvel realized that she could have stopped him, but was so angered by what he had done that she had allowed the bomb to go off. She regenerated from the explosion and lied to her team about not being able to prevent the Puppet Master's suicide.
The alien being called Cru then appeared at the end of this arc, and revealed that 'she' was the reason that Ms. Marvel was regenerating, because a part of her was inside Ms. Marvel. It actually turned out that the Brood destroyed Cru's home planet, not the other way around. Cru unlocked Ms. Marvel's old Binary powers, giving her a chance to battle and defeat an old enemy, the Brood Queen. The Brood Queen killed Cru, but Ms. Marvel smartly used a bomb to make the Brood Queen explode.
Mighty Avengers
Iron Man asked Ms. Marvel to lead a new government-sanctioned team of Avengers, which she accepted; the two picked a team together. During their first mission, the Mighty Avengers fought the new incarnation of Ultron. Ms. Marvel absorbed energies from Ultron during their battle; after having SHIELD scientists examine the energies, she stopped missiles from hitting New York by diverting them upwards. She then used the energy she absorbed from the missiles to stop the Sentry when he went crazy.
When the Mighty Avengers and SHIELD launched an attack on Doctor Doom, Ms. Marvel was again team leader, along with Iron Man. When the Sentry and Iron Man returned from the past, she flew to them, urging them to take cover before the place exploded. They survived the explosion and continued with the invasion. In the end, they prevailed and Doom was taken into custody.
Secret Invasion: the Infiltration
On a mission to Japan (in which Ms. Marvel did not participate), the Avengers discovered that the assassin known as Elektra had been replaced by an agent of the shape-shifting alien race known as the Skrulls. They soon learned that many more Skrull agents, in disguise as other Earth heroes, were spearheading an imminent invasion of Earth by the Skrull Empire. It was nearly impossible to determine who might be a Skrull, resulting in Earth's heroes, already paranoid from the recent Civil War, viewing each other with great suspicion. Iron Man, as the head of SHIELD, observed secret surveillance footage showing Carol Danvers seemingly being in two different places at the same time. Iron Man told SHIELD Agent Sum that one of the Carols must be a Skrull in disguise, and had surveillance intensified on Ms. Marvel.
Back in New York, Ms. Marvel was still investigating AIM and was unaware that she had fallen under SHIELD scrutiny. She performed a routine check-up which unexpectedly yielded the location of a hidden AIM base. After a suspicious delivery truck with unknown cargo left the base, she decided to follow it rather than attack. It turned out that the truck contained a hostile alien life form, and after she intervened, she discovered that it was a Super-Skrull with the combined powers of several of the X-Men. She battled the Super-Skrull, who teleported away using Nightcrawler's teleportation power after noting that Ms. Marvel "smelled of his true prey," which was enough to help him continue on his "true mission."
Ms. Marvel thought through the people she had seen earlier that day and grew concerned that the Super-Skrull's actual target may have been an associate named William Wagner, with whom she recently had a brief romantic relationship. She urgently called him via cell phone and a surprised-sounding William answered, but before the conversation went anywhere Ms. Marvel heard him scream and drop the phone. She flew at top speed to his apartment, only to find William sprawled dead in the bedroom. As she checked William's body, Agent Sum arrived, armed with a SHIELD weapon designed to take down superhumans and threatening to shoot her if she did not surrender.
Realizing that she had been set up, Ms. Marvel thought fast and managed to escape Agent Sum, but was confronted by more of her own SHIELD colleagues, the super-powered agents Sleepwalker and Machine Man. Unable to convince them of the truth and not wanting to attack her own teammates, she flew away but was followed by Machine Man, who gave her no choice but to turn and fight. Ms. Marvel reluctantly tore Machine Man to pieces, knowing that he could easily reconstruct himself later, but was then attacked by a duplicate Ms. Marvel, resulting in much confusion. The elite SHIELD unit known as Operation: Lightning Storm arrived and, unable to distinguish which Ms. Marvel was Carol Danvers and which was a Skrull agent, apprehended both of them and took them into custody.
Carol (the true Ms. Marvel) was later freed from her cell by Agent Sum, but then her danger sense kicked in and she struck him down, believing him to be a Skrull. When he fell and didn't revert to Skrull form, she thought that she had made a mistake. But at that point the real Agent Sum entered the room, and the fallen "Agent Sum" reverted to his Skrull form -- the same X-Men-powered Super-Skrull that Ms. Marvel had fought earlier. Ms. Marvel, Agent Sum, and other SHIELD agents all attacked the Super-Skrull, eventually knocking him into the area where the second Ms. Marvel was being detained. That "Ms. Marvel" finally reverted to her true Skrull form, and revealed that William Wagner was still alive and that she had merely disguised herself as William's body in Carol's apartment in order to frame Carol. William himself later appeared and revealed that he was actually a Kree agent sent to Earth to investigate the recent activities of the Skrulls, as the two races were long-time mortal enemies.
Secret Invasion
In the core Secret Invasion storyline, Ms. Marvel flew with the Mighty Avengers to the Savage Land. Iron Man's armor became infected with a Skrull virus, so Ms. Marvel pulled Tony Stark out of the armor and flew him away to the base where the fugitive New Avengers (composed entirely of non-registered heroes) were captured on their first mission. Stark told her to leave and return to the mainland in order to gather the Initiative so they could be ready for the Skrull invasion. However, it was too late and the Initiative was scattered. Ms. Marvel, the only hero left in Manhattan to face the invasion, made the decision that the city would not be taken as long as she was alive.
The battle ensued, and Ms. Marvel fought the entire Skrull invasion force harder than she ever fought a battle in her life. In addition to the countless Skrull soldiers, she had to contend with numerous Super-Skrulls, including an unprecedented giant version that could adopt virtually any power it wanted. Despite the overwhelming odds, Ms. Marvel prevailed, almost single-handedly preventing the Skrulls from taking the city before their ultimate defeat at the hands of Earth's heroes.
Dark Reign
Afterward, the government made Tony Stark the scapegoat of the invasion and forced him to step down as head of SHIELD. The organization was re-named HAMMER and restructured from top to bottom. Norman Osborn, a former super-villain who was now seen as a hero after the invasion, was put in charge of both HAMMER and the new government-sanctioned team of Avengers. Osborn issued a warrant for Stark's arrest, forcing Tony into hiding. Osborn then summoned Ms. Marvel to his headquarters in Avengers Tower and gave her an ultimatum: Join his new Avengers team under his command, or be considered a criminal like Stark and placed under arrest. Ms. Marvel, knowing Osborn for what he truly was, rejected the offer and blasted free of the Tower before she could be apprehended. She then joined the renegade New Avengers and was elected the team's second-in-command.
Osborn realized that the fugitive Carol Danvers, like Tony Stark, was very dangerous to his future plans. He recruited the terrorist Ghazi Rashid, an old enemy of Carol's from her CIA days, to kill Ms. Marvel. Osborn used a super-drug known as 'Ascension' to give Rashid superhuman powers formidable enough to succeed in the task. Only a short time later, Ms. Marvel encountered Rashid, who attacked with lethal force. Though she was experiencing power burnout at the time, Ms. Marvel overcame the attack and managed to defeat the villain. In the process, however, she overloaded, and it seemed that the original Ms. Marvel was now dead ( Ms. Marvel vol. 2 #37).
War of the Marvels
Satisfied that Carol had been eliminated, Osborn hand-picked his own team of Avengers, mostly choosing former Thunderbolts. This team became known as the Dark Avengers, since it was both composed of and led by former super-villains in the guise of heroes. He placed Karla Sofen, formerly the villainess Moonstone, in the guise of Ms. Marvel. A stunning blonde similar in appearance to Carol, Karla was suited in a variation of Carol's original red-and-blue Kree-oriented costume and became the version of Ms. Marvel that was exposed to the public eye. She took on a more brutal role of crime enforcer, killing rather than apprehending dangerous criminals. The public reaction to this new Ms. Marvel was mixed.
Some time after the apparent demise of Carol Danvers, there were various world sightings of several brightly-colored feminine energy beings, seeking special genetically engineered creations of AIM. Wherever the beings appeared, they left death in the wake of their search. While this was happening, Karla Sofen, in the guise of Osborn's Ms. Marvel, used the weapon of an AIM splinter cell against itself. In the process, she rescued an assembly of multiple telepathic genetic fetuses, engineered from both the MODOC and Storyteller protocols. She discovered that both she and the energy beings sought the "babies," and ended up doing battle with one of them.
Later, when Wolverine, Spider-Man, and even Deadpool became involved in the fight for possession of the "babies," it was revealed that these energy beings were actually Carol Danvers herself, split into all of her various Kree energy patterns. After the New Avengers helped her gather enough of the "babies" and put them together, their combined power was used to fuse Carol back into a single being, paving the way for a fateful final encounter between Carol Danvers and Karla Sofen. In the ensuing battle, Carol decisively defeated Karla and reclaimed her rightful name and role as Ms. Marvel.
Siege
Ms. Marvel later fought in the climactic struggle against Osborn's Dark Avengers during the Siege of Asgard. She arrived at the battlefield set up on the Asgardian ruins and helped Spider-Man defeat his arch-enemy Venom, who was on Osborn's side of the conflict. But during the fight, Venom's alien symbiote suit latched onto Ms. Marvel and tried to turn her into a brand new host for itself. Spider-Man helped Ms. Marvel free herself from the symbiote, which then re-joined with its human host Mac Gargan. Venom then revealed that while in connection with Ms. Marvel, it had sensed that she harbored a secret affection for Spider-Man. Angered and embarrassed, Ms. Marvel took down Venom herself and flew Spider-Man to the Asgardian battlefield to join with the other heroes. The Siege ended with the total defeat of Osborn's forces thanks to the combined efforts of all of the heroes involved, led by Captain America (Steve Rogers, back from the dead after seemingly being assassinated after the Civil War), Iron Man, and Thor.
Heroic Age
The defeat of Osborn and his Dark Avengers ushered in a new era of Marvel history, known as the Heroic Age. The Superhuman Registration Act was repealed, and the original "Big Three" of the Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor) decided to establish three separate teams of Avengers in order to better serve and protect the public. Ms. Marvel was once again elected second-in-command of the latest New Avengers team, led by Luke Cage and headquartered in the restored Avengers Mansion. The team's current roster includes Carol's longtime friends Wolverine, Spider-Man, and the Thing.
Avengers vs. X-Men
With the new Marvel event, Ms. Marvel became part of the Secret Avengers and was part of the group who were sent into space to try to stop the Phoenix Force from reaching Earth. Her teammates were Thor, Noh-Varr, War Machine, Captain Britain, Vision and Beast. The first time they went straight up against the Phoenix Force, they failed but the second time, Thor was able to send the Phoenix away for a time. Afterwards, Captain Marvel made his return and Ms. Marvel went with him and Noh-Varr to the Kree Empire. She showed that she is still in love with him and they kissed but also that she does not know he is not the real Captain Marvel.
Captain Marvel
During a battle with the Absorbing Man, Captain America urged Carol (who was dressed in a new costume) to take on the mantle of Captain Marvel. Hesitant, she decided to initially decline his offer. Whilst pondering her life on the fringes of the Earth's atmosphere, Carol remembered Helen Cobb; a late friend, mentor and fellow pilot who had recently passed away. Helen had emphasized the idea of being the best you could be, and not allowing anything to hold you back. With this in mind, Carol chose to take the mantle of Captain Marvel. Whilst trying to break Helen's previous flight record, Carol encountered engine failure. During her attempt to regain control of the aircraft by utilizing her powers, she lost consciousness. Upon awakening, she found herself to be in a forested area, with no memory of how she got there - or, indeed, whether she managed to avoid crashing the plane (she was unable to find a landing site). She soon encountered enemy forces, who briefly held her prisoner. Before long the enemy forces encountered the all-female Banshee Squadron—a small camaraderie of World War II soldiers—and it became apparent to Carol that she was certainly not in the present day. After escaping back to her own time, Carol was invited by Monica Rambeau, another Avenger who has gone by the name Captain Marvel over the years, to uncover the mystery which surrounded the disappearance of various ships and planes. After finding an underwater graveyard of the missing vehicles, a huge robot emerged from the water, building itself from the wreckage. After a short battle, and with the robot not yet defeated, Carol absorbed Monica in her energized state. Using the excess energy, Carol unleashed a powerful energy blast at the robot, and it was defeated.
Back in New York, Carol went about her daily routine, still tormented with painful headaches. After running a few errands, as dictated by Tony Stark, Carol goes to her doctor's appointment and is told that she has a brain lesion. As a result, she can no longer use her power of flight. (Presumably, the excess air pressure would aggravate the damage caused.) After promptly ignoring the doctor's orders when she confronted the villain Deathbird, and being knocked unconscious as a result, Carol woke up in hospital and was told that if she continues to use her ability to fly she could sustain permanent brain damage, in particular permanent and irreparable long and short term memory loss. Undeterred and eager for a rematch with Deathbird, Carol went in search of the villain, helped by Captain America's upgraded motorbike.
--Karen
