Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel might be one of the unluckiest characters of all time.
She has one of the craziest publication histories which i'd like more people to talk about.
Carol has never really been that popular of a character, even when she was first created.When the concept of Carol Danvers first appeared, it was because Marvel wanted to ride the wave of second-wave feminism that was growing at the time. We get to her initial push, where she was one of the first superheroines to receive a solo comic series, and she was also given the name Ms. Marvel to represent the feminism of the character.Unfortunately, the push didn’t stick. Carol was relegated to being a supporting character, where she remained for several decades, going through editorial struggles. She was quickly left on a limbo for a few years and then brought back only to…appear in complicated storylines (I think we all know which one I’m referring to.) Plus the Rogue moment that everyone is familiar about. This ended up being one of the most impactful uses of Carol in that period which was ironically more for another character’s development than for her own long-term momentum (poor Carol barely knew this was going to be her status quo for a while.)
Right after all that controversial period Chris Claremont stepped in to course-correct the character because he really liked Carol, directly addressing what happened and having Carol confront the Avengers before leaving Earth for a time. Carol went through one of her first major reinventions when she became Binary and joined the X-Men. None of that translated into lasting A-list popularity but at least it allowed writers to stop pretending the character didn't exist (or Marvel trying to bury her,who knows.)After losing her Binary powers, Carol returned to Earth and eventually took on the identity of Warbird. During the late 80s and 90s, she largely remained an Avengers supporting character, though writers did attempt to deepen her through storylines like her struggle with alcoholism. While this added development, it still didn’t elevate her to A-list status, so she was important, but still not a headliner. Then, Claremont’s earlier influence and the groundwork laid over time finally starts to pay off, and we get the second major push for the character in the early-mid 2000s, when female characters were beginning to see a resurgence (many DC characters getting solo titles, teams like Birds of Prey, the success of Charlie’s Angels, etc.). Marvel probably felt like it was time to try again with Carol.They gave her another solo series that brought her out of limbo and achieved moderate success. And although it again failed to turn Carol Danvers into an A-list character, it at least solidified her as a “premiere supporting character.” She began appearing in several major events during that decade, such as Secret Invasion, Decimation, and House of M.
Finally, we arrive at the third attempt to push Carol in the 2010s, coinciding with the rise of the MCU (with The Avengers establishing itself as a major franchise, Carol taking on the mantle of Captain Marvel in the same year,progressive politics taking more space.) I believe this was a turning point for Marvel,a moment where they thought everything was aligned to finally turn Carol into the headliner they had always envisioned. But once again, major turbulence got in the way. In the comics, we had the terrible character assassination of Carol in the infamous Civil War II. But that seemed manageable, as Carol received a successful solo run written by Kelly Thompson in 2019 that appeared to clean the slate,right in time for the release of her film, which made over $1.1 billion.
It felt like the stars were perfectly aligning at every step… except things started to fall apart soon after.I won’t get into debates about who was right or wrong, what Brie Larson did or didn’t say, or whether the film’s success was deserved. But it’s clear that something happened around the time of the film’s release and in the years following it, where the general audience developed not just indifference, but apathy towards the character.And that seems to have affected The Marvels. After all, it’s much easier to get audiences to like a character they don’t know than to convince them to like a character they already know,but have decided they don’t find interesting. It becomes even harder to justify failure when this is the third major attempt, backed by the biggest film franchise in history. The truth is, there isn’t really another explanation: Carol Danvers has never been, and likely never will be the kind of character Marvel wants her to be, because from the very beginning of her creation she has consistently been left behind whenever she failed to meet Marvel’s expectations. Aquaman’s second film had a more successful box office, and came from a franchise in worse shape with a much weaker reputation, yet it didn’t earn the distinction of being one of Hollywood’s biggest bombs like The Marvels did. And before some fans try to blame the writers’ strike, I’d ask them to honestly consider whether interviews with Brie Larson or Iman Vellani or promotional moments that wouldn’t significantly impact box office would have magically pushed The Marvels to $500 million.