The History of Captain Marvel

Come along on a journey as we look at the history of Carol Danvers!

We're using the powers of Marvel Unlimited to look back at the most notable appearances of a character that's making waves in the Multiverse: Captain Marvel!

When she debuted in 1968's MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #13, Carol served as the Security Chief of the Cape Kennedy Air Force base. There, the alien Kree spy Captain Mar-Vell was undercover as the benign Dr. Walter Lawson. When the Kree Sentry being kept there reactivated, Captain Mar-Vell jumped into action in costume, which then carried over to CAPTAIN MARVEL #1. Carol acted as a recurring character for the first 18 issues of that series until she became exposed to a powerful alien device known as a Psyche-Magnitron.

Gifted mighty cosmic powers by the incident, Danvers recovered and returned to her job as a security professional. But then her life took a new turn in 1977, when she harnessed those powers as a Super Hero in MS. MARVEL #1! In the first issue of that series, the hero flew in to knock out robbers just before Danvers herself took the reigns of a Daily Bugle-run magazine from J. Jonah Jameson. She later explained to Mary Jane Watson that she turned to writing, her first love, after Captain Mar-Vell's antics ruined her reputation in the security world.

In the second issue of that series, Carol remembered how the Psyche-Magnitron encounter mixed radiation with Mar-Vell's own genetic structure, then altered her own physical makeup, transforming her into a human-Kree hybrid with incredible powers.

Throughout the 23-issue series that ran until 1979, Carol not only changed up costumes a number of times—eventually landing on the black togs with the lightning bolt—but also tangled with villains ranging from the Scorpion and Doomsday Man to Ronan the Accuser and Death-Bird. Along the way, Ms. Marvel worked with other heroes—including the Avengers—and began building the foundation of her stellar reputation in the hero community.

Without a title of her own, Danvers still made her presence felt in other books. In AVENGERS ANNUAL #10, the power-absorbing Rogue touched our hero and took on not only Ms. Marvel's powers, but also her memories. Though restored to some extent, Carol would leave the event feeling betrayed by revelations about her former teammates' pasts.

As such, Danvers spent a good deal of her time in UNCANNY X-MEN, which put her in direct opposition to the Brood, who experimented on her in issue #163. Freed by Wolverine, she and the X-Men escaped the monsters' ship, but the thrills didn't end there. In issue #164, she evolved into her next hero identity: Binary, the woman with the power of a star!

Carol fought all kinds of cosmic foes as Binary. When the Avengers reunited in the late 1990s, she showed up to help in her Binary form, but wearing her black Ms. Marvel costume. In AVENGERS #4 from 1998, Beast told Carol that she still retained powers, but probably couldn't return to her Binary form.

At that same time, Carol not only changed her name to Warbird, but also dealt with growing personal issues. After hitting rock bottom on a very public stage, Danvers was removed from active duty, got some help from Tony Stark and eventually returned as one of Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Eventually returning to her Ms. Marvel identity, Carol sided with Iron Man on the Pro-Registration side of CIVIL WAR. In the wake of that event, she not only starred in her own MS. MARVEL title (which ran for 50 issues), but also signed on for MIGHTY AVENGERS.

Since then, Carol's become of the most important heroes at the House of Ideas, eventually taking the name Captain Marvel in 2012. In addition to exploring her own past and continuing to build towards her future, she became the leader of a movement in CIVIL WAR II and even ran the space agency known as Alpha Flight.