By Friends — Betrayed!

A woman has fallen off the edge of San Francisco’s famous Golden Gate Bridge. Luckily, the woman is rescued by Spider-Woman who catches her in mid-air and swims across San Francisco Bay to get her to safety.[1] Thinking this was a botched suicide, Spider-Woman takes the woman to a nearby hospital for treatment. There she meets with Lieutenant Sabrina Morrel, who begins investigating the bridge jumper. It turns out that she was a woman named Carol Danvers, a woman with a varied career. Former US Air Force, once security chief at NASA, and former editor for Woman Magazine.[2] Morell notes that Danvers was last seen living in New York City until she went missing a few months back. This took a lot of work because whoever dumped her removed all form of identification and unfortunately they can’t learn anything more about her because Carol’s mind has some how been wiped clean of all her memories.

Although the doctors don’t know how to help, Spider-Woman knows someone who does. She puts in a call to Charlies Xavier’s School for the Gifted Youngsters, secret headquarters of the X-Men. The group is working on repairs to the Danger Room after it was trashed when their newest recruit, Kitty Pryde, had to fend for her life against a demon that was running loose.[3] The phone is quickly passed to their leader, Professor Charles Xavier himself, who agrees to come to San Francisco and help restore Carol’s mind. When Xavier arrives he uses his telepathic powers to try and find out what happened and discovered that someone whiped Carol’s mind nearly blank. While restoring her lost memories will take some time, Xavier was able to pluck an image out of Danvers’ mind that identifies who attacked her. He passes a mental image to Spider-Woman of a young woman with brown hair with bleached white stripes who goes by the name Rogue.

At that same moment, Rogue has just attacked Captain America in Central Park. She has the ability to absorb the powers and memories of those she makes skin-to-skin contact with. As she permanently stole Ms. Marvel’s powers and memories, she has begun targeting the Avengers. With these new powers, Rogue easily defeats Captain America and drains his powers, but only maintains contact long enough so the transfer remains temporary.[4]

Having stolen Captain America’s abilities, Rogue then tosses the Star-Spangled Avenger through the front window of Avengers Mansion. Unaware of who attacked, Cap, Jarvis calls Iron Man and asks him to come to the mansion with Donald Blake to come and give medical attention to the wounded Captain America. As Tony Stark changes into Iron Man he is contacted by his secretary, Bambi Arbogast who tells him that Janet Van Dyne is here to see him. Inviting “Janet” into his lab, Iron Man discovers that this is actually Mystique — the shape-shifting leader of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants — in disguise. Unfortunately, he only learns the truth after Mystique clamps a device onto Iron Man’s back that incapacitates his armor. Mystique then contacts Rogue and orders her to follow the next phase of the plan.

At that moment, Spider-Woman has arrived in New York to tell the Avengers about what happened to Carol Danvers. This coincides with Thor’s arrival in a nearby alley. After the thunder god changes back into his mortal guise of Don Blake, he is ambushed by Rogue who tries to knock him out with a blow from behind. The commotion draws in Spider-Woman who comes to Blake’s rescue. While the two women are fighting, Blake transforms into Thor once again. Unfortunately, this plays right into Rogue’s hands as she uses her absorbing powers to steal Thor’s strength. The sound of battle draws out the Vision and Wonder Man, two individuals who aren’t organic and thus immune to her power.[5] No longer having an advantage, Rogue decides to leave so she can continue carrying out the plan.

With Rogue gone, the remaining Avengers invite Spider-Woman in and she tells them about Carol’s situation and asks if they know anything about how Ms. Marvel ended up in San Francisco after going missing. The Avengers explain how, when last they saw Carol, she had been impregnated by Marcus Immortus a man trapped in Limbo seeking to escape his prison by impregnating and being reborn in the timestream. Ms. Marvel went through a sudden and rapid pregnancy and gave birth to Marcus on Earth. Unfortunately, his presence caused time to warp out of control and, mistaking Marcus as a threat, the device to fix this was destroyed by Hawkeye. With no other choice, Marcus was forced to return to Limbo, and Ms. Marvel seemingly agreed to go with him of her own will.[6] With no word from Iron Man, the Avengers and Spider-Woman begin hunting for Rogue as she is the key to the mystery behind Carol Danvers. As she absorbed Ms. Marvel’s powers, the Beast is able to track Rogue by tracking the Kree energies that now exist in her body.

Rogue is heading east to Ryker’s Island where the rest of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants are being held prisoner.[7] Rogue and Mystique have been working on freeing their teammates — the Blob, Pyro and Avalanche — thanks to the precognitive visions of another captured teammate, Destiny. Arriving over the prison in a jet, Mystique drops Iron Man’s inert body through the prison, taking out both the island’s independent power supply and shattering the concrete prison holding the Blob. With the power out, the power dampeners are shut down, allowing Avalanche to use his powers to help break himself, Pyro, and Destiny from their cells. Soon, the Avengers arrive on the scene and while the team tries to prevent the Brotherhood from escaping Ryker’s, Spider-Woman is sent to find Iron Man. Seeing visions of failure, Destiny tells Mystique to stop Spider-Woman before it is too late.

The shape-shifter disguises herself as Nick Fury to catch Spider-Woman off guard. Unfortunately, she is unsuccessful at mowing down Spider-Woman and the stray bullets destroy the device keeping Iron Man immobilized. With Iron Man rejoining the battle, things quickly begin turning against the Brotherhood, particularly when the Scarlet Witch begins using her hex powers against them.[8] The last member to fall is the Blob due to the fact that he is nearly invulnerable to harm. He is defeated when Jocasta and the Vision blast a hole in the ground under him. Then Spider-Woman and the Scarlet Witch combine their powers with some water and concrete rubble to create cement to trap the obese villain cannot escape out of.

Weeks Later

Once things have settled down, the Avengers make a trip upstate to Xavier’s School where Carol Danvers has been recovering after her ordeal with Rogue. While the X-Men offer to be by her side, Carol insists that this is something she needs to face alone. The Avengers are happy to see that Carol is recovering. She tells them that many of her memories have been restored by Professor X, but there is still work to be done. When they ask about what happened to Marcus, Carol tells them that he is dead. Her response is utterly devoid of emotion. When Iron Man offers his condolences and asks if there is anything they can do to help ease the pain, Carol gets deeply upset and accuses the Avengers of causing her the pain to begin with.

This confuses the team, and when Thor tries to remind Carol that she left with Marcus to Limbo out of love, she turns around and slaps him across the face. She can hardly believe that Avengers couldn’t understand that she never loved Marcus and never wanted to be with him. Hawkeye takes offense to this because as far as they know, Carol left of her own free will. Breaking down into tears, Carol reminds them that Marcus used his father’s technology to manipulate her emotions and force her to fall in love with him and allow Marcus to impregnate her. When Marcus was reborn on Earth and had to return to Limbo, she left with him because she was still under the influence of those machines.

However, when they returned to Limbo, Marcus started to rapidly age and eventually became so old he crumbled to dust. Trapped in Limbo, Carol eventually figured out how to operate the machines there and return to Earth. However, after her experiences she wanted a fresh start and began a new life for herself in San Francisco when things were up-ended again by Rogue.

When the Scarlet Witch asks why Carol didn’t get in touch with them, Carol — more upset than ever — tells Wanda that she didn’t tell the Avengers because they failed and betrayed her. They were so amused by the birth of Marcus that they didn’t even think about how Carol felt after being forced into a pregnancy she never wanted in the first place then, when it turned out she gave birth to her rapist who openly admitted he gaslighted her, they let her go back to Limbo with him without a second thought that he might have been manipulating her. She tells the Avengers they screwed up big time, but she learned to move past that experience and rebuild a new life for herself. She hopes that the rest of the team can realize what they did was horrible and learn from this mistake and become better heroes.

When they ask what Carol is going to do next, and offer their aid, Danvers tells them that she is going to rebuild her life on her own, saying that she’s done it before and strong enough to do it again. She knows the Avengers will be there for her, but assures them that she’ll be all right. On the ride home, the Avengers have a lot to think about. The Scarlet Witch herself is the most deeply upset for failing Carol, but the Vision points out to her that Carol has given them a second chance to do better in the future and that they must never lose sight of this lesson if they don’t want to fail someone the next time.

Recurring Characters

Carol Danvers, Avengers (Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Wonder Man, Beast, Jocasta), Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (Mystique, Rogue, Blob, Pyro, Avalanche, Destiny), Jacosta, Spider-Woman, X-Men (Professor X, Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Spirte), Edwin Jarvis, Madeline Pryor, Bree Morrel, Bambi Arbogast, Marcus Immortus (flashback)

Continuity Notes

1. Ms. Marvel’s battle with Rogue is not depicted in this story at all. This is because it was intended to be featured in the 25th issue of Ms. Marvel. However, the series was cancelled after issue #23 and the story remained only partially complete and unpublished for years. It would later be completed and published in Marvel Super-Heroes (vol. 3) #11.

2. Carol’s had an impressive career over the years aside from her becoming Ms. Marvel.

   • Her Air Force career was always been mentioned but never really touched on at this point. Morrel states here that much of Carol’s time in the USAF is classified. This is because she was involved in many covert missions which involved Wolverine and Ben Grimm. See Logan: Shadow Society #1, Wolverine (vol. 2) #-1, Before the Fantastic Four: Ben Grimm & Logan #1-3.

   • Carol’s time with NASA was chronicled in Marvel Super-Heroes #13 and Captain Marvel #1-18. It was here that through he involvement she got her powers and became Ms. Marvel.

   • Woman Magazine was published by J. Jonah Jameson, owner of the Daily Bugle. Carol was employed as editor at the magazine from Ms. Marvel #1 until she was fired by Jameson in issue #22 due to regular clashes over content.

   • Of course, readers know that Carol has been missing because she was gaslighted into returning to Limbo with her rapist, Marcus Immortus in Avengers #200 in one of the most tone deaf stories ever written.

3. For Kitty’s harrowing escape from the N’Gari demon let loose in the mansion, check out Uncanny X-Men #143, it’s iconic.

4. It’s not clearly explained why Rogue is reluctant to permanently steal the powers from everyone she comes into contact with. As detailed in Marvel Super-Heroes (vol. 3) #11, the process of permanently stealing the powers and memories from someone for the first time was quite a traumatic experience for Rogue. Rogue will soon discover that stealing Ms. Marvel’s power came at a heavy price as she will find herself being unable to separate Carol Danver’s memories from her own, such as in Uncanny X-Men #182. This leads to regular conflicts between the warring psyches until a trip through the Siege Perilous causes Carol’s memories to manifest in the flesh, leading to the pair throwing down in a battle to the finish in Uncanny X-Men #269.

5. Wonder Man is unaffected by Rogue’s powers because he is living ionic energy due to the process that gave him his powers way back in Avengers #9. This was explained in issue #164.

6. Carol’s rape pregnancy was chronicled in Avengers #198-200.

7. The whole Brotherhood except for Mystique were arrested during a botched attempt to assassinate Senator Robert Kelly, and anti-mutant candidate who was saved by the X-Men to prevent the Days of Future Past timeline from happening. See Uncanny X-Men #141-142.

8. It’s stated here that the Scarlet Witch’s powers are mutant abilities. This is later proven to be false in Uncanny Avengers (vol. 2) #4. In reality, she was experimented upon by the High Evolutionary as a child. In order to cover up his work he made it so any future DNA tests had Wanda register as a mutant.

Topical References

• Bree Morrel states that it has been about six months since Carol Danvers disappeared circa Avengers #200. Issue #200 and this annual were published about a year apart, so this isn’t based on publications. That said, Claremont’s assessment on the passage of time here doesn’t jive with the Sliding Timescale as the events of both stories would have taken place during the same “year” of the Modern Age. I think this is a case where it should be generalized to a “few months” instead of a hard six months. Claremont’s timeline here should then be considered topical as the sliding timescale was still being ironed out.