Ms. Marvel (vol. 2) #11
Doomsday
Carol Danvers goes to Cafe Brioche, a restaurant that was trashed during her recent battle with her variant self from another reality.[1] She tries to curb her excitement about meeting the owner, because he is the first attractive man she has met that doesn’t wear a costume in a very long time. Inside, Carol and the owner — William Wagner — are formally introduced. Although she came under the pretense that they were going to discuss insurance issues for repairing his shop, the two admit that they are interested in one another. She suggests they go to lunch, but William can’t leave his restaurant. When she gives her his phone number, she expects him to turn it down but he takes it and tells her that he’ll be free for dinner that evening. Carol is excited for something so mundane as a date with an ordinary guy and looks forward to a normal evening out.
However, fate has other ideas in store for her. Beneath the city is a secret facility run by the terrorist organization known as Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM). Two rogue scientists are assigned to this post to watch over various scientific curiosities they keep in detention.[2] One of the subjects, the Doomsday Man has just recently started dreamer —- or rather Kerwin Korman the man fused with the Doomsday Man robot has started dreaming. Checking on the connections to try and figure out why, one of the AIM scientists explains to his colleague that they have kept the Doomsday Man in captivity because they haven’t figured out a way to control it.[3] After checking the readings, they discover that it isn’t the robot that has woken up, but Korman! That’s when the robot breaks free, demanding to know why they have kept him alive when he only wanted death. Now controlling the robot he is trapped inside, Kerwin plans on killing a lot of people before having his revenge on Ms. Marvel!
That evening, Carol is out on her date with William Wagner and she is delighted to talk about anything other than her superhero career. She talks about her time in US Navy and how she earned the nickname “Hamburger” after throwing up during g-force training. The two end up going back to Carol’s apartment for some romance. However, before things can really get started there is a loud crash from the living room. Using her powers to change into Ms. Marvel, Carol goes to investigate and finds her new trainee, Araña (Añya Corazon) there with an AIM scientist prisoner.[4] Carol calls an end to her date, and William understands and they make plans to meet up again.
From Añya that they were supposed to go on patrol tonight and she caught this AIM nerd hanging out on Carol’s balcony. While they search him for weapons, they learn the guy’s name is Sean Madigan. When Sean finally wakes up he warns them that the Doomsday Man is awake and running loose in the city. He quickly brings Carol up to speed, including telling her that AIM had stolen the Doomsday Man after she last defeated him so they could reverse engineer his technology and recreate the man/machine fusion that Kerwin’s body underwent when he was merged with the robot. He then explains that before he woke up, Korman was dreaming about killing Ms. Marvel. That’s when the AIM scientist is teleported away to points unknown.
At the same time, Kerwin continues to assert his dominance over the Doomsday Man and learns about its apocalypse program, there he finds just the thing he was looking for. Moments later, Ms. Marvel and Araña arrive outside the AIM warehouse. Since this is too dangerous for Añya to get involved in, Carol hands over her cell phone and orders her to call Iron Man while she goes inside alone. When she does, she finds the Doomsday Man waiting for her with a trap. He has unleashed the Targoths — genetically modified Slorenian soldiers — to kill her in the most painful way possible so he can finally have his revenge!
Recurring Characters
Ms. Marvel, Araña, AIM (Sean Madigan), Doomsday Man/Kerwin Korman, William Wagner, Targoths
Continuity Notes
Carol fought her counterpart from Reality-7192 over the last two issues. This reality designation was given in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #2.
One of the containment units contains someone named Targoth. Targoth isn’t a person but a type of genetically modified soldier created by the Slorenian government in their ethnic cleansing of the Dudak minority that lived in that country. For more on this, see Force Works #4-5 and 11-12. The Targoths were first seen in War Machine #14.
For more on Kerwin Korman and the Doomsday Man and how they were fused together, see Ms. Marvel #1-4 and Iron Man (vol. 3) #15-17.
Carol took Araña under her wing after making her register under the Super Human Registration Act in Ms. Marvel (vol. 2) #7.
Topical References
When discussing the use of nicknames used by the Air Force, she says they don’t give each other names like “Maverick” and “Ice Man”. She is referring to the 1986 film Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer who played the characters Pete “Maverick” Mitchell and Yom “Ice Man” Kazansky respectively. This wouldn’t necessarily be a topical reference given that Top Gun is considered a classic film. That said, you could probably slot in a more contemporary example if you really wanted to, there’s no shortage of military propaganda films out there, take your pick.
She also name drops the Discovery channel, which is topical since it is a real world TV network.
Ms. Marvel is depicted as having a “flip” style phone with physical buttons. These were quite popular when this comic was published in 2007, but they have fallen out of common use following the advent of smart phones. As such its depiction here should be considered topical.
