Ms. Marvel (vol. 2) #31
Family
Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) gets a letter from her brother Joe asking her to please come home and visit their father, saying that is important that she spend time with the family. Carol heads to the family home in Bar Harbor, Maine. After waiting pensively in a taxi outside, she goes up and knocks at the door. She gets a frosty reception from her mother, Marie, who quickly figures out that Joe told Carol what’s going on.[1]
Marie is furious that Carol had been ignoring her family, even after her father became sick. Now he is dying. She accuses Carol of playing superhero and being a celebrity while the rest of the family was suffering. Carol doesn’t want to start a fight and Marie finally agrees to let her in so the neighbors don’t start gossiping.[2]
Before she lets Carol see her husband, Marie chastises her for not having an emotional connection to their family anymore. Carol tries to explain the situation to her mother, saying that this lack of emotional connection happened when Rogue absorbed all her memories. While they were eventually restored, the emotions connected to these memories could not be restored.[3] Marie gets upset and questions why Rogue gets to keep on living her life after what she did to their family. All Carol can say is that the situation is complicated.[4]
That’s when Marie tells her daughter that Joseph is dying of cancer and that treatment didn’t work. This is because by the time the cancer was discovered it was too late to do anything. Her father is now undergoing hospice care to ease his suffering before he dies. Joe, Carol’s brother, hasn’t left his side and is sleeping upstairs. Marie then leaves Carol to see her father but tells her not to ask her for anything.
When Carol goes upstairs, she stops at the door to her father’s bedroom and works up the courage to go inside. Her mother is right as she still has no emotional connection to her family anymore, but she pushes herself to go inside because she still has a lot she wants to say before her father dies. Sitting at his bedside, Carol recounts that the first memory she that comes up when she thinks about her father is how he berated her for joining the military after her older brother Steve was killed in action.[5] Steve’s death sent Joseph spiraling into alcoholism and Carol asks his father if he saw Steve as his perfect child before his death, or if that was something that he manufactured after the fact. She knows he can’t answer her, but she still wants to ask the question. With her own struggles with alcoholism, Carol can understand where her father came from,[6] more so because she too doesn’t feel like she doesn’t have much time in this world.
She wants to talk about how she decided to enlist in the Air Force when she was 18. It was the only prospect for the future she had available to her since her family wasn’t going to pay for her going to college. All she wanted to do was fly and she got that chance. However, from there she was recruited into intelligence and even saved the world a few times before she became a superhero.[7] She wonders if he would have been proud of her had these missions not been top secret. She doesn’t think so, since she wasn’t Steve.
She then realizes that coming was a mistake and she walks out of the room. On her way out she apologizes to her mother for showing up. However, Marie breaks down and begs for Carol to stay, saying she didn’t mean what she said earlier. The commotion wakes Joe up and he comes down and is surprised to see Carol there when she said she wouldn’t come. Carol firmly tells them that she needs to go and walks out. The entire experience confirmed that whatever love she had for her family is gone and that alone justifies what she needs to do next: kill Norman Osborn.
Recurring Characters
Ms. Marvel, Marie Danvers, Joseph Danvers, Joe Danvers, (in flashback) Steve Danvers, Logan
Continuity Notes
Carol’s relationship with Joseph Danvers is complicated due to his sexism, alcoholism, and the death of her brother Steve. See Ms. Marvel #13-14, 19, and Uncanny X-Men #182.
Carol says that the world isn’t in a good place right now. This story takes place after the Skrull invasion of Earth, which occurred in Secret Invasion #1-8. Things are about to get worse since Norman Osborn was the one who killed the leader of the Skrull invaders and is now being installed as the new Director of SHIELD.
This happened back in Avengers Annual #10. Carol had her memories and powers absorbed by Rogue. Her memories were later rebuilt by Professor X of the X-Men.
Indeed it is, while Rogue was originally a villain, Carol’s memories and powers were difficult for her to reconcile with. She later went to the X-Men for help and has been on the path of redemption ever since. See Uncanny X-Men #171.
Steve Danvers was killed in action as explained in Uncanny X-Men #182.
Carol started developing a drinking problem in Avengers (vol. 3) #4 to compensate for the loss of her Binary powers and the pressures of being on the Avengers. It got so bad that she was kicked off the team in issue #7 of that series. She was convinced to start going to Alcoholics Anonymous in Iron Man (vol. 3) #18 and has remained sober since.
Here we see Carol fighting side-by-side with Logan, aka Wolverine. Carol’s past association with everyone’s favorite Canadian mutant was first referenced in Uncanny X-Men #158. We saw some of their early encounters in Logan: Shadow Society #1, Wolverine (vol. 2) #-1, and Before the Fantastic Four: Ben Grimm & Logan #1-3
Topical References
In this story, Marie specifically states that Joseph has lung cancer and he underwent chemo therapy. While this was the standard treatment at the time this story was published in 2008, advances in science may make this form of cancer easier to treat. In fact, as I write this a new drug to treat Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer with an 80% success rate has been approved by the FDA in 2023. That said the type of cancer and the treatment that Joseph has in this story should be considered topical.
Here Carol states that Steve was a Red Sox fan. This should be considered topical as this is a real world baseball team.
