Carol Danvers was born and raised in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, with dreams of someday becoming an astronaut and visiting distant planets. When financial setbacks only allowed one of the three Danvers’ siblings to attend college, Carol’s father – who believed a woman’s place was in the home – chose one of her brothers despite Carol’s superior grades in high school.
Undeterred, Carol Danvers enlisted in the Air Force and was eventually hired by NASA as chief security officer at a secret missile base. Unbeknownst to her at the time, one of Danvers’ co-workers was an alien Kree operative named Mar-Vell. When Mar-Vell rebelled against his direct supervisor, Danvers was caught in the crossfire and it was only because of Mar-Vell’s last minute heroics that she wasn’t hit full blast by an emission from a Kree Psyche-Magnitron.
While Mar-vell became the superhero Captain Marvel afterwards, Carol Danvers’s career trajectory screeched to a sudden halt instead. She resigned from NASA shortly thereafter and wrote a scathing expose of the agency that became a national best-seller. When Daily Bugle editor-in-chief J. Jonah Jameson was in need of someone to take charge of the newspaper’s Woman magazine, he thus turned to Carol Danvers.
“Articles on women’s lib, interviews with Kate Millet, stories about careers for women – yecch,” Jameson tells her. “The way I see it, a woman’s magazine should have articles that are useful, like new diets and new fashions and recipes. Things like that.”
Carol Danvers accepts the job offer, but only after making it clear to J. Jonah Jameson that she intends to run the magazine her way, not his. The new position quickly becomes problematic, however, as Danvers is subject to blackout spells and loss of memory. It is later revealed that her encounter with the Psyche-Magnitron had fused her DNA with that of Mar-Vell, transforming her into a Human-Kree hybrid that secretly goes by the name Ms. Marvel.
Unable to initially process the change, her mind split into two separate personalities and it took a few months before Danvers realized that both magazine editor and superhero were one-and-the-same.
The revelation occurred just before Carol Danvers visited her hometown of Boston in issues thirteen and fourteen of Ms. Marvel, both published in early 1978. Danvers is surprised to see a copy of Woman in the house, but her mother explains that she is proud of her daughter’s new career and recommends the magazine to all of her friends. When Carol asks what her father thinks, however, she is greeted with a different response.
“Your father wouldn’t be caught dead reading Woman,” her mother replies. “Unless, of course, Jonah Jameson gets some ‘sense’ and turns the magazine over to a man.”
Later that evening, Carol Danvers and her psychiatrist friend Mike Barnett attend an Indian Summer Ball on board the USS Constitution – affectionately referred to as “Old Ironsides” – in honor of the USS Halsey nuclear aircraft carrier visiting Boston. The celebration is cut short, however, when Danvers’ enhanced hearing ability detects a strange noise coming from the direction of the Halsey.
“That’s crazy, Carol,” another friend remarks. “Who’d want to go to war in the middle of Boston Harbor?”
As an explosion erupts on the deck of the USS Halsey, Carol Danvers leaps from Old Ironsides, transforms into Ms. Marvel and takes off to find the answer to the question. What she discovers are two aliens embarking on some sort of secret mission. Although overmatched, Ms. Marvel eventually gains the advantage nonetheless and the pair flee instead of continuing the fight.
While the identity of the two aliens would remain a mystery for later issues of Ms. Marvel to uncover, Carol Danvers’ visit to her hometown of Boston was far from over. It turns out that her construction foreman father was unraveling his own mystery, one that inevitably puts his life in danger.
Earlier that day, one of his crew at a skyscraper construction site slipped on a steel beam when the verticals toppled, barely hanging on from plummeting to certain death. Joe Danvers inched his way along the beam until he reached the worker and brought him safely back before the beam itself dislodged and fell. As Joe inspected the damage afterwards, he quickly realizes something was amiss.
“Shoddy materials an’ cut corners an’ the almighty buck comin’ ahead of quality workmanship,” he declared. “We call this building a jinx, but it ain’t. It’s an accident waiting to happen – with us caught in the middle.”
A few nights later, Ms. Marvel herself is atop the construction site during a fierce thunderstorm. “What the heck am I doing here?” she asks herself. “What every dutiful daughter should, I guess. Looking out for her old man. Joe Danvers, self-made man who just has to do things his way, even if it gets him killed. Dad, you’re too old to be running around high steel at night, in a storm, looking for trouble.”
As if to prove the point, a handful of girders higher up suddenly become loose and descend upon Joe Danvers. Ms. Marvel is able to arrive in time to push her father out of the way but topples to the ground herself instead. Looking around for her father afterwards, she sees him scurrying away without even checking to see if the woman who just saved his life was hurt.
After transforming back into her human identity, Carol Danvers heads to the construction site office of Joe Danvers. Her father gives a brief “Hiya, Kitten!” before returning to his phone call with real estate magnate Maxwell Plumm, arguing that the substandard material being used was causing hazardous work conditions for his workers. After slamming the phone down so hard that it shatters in pieces, Joe Danvers instructs his daughter to head home and “leave a man t’do a man’s work in peace.”
“Nothing has changed, not one blessed thing,” a now angry Carol Danvers tells herself. “As far as dad’s concerned, I’m still his ‘kitten,’ his darling little girl. Well, daddy, you better take another look ’cause your little girl is all grown up!”
Utilizing her colleagues at Woman magazine to investigate Maxwell Plumm, Carol discovers that the one-time successful entrepreneur is in debt, with over one million dollars owed to the mob. The new office complex in Boston is his last chance to save himself but he bid so low on the project that cutting corners at the expense of safety was his only alternative – and now that Joe Danvers is aware, Plumm has no recourse but to eliminate him.
Maxwell Plumm hires the supervillain Steeplejack – who had been presumed dead months earlier – to hijack Joe Danvers and force him to jump from the fortieth floor of the construction site. “Yer foolin’ yerself, pal,” Danvers tell Steeplejack. “Too many people know. There’ll be questions.”
Steeplejack disagrees and threatens to shoot Joe Danvers with his acetylene gun, which fires white-hot rivets, unless he jumps. Before either option is chosen, however, Ms. Marvel arrives and rams into Steeplejack. With the supervillain momentarily out of the picture, Ms. Marvel turns her attention to her father and rescues him from the extended girder that he was standing on.
“Put me down!” Joe Danvers screams at Ms. Marvel. “I can fight my own battles, woman. An’ I can handle punks like Steeplejack without your help! I don’t need no bunny in a bathing suit tellin’ me how to live my life.”
With Steeplejack having recovered sooner than expected, Ms. Marvel has no choice but to knock Joe Danvers unconscious – “sorry, dad, but that’s something you’ve had coming for a long time anyway” – and hides him under a nearby tarp. She then smashes through the ceiling above and renews her fight with Steeplejack.
Steeplejack quickly gains the advantage, however, lassoing a rope around Ms. Marvel’s neck and tossing her onto a construction elevator. By now the superhero has realized that Steeplejack is actually Maxwell Plumm masquerading as the deceased supervillain. Using his acetylene gun – which he stole from the real Steeplejack’s apartment after his death – Plumm snaps the wire holding the elevator in place and send it tumbling downward.
Ms. Marvel recovers quickly enough but Maxwell Plumm’s next shot cuts the horizontal braces on the ceiling above and it’s left to Ms. Marvel to keep it from collapsing onto her unconscious father. The impact of the falling elevator hitting the ground, meanwhile, causes boxes of explosives to ignite. With the entire structure disintegrating around her, Ms. Marvel grabs both her father and a now disarmed Maxwell Plumm and flies everyone to safety.
After the police and fire departments arrive, Ms. Marvel checks on Joe Danvers but only receives a dismissive reply. Recognizing her daughter despite the superhero disguise, Carol’s mother approaches her. “Don’t judge him too harshly,” she says. “Your father isn’t used to being saved by anyone – especially a woman. For all his faults, Joe is a good man, and in his own way, he loves you very much. Try to understand that.”
“All I ever wanted was for dad to accept me as I am, not as he wanted me to be,” Ms. Marvel silently replies. “And now I know that no matter what I do or how well I do it, he never will. He won’t change, and all of a sudden, I don’t care.”
Anthony Letizia