Captain Marvel #2 Review

Writer: Kelly Thompson / Artists: Carmen Carnero, Amanda Conner, Paul Mounts / Marvel Post Apocalypse Time On Roosevelt Island We open on Captain Marvel punching it up with Nuclear Man inside some kind of time/space bubble on Roosevelt Island. The whole island appears to be in rubble, the sky is red, there’s a mysterious green mist off in some direction. The apocalypse as come and gone. Out the door, I’m going to admit I don’t know where Roosevelt Island is (context tells me NYC), so the sense of scale and threat in this issue of Captain Marvel is muted for me. I mean, is losing Roosevelt Island a big deal? That’s only the first question of the many that this rough issue brings to mind.

There’s plenty of Sparklefist power on display. Well drawn and well paced, with Captain’s trademark “hit me with your best shot” quips littered properly throughout. That part is all textbook. The challenge here is in the scenes between the punching. The exposition of the situation is awkwardly given — there’s a bubble on the island that keeps men out and women in, with some kind of time-dilation effect as a bonus — and doesn’t actually reveal how some of the more obvious aspects of the problem. The cast of supporting heroes, bestie Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew), Echo (Maya Lopez), and Hazmat (Jennifer Takeda), has an interesting cross-section of powers. They are unfortunately, wasted. All we see of them here is them using guns against vaguely drawn robots. There’s some talk about the island *…