A Case of Mistaken Energy Signatures

"Ms. Marvel" #43 from Marvel Comics

(I haven't read "Ms. Marvel" #35-42 and I think that should be made clear first.)

Okay. So. At the current moment in Carol Danvers' life, she's just come back from the dead... I think. She died in battle with the person pretending to be her: Moonstone. But she didn't really die (of course) she was transformed into two (or three?) distinct energy signatures: one is in her old body, one is in the body of a Los Angeles screenwriter... hmhmm, and a third I suspect has fallen into the body of her impersonator although this is yet to be stated.

This issue of "Ms. Marvel" opens with former Thunderbolt team-member Moonstone. She has, as part of the "Dark Reign" crossover assumed Ms. Marvel's identity by donning her Eighties outfit and running around with the new 'Avengers', all essentially Norman Osborn's supervillain cronies currently posing as superheroes. She's telling all of this to some guy she abducted right out of his own apartment and flew off with. Then to give herself some 'therapy' she drops the guy right into Manhattan.

Honestly, for an issue opener that's pretty strong.

She claims that she likes being a superhero now, but I have a bad feeling that this desire to be heroic is actually just a shard of the real Ms. Marvel's being trapped inside 'Ms. Moonstone'.

BAH!

The only good moments in this issue are those between Wolverine and Spider-Man and between Lily Hollister and Norman Osborn, four characters NOT in the title of this comic.

1. Spider-Man says: Shouldn't we make sure Ms. Marvel is okay? She just died and came back? Wolverine basically says: Yeah sure. You go do that. I'm going to leave now.
Classic.

2. Lily Hollister (a woman in her twenties) offers to give some pleasurable distraction to Norman Osborn (a man in his forties). Skeezy, skeezy, skeey. Also I believe this marks the first time a Brand New Day Spider-Man character has appeared outside of the Spider-Man books, proving once and for all that it's supposed to be the same fictional universe. They're just doing a craptastic job of making that clear.

The rest of this issue was one very overdone fight and pages and pages of this faux-Carol Danvers screenwriter woman, which would be fine and dandy in an autobiographical comic, but seem pretty silly and boring between pages of action.

Honestly THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT?, all this boils down to the fact that this is confusing and mediocre stuff. In issue #34, it looked like Carol Danvers was going to make a crusade out of taking down Norman Osborn and I was looking forward to reading it whenever Spider-Man dropped in. Spider-Man dropped in and if it weren't for his appearance I would have dropped out.

Considering that Brian Reed is supposed to be one of Marvel's best writers, (or at least this was what I understood) I expected better.