Mar-Vell is kind of interesting in so far as how uninteresting he was. The popular opinion in comics fandom is that the best story starring Mar-Vell was The Death of Captain Marvel - that is, the one where he died. Generally speaking, most people's favourite interpretation of the character is the one by Jim Starlin. Even though Mar-Vell had been around about 7 years before Starlin started drawing the series with issue #25 and he ultimately only worked on the book for about 11 issues (plus the graphic novel), Starlin was the one who gave Mar-Vell his blond hair and Cosmic Awareness powers, to say nothing of pitting him against Thanos. Starlin is pretty much the only reason Mar-Vell is remembered favorably today.
This is despite the fact that the Captain Marvel comic book series had a lot of talented hands toiling on it. He was created by Stan Lee and Gene Colan and other contributors prior to Starlin included Roy Thomas, Arnold Drake, Don Heck and Gil Kane - not exactly a bunch of Joe Schmoes.
However, prior to Starlin, Captain Marvel had a pretty lousy reputation. If you look at the nascent comics fandom of the late 60s and early 70s, you'll notice a number of fan publications which seriously pooh-poohed this series. Some of this was simply due to the character's name; the original Captain Marvel (published by Fawcett) had been the single most widely-read super hero of the 1940s. Aging fans mythologized the then-defunct Fawcett hero to the point that seeing another hero assume his name was taken as a personal affront. In that sense, comic book fandom has not changed much in the last 50 years...
But beyond fandom's antipathy regarding the hero's moniker, there was also a great deal of scorn directed at the comics themselves. Marvel had been producing one hit after another in the 1960s but Captain Marvel was the first hero who did not impress audiences right out of the gate. Heck, even the much-mocked Ant-Man had his early adventures illustrated by Jack Kirby. But while most Marvel heroes were introduced with either Kirby or Ditko participating in the character creation, Captain Marvel proved unfortunate. Gene Colan is no slouch, to be sure, but it was Kirby and Ditko who established the Marvel look and at a time when Kirby was designing almost all of the Marvel heroes' visuals, his lack of participation seemed to mark Captain Marvel as an also-ran. Beneath the King.
True. the Kree had been created by Kirby in the pages of Fantastic Four, but they hadn't yet been codified into one of Marvel's great extraterrestrial races. Further, Colan took very little from Kirby's own designs and when he did attempt to draw the same Kree whom Kirby had created, it appeared off-brand. Even fans who weren't incensed at Mar-Vell for bearing the name Billy Batson once held considered Captain Marvel to be possibly the single worst Marvel super hero comic of the 1960s.
So! Why then am I blogging about this series? Despite having been an author of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe for eight years, I didn't delve too deeply into Mar-Vell, reading only those issues which I needed to. Therefore, the pre-Starlin stories are mostly unknown to me and what I did read wasn't in sequential order. Thus, I'm going to read the saga of Mar-Vell in original publication order and blog about what I find until I reach issue #24. Will I find Captain Marvel to be as bad as its reputation holds? Dunno. I have an open mind and I enjoy finding something interesting within neglected works. Let's see what I find...
Tomorrow: We begin with Marvel Super-Heroes #12, the first appearance of Captain Marvel!
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