Captain Marvel Will Kill An Avenger

Captain Marvel is going dark. No, she's not dropping off the radar... she's going dark.

Marvel Comics recently announced a story arc entitled "The Last Avenger," to run in the pages of Captain Marvel beginning with issue #12. The arc will find Carol Danvers hunting down her fellow Avengers — and at least one of them will die by her hand early in the proceedings.

The official synopsis for the arc offers no explanation other than to say that annihilating the Avengers will constitute Danvers' "greatest challenge," which kind of goes without saying. But as to why she would be forced to turn against her teammates — and even go so far as to do in one or more of them — we can only guess.

The arc comes courtesy of writer Kelly Thompson, who has worked on a number of Marvel titles including A-Force, Hawkeye, Jessica Jones, and West Coast Avengers. Thompson has been in charge of Captain Marvel since the title's relaunch earlier this year, and while she's had an awesome run, she's the first to admit that she hasn't exactly conditioned readers to expect the kind of mega-bomb she intends to drop on them with issue #12.

Speaking with Comicbook.com, Thompson said, "Carol is an incredibly powerful character and you can really push her to the furthest edge, and you sort of need to in order to keep things interesting, and that's what we're trying to do with 'The Last Avenger.' I think it's going to be a terrific Carol story that really highlights her strengths as a character — and maybe some weaknesses as well. Issue #12 is unlike any script I've written for Marvel before and unlike any Carol story I've ever read. It's a little risky but I'm excited. I hope people love it."

We knew that it had the potential to get hardcore when the 'Last Avenger' story arc was announced; we won't be able to crack open issue #12 until it hits stands in November, but the synopsis for issue #13 was recently released, and it clues us in to the fact that it's going to get very hardcore, indeed. It states that as the issue opens, "one Avenger is dead at Captain Marvel's hand," as the rest of the team race to discover "what strange allegiance" is driving their teammate to "the darkest edge." 

Our friends over at Comicbook.com have also given us a look at a variant cover for this issue, and all we can say is... whoa. We've read the comics, we've seen the movie, we all love Captain Marvel. We can think of a great many descriptors that we could use to describe her, but "terrifying" has never popped to mind until now.

Marvel has a long and storied history of good characters going bad, from the iconic X-Men story arc "Dark Phoenix" (which formed the basis for this year's movie of the same name), to Spider-Man's tangle with the symbiote which would eventually become Venom, to the recent (and infamous) "HYDRA Cap" storyline, which was among the more divisive in the publisher's history. But the idea of Captain Marvel turning on her friends is a truly scary one; just in case you're unaware, she is one of the most insanely powerful characters in the entire Marvel universe. She has strength and durability on par with the Hulk, can discharge pure energy with perhaps even more effectiveness than Thor, and can sly faster than Iron Man; she's a bit like all of the Avengers wrapped into one, and if she's truly gotten it into her head to wipe out Earth's Mightiest Heroes, there might not be a heck of a lot anybody can do to stop her.

Of course, there's obviously some crucially important aspect to the story that we haven't been made privy to; to use an obscure colloquialism, Carol isn't just going to break bad for no reason. We can only guess as to why she does... so, since it's all we can do, here goes.

We're going to go ahead and rule out mind control, since this is a plot device that's been used about a billion times, and is usually met with a resounding groan from fans. We're thinking that this also isn't likely to be a Captain Marvel from an alternate reality, or something of that nature; that would be too close to the "Captain America is HYDRA now" storyline, and it seems pretty clear from Thompson's remarks and the synopses for the first two issues that this is the main continuity Carol we're talking about.

However, one word in the synopsis for issue #13 leaped out at us: "allegiance." This clearly implies that Carol isn't working on her own; she's acting at the behest of some other party, or has entered into some kind of pact. But with who, and for what purpose?

Well, we're not psychic or anything, but we're going to go ahead and guess that the good Captain must have a pretty damn good reason for attempting to wipe out all of her friends. Perhaps they must all go to make room for refugee versions from an alternate worldline? Maybe some or all of them have been compromised somehow, perhaps by some malevolent cosmic force?

We certainly hope it's something along these lines, and that Carol is simply doing an extremely dirty job that needs to be done for the good of the universe. Otherwise, Captain Marvel is simply about to go bonkers, and that's going to add up to a really bad time for anyone in her way.

Captain Marvel #12 hits stands and digital platforms on November 20, while Captain Marvel #13 is set to hit newsstands in December.