Catching up with Ms.Marvel

During House of M, the one non-mutant character besides Spider-Man that figured prominently and foreshadowed great things was Ms.Marvel. If you're unfamiliar with her, that's not surprising. While she's practically Marvel's answer to Supergirl, she's also been forever relegated to second-stringer who plays best as a member of the Avengers than anything else.

While the conclusion of House of M launched a promising solo title, it unfortunately got caught up with the Marvel Civil War event... which meant I reluctantly dropped it. I refused to read any tie-in material while waiting for the event's headliner mini-series to run to completion. Which in turn means nearly a whole year elapsed before I went back to pick up the collected editions for Ms.Marvel... Here is what I get:

"Civil War" and collects # 6-10 plus the "Ms.Marvel Special" that was published that summer. While Ms.Marvel did take sides in MCW, in reality, the issues that this collection spans only contain 3 issues that actually tied into the event directly. The first arc chronicles her adventure with fellow Avenger alumnus Simon "Wonder Man" Williams as they encounter a Arana and deal with Arachne (formerly Spider-Woman II). If anything, I found this arc to be fascinating because like the Spider-Man tie-ins to MCW, they explored the gray shades as Arachne served as a double-agent causing Ms.Marvel to question her position as head of a SHIELD team tasked with taking down unregistered heroes.

The second arc stepped away from Civil War and explored her relationship with Rogue. Personally I felt this was a rather weak attempt at infusing some humanity. While their fight has lasting implications for Rogue (she more or less had a permanent set of powers absorbed from Ms.Marvel), they didn't seem to do much to Ms. Marvel except to leave her really pissed off. Anyway, the arc involves her pissing off the X-Men in return.

The final bit of the collection is a reprint of the summer one-shot. In this story, Carol is having lunch with Simon when they get caught up in a someone's reality-warping power run amok. The tale is a simple adventure story and introduces a powerful new villain(?). And it sort of momentarily brings back Ms.Marvel's cosmic persona "Binary" (sort of, but not really; who can tell when alternate reality is involved?)

"Operation Lightning Storm" collects issues #11-17 and provides a much more linear set of stories. After the filler material with Rogue, the title went back to the events that started in Civil War. Carol deals with finding direction in her life while A.I.M. (a mad-scientist terrorist group) start brewing trouble. Ms.Marvel also gets back to Arana who is now something of a protege. This bad for everyone involved since the MCW has left some bad blood among the population... including a recently released Julia "Arachne" Carpenter ...who was last seen forcibly separated from her daughter by the authorities. Arana meanwhile learns the hard way that hero work is dangerous to one's health. The meat of the volume, however, is story of a deal Carol makes with Tony "Iron Man" Stark to assemble a paramilitary strike force of hand-picked SHIELD specialists to take down the likes of A.I.M..

Reading both these collections in rapid succession helped a lot I think. Between the Rogue filler and the sudden change in pacing of the later issues, everything flowed better that way. The Arana story in particular flows better as it has a clear beginning when she registers in the MCW issues and a clear conclusion after her injuries in the next collection. The Arachne story spans both volumes likewise. But for straight reading beginning to end, I have to rate volume 3 higher than volume 2 for it's simple cohesiveness.