Captain Marvel was my first favorite hero and has lingered around that position for the whole of my comic book reading and collecting life. I had read a few comics here and there, but with the purchase an early issue of The Incredible Hulk and Marvel's Space-Born Super-Hero Captain Marvel #1 I started to be a comic book fan and I have never really ever stopped, though I have shifted focus more than a little bit over the decades. Ol' Greenskin has receded in my attentions as evidenced by his position at the bottom of this countdown, but Captain Marvel in his various guises remains near the very top. There was something about the nigh-impossible mission of Mar-Vell, a misfit in his own society forced to hide among humans and look for weaknesses among us which struck a chord and still does. He was a man apart from his own and from those he often fought to protect, the ultimate outsider. Then his mission changed and so did he, and then it changed again and so did he again.
Change became the nature of the series which even after some amazing transformations in costume and even identity failed to find a firm footing on the racks. The series was cancelled, revived and quickly cancelled again. But then Jim Starlin was given a crack at it and the series became something else entirely, but also became a little bit successful and lingered on around the perimeter of the Marvel Universe for much of the Bronze Age.
Ultimately Starlin took Captain Marvel to the very edge of life and beyond, writing beautifully about his final days and final hours and final moments. Captain Mar-Vell has resurfaced but never been revived totally and now the sobriquet belongs to another soon to burst onto the big screen. But for me there will always be just one Captain Marvel, an isolated soldier attempting fight a war he doesn't agree with in a foreign land far away from the comforts of home who lives and dies for the sake of others.
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