With Captain Marvel #15, Carol Danvers' solo title will be woven into the fabric of Marvel's next big cosmic event, at the center of which is Jonathan Hickman's six-issue mini-series, Infinity. We had the chance to talk to Captain Marvel writer Kelly Sue DeConnick about the Infinity tie-in and Carol's personal journey toward this summer's event.
If you're not up to speed with Carol's adventures, proceed with caution. We discussed plot points through Captain Marvel #12.
IGN Comics: Let's get started with Infinity. How much can you actually tell me about your Infinity tie-in with Captain Marvel?
Kelly Sue DeConnick: We're in a weird spot with the Infinity tie-in because it's not my own book. If it was my own book, I would know exactly what I can say and what I can't and I don't want to hurt John in any way.
IGN: Understandable. You don't want to blow up someone else's spot.
DeConnick: Yeah, so what I can tell you is that there is an event that starts in Avengers #19 that I'm going to expand on -- on this event and subsequent events -- in four issues: two issues of Captain Marvel and two issues of Avengers Assemble. In the Captain Marvel issues, you'll see it from the point of view on Carol and Hawkeye and from the Assemble issues, you'll see it from the point of view of Spider-Woman and the Widow.
Captain Marvel #15
IGN: What's it like working on a tie-in for an event that massive?
DeConnick: It's terrifying. I do not handle any of this stuff in stride. I'm completely convinced that anytime anything happens that I'm about to end my career.
IGN: Oh my. That's a great feeling to have.
DeConnick: Yeah, yeah. The cortisone levels are high.
IGN: So without going into details about the story, what's your process of working with Jonathan Hickman?
DeConnick: The funniest part about that is that John is so great it's almost annoying because he simply refuses to tell you what he wants you to do. You want to make sure you're not stepping on his toes or going against anything because it's his story. I'm expanding his story. And John's like "Hey, man, whatever you want to do, it's cool." And I'm like "Goddamn it, John! Just answer the question!" It's like standing at a door with somebody and you're both going "You go first, no you go first," you know? Like, no seriously, John, go first! [laughing] John's counsel on everything is "It's cool, man, it's cool."
IGN: Which is nice, if a little vague.
DeConnick: It is, yeah. It’s awesome and it’s generous of him but hilarious sometimes, like "Would you just tell me what to do, dammit!"
IGN: I understand, collaboration is a tricky beast. I think it’s interesting that an event of this magnitude is happening with Carol being where she is in Captain Marvel right now. She's going through some stuff right now and she's having a pretty hard time of it, what with her brain lesion and all. The psychology of what you're doing with Carol is interesting so I wanted to ask you about stripping her of her one superpower that’s most closely aligned with her sense of self.
DeConnick: It’s kind of a thing we do with these characters. We torture them. We find their weaknesses and we exploit them to challenge them to step up and be heroic in the worst possible circumstances. And when I was thinking about Carol, I was like, okay, I've got her totally rooted, I've established that she's not apologizing for who she is. And now, how do I hit her across the knees? What do we do here?
And the thing I kept thinking of was...let’s take away flight. That's the thing that so much defines who she is and then it took on some other levels, too. We started with that idea. I haven't dealt with her alcoholism expressly, but this behavior that she repeats, like when she flies to the edge of space and stays there, holding her breath until she passes out and falls and is revived by the friction energy of the Earth’s atmosphere... that is addictive behavior. That is not healthy. It's like an adrenaline junkie but an adrenaline junkie way beyond snowboards and roller coasters. This is really dangerous, bizarre behavior if you think about it. And I think that alcoholics and drug addicts use their chosen substances to self-medicate their feelings. Carol uses this sort of toddler behavior of holding her breath until she passes out.
IGN: It feels true to life because oftentimes with people in recovery, they substitute what they're trying to recover from with something equally self-destructive.
DeConnick: Or something that isn't so self-destructive. You've heard of the sober dude who works out three times a day? It's good for you, sure, but you're getting juiced. You're getting a high out of that behavior. I mean, pick your vice, I get it, if that's what keep you clean, great, but...
IGN: Better than the alternative but maybe not psychologically healthy.
DeConnick: And maybe you're not dealing with the underlying problem. Maybe you're still not handling the fact that you can't just sit with an uncomfortable emotion, that you can't have faith that it will pass.
So, taking that away from her [flight], she can still fly planes, she can still fly her lawnmower thing. So she's not out of the sky. In a way, the thing that she loves about flying a plane is the lack of magic to it. There's no alien anything involved in it. It's just "this lever does that and it works because science." Carol loves that. Carol is a control freak. She likes science.
The flying lawnmower from Captain Marvel #12.
IGN: But that’s the sort of double-edged sword of being a control freak. You can't punch your way out of a brain lesion. Her own worst enemy has become her own physiology.
DeConnick: Yes, and with her always feeling like she's an exception to the rules. Like, seriously when we say don't fly, we mean DON’T FLY. Oh, but this one time, I needed to.
IGN: And that goes back to what you were talking about before. The first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem.
DeConnick: Exactly. It’s interesting in "Enemy Within," she makes this hero move at the end and it’s dignified and it’s beautiful and it’s a sacrifice, but there’s a part of me that wonders how deep her arc is. Like, did she really learn from this experience? And I don't know, I think it’s debatable. All of that will be closed out before Infinity. So, you'll know about that soon enough!
IGN: In the run up to Infinity, I thought it was interesting that you're bringing back Yon-Rogg. Can you tell us a bit about bringing back a character who's so intertwined with Carol’s origin story?
DeConnick: I liked him so much from the first arc, that I was like, this guy needs to be a seed. This isn't all done when we think it is. One of the things I like about superhero comics is that long form storytelling where you don't need to go back and read the earlier stuff, but bits and pieces of it weave into what’s going on and you can be like "Oh, and now that’s back!" and it’s fun. I don't mean in a hamstrung continuity way but in a sort of "I can understand this in one distance one way and when I pull back, I can understand it at another distance in another" way. I enjoy that.
What I also enjoy about Yon-Rogg is that the way I've got him now, he's almost like the opposite of Carol. He’s Kree, trapped on Earth, and she's human and part Kree. In her earlier incarnation, she had some Kree memories that weren’t her own and now there’s this third lobe in her brain, this physiology that's foreign to who she was at first and this whole other culture that lives inside her. And for [Yon-Rogg] to live on Earth, it would be like if you and I were to go back and live in the fourteenth century.
IGN: I do not think I would thrive.
DeConnick: Yeah and for him, it's like "this is gross." And as much as Carol will always be a little bit of a stranger in any room, he is also. I wanted to call it "Man Out of Time" completely forgetting that that was a famous Captain America title, so... whoops.
IGN: Well, she has his flying motorcycle so she can steal a reference or two.
DeConnick: There you go.
IGN: So, what's it like co-writing with Chris Sebela?
DeConnick: Oh, Chris is great. He's been a friend of mine for as long as I've known my husband. He was a good friend of my husband’s. Chris and Matt [Fraction] and I had a writing group we called Cookie Club.
IGN: Cookie Club?
DeConnick: Cookie Club. We would rotate and whoever was bringing in a piece they were working on would also bring in some homemade cookies and we would eat our cookies and read our work and talk about it.
IGN: That sounds way better than my writing group. We just bring in Cheetos.
DeConnick: Oh yeah, you gotta go with cookies. Homemade. No processed food. So yeah, Chris and I go way back. He's very talented ad I trust him immensely and we were able to work together in a way that feels consistent with the rest of the run.
IGN: Awesome. Is there anything else you want to tell IGN’s readers about Captain Marvel?
DeConnick: Things are gonna get really tough for Carol over the next few months, but hang in there! She's got it. She can handle it. She's gonna come out of this with her chin up.
Melissa Grey is a lover of all things cats, comics, and outer space. She can be found on MyIGN at MelissaGrey or lurking on Twitter @meligrey.
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