"What If...? Minnie Became Captain Marvel"

 Okay okay, let's do this, by popular demand (?)--well, I probably DID at some point say I was going to do it, so here you go.  I haven't been following these Disney What If stories, but evidently they've been proliferating.  Woof.  If I'm required to write about all of them, I must've committed some pretty bad sins.  To be clear, I don't think I am.  I haven't even read those others; they sound just too insipid for words, at least given the series' track record.  So are you filled with excitement?  Let's do it.

So when I was first planning to write about this, I actually ended up reading the first dozen or so issues of the original Ms. Marvel (nee Carol Danvers), which kicked off in 1977, to prepare.  I enjoyed them, even if they did become pretty repetitive.  The character's abilities are fairly generic, in spite of her convoluted back story, but she IS notable as a specific feminist archetype.  This is exemplified  as exemplified by the use of "Ms," which was just becoming a big cultural thing in the seventies.  Gloria Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine in 1972, and we're off to the races.  She's an independent, self-reliant working girl making her way in a man's world, and she's in media, even.  What I'm saying is, she's basically Mary Tyler Moore.  J Jonah Jameson would have and no doubt at some point did derisively refer to here as a "women's libber."  So that is interesting and I like it.

At some point in the eighties she was changed to "Captain Marvel," which kind of makes sense--that archetype might have started to feel less legible by then.  However, this here story with Minnie IS based on the initial Ms. Marvel story arc, so calling her "Captain" gets a little confusing.  And yet, now there's a different character using that name, so maybe there's no way it's not confusing.  Maybe this is just nitpicking, but this is all very complicated, and I just don't think any of this really supports a one-shot parody.  Not that it was going to be great anyway, but you know.

(Side note: the new Ms. Marvel is a Pakistani-American teenager named Kamala Khan.  That's good representation, and it's sure to piss off all the right people, so I approve, BUT: in the MCU, whether it's the Ms. Marvel miniseries or the Captain Marvel movie, whenever her superhero name is pronounced, she's referred to as "Miss Marvel."  Jeez, man.  Have we forgotten the point of the character?  Yes, obviously, she exists in a very different context, but...I mean, if you don't want to use the word correctly, just call her "Miss."  I think Ms. is better, but come on.  I feel like people have this same issue with Ms Pacman.  We do not need to know the marital status of this ravening yellow orb, people!)

I guess I should actually talk about it though, shouldn't I?  Let's just start with two things: first, it does look quite good, in my estimate.  So bully for that.  And second, the script is extremely wooden--as you'd expect, but also, seriously guys, what the hell?  In their notes to these books, the editors always go out of their way to talk about how fantastic and fun the stories are, and to try to give you the impression that they're big Disney fans.  So how are they just okay with this dull-ass writing?  Say what you will about Superhero comics, but they don't generally suffer from this particular problem.  Do the editors just assume that yeah, this is what Disney-comics fans want?  More likely, I suppose, they're dutifully parroting the official line.  So why is the official line so shitty?  I cannot tell you.

Who IS behind the identity of Captain Marvel?  Or, more relevantly, who is responsible for that ungainly phrasing?

Dammit, maybe I was right not to write about this, since you can't do it without getting bogged down in ALL this superhero lore.  But the idea with Ms Marvel is that she has a split personality, one as a regular person and one as an alien fighting crime, neither knowing the other exists.  So she has to learn about this and how to control them and everything.  And that's definitely an oversimplification, but it's all I can manage, and I think it's good enough.  So that's what this story is about, sorta kinda.  Scrooge as Jameson is an obvious idea, and potentially a good one, but don't expect much here.

The idea is that she gets dizzy before transitioning personalities.  Well, in theory that's the idea, although here it just seems to be happening to remind us of the story we're reading.

Yeah, this guy's in the original story, too; he wants revenge against Jameson for reasons that I refuse to adjudicate.  Only now he's Pete.  Be still my beating heart.  Look, I know I'm comparing this to the original more than saying anything specifically about it, but that's kind of it, isn't it?  The only real purpose of this story is for people to look at it and go, hey, this is vaguely like that other story, only with Disney characters!  How zany!  I suppose overthinking Disney stories is kind of my "thing," so I maybe should just suck it up, but stories like this really pretty strongly resist ANY degree of thinking.

The reports on the economy of the Mesopotamian peoples, eh?  Look, you know I hate to sound negative, but this is a dogshit joke incompetently told.  Nobody involved should feel good about it.  I don't know; maybe an actual writer could've punched it up (though only so much, given its shaky foundation).  We will never know, however, because apparently we are philosophically opposed to such things.

And come to think of it, I actually kinda hate this depiction of Scrooge.  I enjoy Jameson as a character, but I sure don't enjoy this.

This entire entry might have been a mistake, because I'm just realizing the vast, yawning chasm of nothing that I have to say about this story.  I suppose that's the most damning thing of all.  Be bad, fine, but don't be BORING, fergawdsake.  Well, enjoy this giant robot, I guess.

In the interest of total fairness, I can't deny that I snorted a little at this one, just because it's so unexpected.  I don't know if that means it's good, per se, but it's the only joke here that did anything whatsoever for me, so...any port in a storm.

You know, I actually read "What if...? Goofy Became Spider-Man," just out of curiosity.  I sort of thought it might have had potential had it been along the lines of one of those A Goofy Look at... stories.  Those can be fun.  And when you think about it, there would've been a chance there to create something genuinely interesting that draws on the legacy of both Disney and Marvel comics.  Coulda been SO COOL.  did I REALLY believe that was a possibility?  Well, hope sprang eternal.  Alas, then a maniac with a knife leapt upon hope and stabbed it over and over and over, because that shit was fucking dire.  It could only aspire to the sporadically-competent insipidity we see here.  Thinking about it fills me with rage.  I will provide no details.  Why am I talking about it now?  Because I have to say SOMETHING sort-of get through this story in spite of my extreme lack of interest or motivation.  Welp.

As I've conceded, it does look okay, at least in parts.  So here's an example of that.

...oh.  So that's it.  That was kind of...deflating, or would be had there been any flating going on up to now.  In the original stories, it's a multi-arc thing, her discovering the truth about herself.  But here, yeah, fine, whatever, A Wizard Did It.  It introduces us to new vistas of half-assed slapdashery.  Now, you might say, yeah, well, it clearly HAD to be truncated to fit into one issue, to which I say yeah, sure, but it's STILL terrible.  If you can't comfortably fit it all in there, that's on you.

WINK.

What a bad-tempered entry this has been.  I'd thought I was getting better at not getting annoyed by shoddy work, but I suppose that depends on the nature of the work.  And can I just finish by pointing out how much that "What If...?" branding irritates me?  I know it's a long-running thing, and maybe in the past it's been done well, but in these Disney stories the answer to the question is always "it would be exactly like it's ever been only in an oversimplified way with different characters."  What an exquisitely boring question-and-answer.  Anyway, let's hope for better next time.