This was a fun revisit. I was never a massive Captain Marvel fan, and I think I was just getting into comics around the time Starlin was doing his run on the series. I remember picking up an issue and kind of being lost, so I didn't really follow up on it.

Reading this now, I realized the issue I'd picked up was the final one. So, there's a fifty year old mystery solved.

I was in time for Starlin's incredible run on Warlock, however, and that still remains one of my favourite comic reading experiences ever. I even wrote a high school essay on that run (and got an A+ for it, too!), so, when I saw this collection in a bargain bin in a comic shop, I figured it was time to get my Starlin on again.

I'd read the Death of Captain Marvel when it first came out, but didn't catch a lot of the subtext, despite Starlin's excellent recap at the beginning of that graphic novel. But now, I got the full run, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Yes, it's very obvious that either Starlin was under the influence of some psychedelics as he wrote this series, or was at least acquainted with them, because there's times when it gets quite trippy. Then again, so did Warlock, so it wasn't unexpected. But I appreciated that Starlin was really doing a solid deep dive into not just the Mar-Vell character, but also Rick Jones, and a few other secondary characters.

And the Thanos storyline, while a touch drawn out, was epic and fun.

If I have any complaint about any of the pages of this entire saga, it's the extended, and rather gratuitous fight scene toward the end of the Death of Captain Marvel piece. It was unnecessary, and it messed with both the emotion and the pacing.

But, take out those four or five pages, and this is just a great run. ( )

A reasonably interesting graphic novel in which Captain Marvel discovers he is dying of cancer. The other members of Marvel's super-hero community gather to him, first to seek a cure, then to pay homage. A little too P.C., and Starlin's artwork is not really my flavor, but the story is fairly interesting, a rare chance for Marvel Comics to handle the true death of one of their heroes. ( )