Completely ridiculous.

I would be dishonest if I said this volume wasn’t a bit of a letdown after how much I loved Higher, Faster, Further, More. I still love the art. I still love the characters. I still love the sense of humor. But the three stories that make up this particular volume were just so lightweight. Almost bordering on the absurd. One of these would probably have been okay, but three in a row knocked this down a star. I need a little bit of pathos with my absurdity, thank you very much.

The first story was my favorite. Following up on Rocket and Carol’s argument from the first volume over whether or not Carol’s beloved cat Chewie was in fact not a cat, but a flerken, we find out that, yes, Chewie is a flerken. In fact, she’s THE flerken. As in, the only one left. Well, for now. Not even a bunch of space pirates trying to kidnap Chewie convinces Carol of her flerkenness. It’s only after Chewie lays one bazillion eggs in a storage locker that Carol gets it.

Turns out flerkens carry pocket universes inside of them, and also act as some sort of inter-dimensional gateway?

Anyway, Rocket digs it.

The second story was weird, but not in a very fun way. It involved Carol and her new sidekick tag-along Tic (wait, was that her name?) following an intergalactic mutant pop-star to her home planet where all the people speak in rhyming couplets. It was weird in a mostly kind of boring way, sad to say.

The third and final story involved Carol returning briefly to New York to take care of some business, including visiting her dying friend, whom I had no context for at the time because I hadn’t yet read the initial Captain Marvel volumes of Kelly Sue DeConnick’s run. Now I have, and this story retroactively makes a little more sense, but it also illustrates a general problem I have with superhero comics. They are really, really dependent on each other, and I don’t really like how unless you’ve read EVERY COMIC EVER, you’re not really going to get everything. Granted, it’s all understandable via context clues, but it still makes me feel not great when I don’t fully appreciate a character interaction or piece of dialogue that only people who read EVERY COMIC EVER will get. Also . . . Santa Claus? Really?

Anyway, I will still be reading this series, but hopefully the next volume is back up to standard, bringing a better balance of serious and ridiculous so I can get back to my adoration of Carol Danvers.