Carol Danvers, who is apparently a hot-shot pilot and one of the Avengers, lives in the crown of the Statue of Liberty (you can do that?) with her sister and niece. When the Avengers find an escape pod from a spaceship with an alien refugee inside it, they decide that Carol be the one to return the girl to her homeworld, as well as take up a more permanent presence in space as a representative for the Avengers Initiative. As she returns the girl to her home planet, she discovers that they are in dire need of help, as much of the populace (already relocated from another planet) is sick and dying. Now the aliens are fighting another forced resettlement and Carol decides to help them.
Considering this is the first trade of a new Captain Marvel run, extremely little was done to explain who Carol Danvers is or what her powers are. At the end of the first issue, there is a brief one page explanation of how she ended up where she is (rendered as a child’s drawing), but I really didn’t think I learned enough to really feel like I got to know the character. Sadly, though I’d heard good things about this comic, it failed to entertain me. I found it pretty meh. Here is the rest of my review.
I think you were gonna be handicapped on this one no matter what because it’s very sci-fi. But as I said on Goodreads, this is actually the fourth of her run, so you are missing quite a bit! Those first three are much more traditional/non-cosmic superhero comics. You should give them a try. The first one is In Pursuit of Flight. Then if you like that, Down, and the story finishes off with an Avengers installment, The Enemy Within. THEN this one comes in. I’m not sure exactly why they started it again at number one.
OK, I had no idea there were three other Captain Marvel trades I needed to read before this one. Still not sure I’m going to bother, though. Compared to the first trade of Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye (which was all kinds of awesome), Captain Marvel left me pretty indifferent.