The Thursday before Emerald City Comic Con, the crowded floor of Seattle's Museum of Flight is a swirl of red and blue and gold fabric fashioned into various garments: jumpsuits, dresses, hats, scarves, t-shirts. One group of people has made tulle brooches. It's fan fashion at its finest, and it's all focused on one very particular Marvel Comics superhero—but not the one you might think. Sure, there's a Captain America in the corner, and a Bucky here and there, but mostly, these fans are dressed as a different Captain: Carol Danvers, who in 2012 became Captain Marvel.
And this is Carol Corps.
Created in 1968 by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gene Colan, Carol Danvers was an Air Force officer who gained superpowers after being caught in an explosion with a superhero named Captain Marvel. Adopting the moniker "Ms. Marvel," Carol spent time on and off with the Avengers and occasionally headlining in her own series. As a character, Ms. Marvel had a lot in common with Iron Man: a larger-than-life personality who's struggled with alcoholism and alienated fellow heroes with her die-hard stubbornness. She's got abilities on par with Marvel's heaviest hitters: She's super-strong, super-tough, shoots blasts of radiant energy from her fingertips, and she can absorb and redirect the energy of a nuclear explosion.
Yet, she remained a persistent C-lister: shuffled between teams, canceled, and restarted. By rights and name, she should have been a flagship character, but no one at Marvel seemed to know quite what to do with her.
Then, in 2012, everything changed. Suddenly, Carol wasn't Ms. Marvel anymore—she was Captain Marvel. Gone was the swimsuit-and-sash costume, replaced by a sharp full-coverage bodysuit designed by artist Jamie McKelvie.
Since then, she's become a fan favorite—and a rallying point for readers like Jennifer DePrey. "I've been reading comic books since I was eight," DePrey says, "and I've always kind of avoided superhero comics. If I was looking for a superhero that I felt was like me, her costume was a bikini and thigh-high boots or had a boob window, or she wasn't ever on a cover by herself—she was always with a bunch of dudes that looked way cooler than she did."
Jennifer first discovered Captain Marvel with the new series. Her curiosity was piqued by news of the character's transition and redesign. "One issue in, I was like, 'This is my superhero. This is the character I wish I'd had when I was 12,'" she says. "I went back and read every Ms. Marvel that had been published and absolutely fell in love with this flawed, real character I could identify with."
It's a story you hear again and again in the fan community. Jennifer's friend Ari, who's here in an art nouveau gown inspired by artist Hanie Mohd's homage to the McKelvie costume, stopped reading comics as a teenager, discouraged by the fact that she wasn't represented "or even acknowledged" their pages. But then DePrey told her about Captain Marvel, and she got sucked back in. I ask her whether the community has changed since her return to superhero comics, and she looks around, grinning: "It's so different than when I was younger. It's amazing to have my girls with me."
In the larger and significantly male-dominated climate of superhero fandom, the Carol Corps is a notable exception. The majority of the 300 fans milling around the museum are female; in fact, the Corps' central rallying points—crafting and cosplay—are both more traditionally feminine areas of fandom.
"Two years ago, anything that was seen as focused toward women automatically got kind of shunned and not enough attention," says Kristina Rogers, who is exhibits director of Emerald City ComiCon, and one of the organizers of the Carol Corps celebration. "And now we can say, 'we're doing this Carol Corps celebration,' and everyone's super enthusiastic about it. We've gotten e-mails: 'Can you have HeroesCon do this? Can you have New York [ComiCon] do this? Can this happen in Florida?' It's astonishing."
Despite the uniforms, the Carol Corps is cheerfully anarchic—it's mostly organized loosely around a handful of hashtags on Tumblr.
"It is not a formal organization," Captain Marvel's writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick, tells me a few days later over breakfast. "There are no rules. People write and ask me all the time, 'How do I join the Carol Corps?' You join Carol Corps by saying you are Carol Corps. There is no test. You don't have to buy anything. You don't need to sign up anywhere. If you decide you are a part of this community, bam, you are. The other part of that is that if you decide you are a part of this community, you will be embraced and welcome."
That message of inclusivity is one I hear again and again from members of the Corps. "There's no gatekeeper, there's no 'you're not enough of a nerd' or 'you don't know enough about Carol,'" says Adrian Keith. He's the co-owner of Optimystical Studios—the source of the brightly colored dog tags that many Carol Corps members sport. The engraving on the backs of the tags reads We will be the stars we were always meant to be.. It's from the first issue of Captain Marvel that's become the community's unofficial motto.
The Carol Corps also just really, really nice. They lend books and gift download codes to strangers, share skills, and pool resources. In the last two years, they've raised thousands of dollars for girls' leadership initiatives. A loosely organized group called the "yarn brigade" sends Captain Marvel-inspired knitwear to any fan in need of comfort or warmth. Tonight, though, the Corps is celebrating: talking about comic books, admiring costumes, and clustering bashfully around DeConnick like she's a rock star (which, in this room, she kind of is).
And DeConnick is likewise in awe of the community that's grown around her. "There's an endless number of stories I could tell you about the tremendous people who consider themselves to be part of this community," she says. She tells me about the rocket scientist with asthma who runs dressed as Carol; the prosthesis designer she met at the reception on Thursday; the woman in the Navy who told Kelly Sue that Carol had inspired her to apply for flight school.
Marvel has taken notice as well. "Somebody somewhere has made a call that they're backing this up," says DeConnick. "The book got a relaunch, and they kept me on it. That's not a thing that generally happens, you know? The Carol Corps is addressed specifically in the letter columns, in their social media outreach. Merchandise is starting to appear with Carol on it."
In Captain Marvel #1, there's a scene where Carol Danvers explains her decision to head out into space. "Have you ever seen a little girl run so fast she falls down?" she asks. "There's this instant, a fraction of a second, before the world catches hold of her again...a moment when she's outrun every doubt and fear she's ever had about herself, and she flies. In that one moment, every little girl flies. I need to find that again."
If only she'd had someone to give her a copy of Captain Marvel.
