Carol hears and then thwarts Dr. Eve's plan in double quick time. The net effect is squirting her back into the 616 with a Reality Stone and a free (though still incorporeal) Bean. Here in the last lap, the script reveals a fair-ish skeleton shaping the action. Both plot and structure are sound. The tone is still woefully discordant. Scenes that are structured to be gut-bustingly funny end up pulling winces rather than laughs. There's also a dismal failure to understand which subjects will resonate with readers; this issue gives a full page of spotlight to a fight between AU Puck and AU Rocket over updating spaceship computers while far more promising topics, dramatic and comedic, remain under-explored. As has become this title's unfortunate SOP, superb artwork rescues a tremendously flawed script and keeps this final issue from being an all-out trainwreck. more

The Ravagers and Zetas run a poorly-conveyed scam on Thanos the Just. The implication, barely explored at all, that the 616 is considered a hell-dimension by AU folks like Good Thanos, is intriguing. The lesser plot threads - Thanos and Eve's mysterious quest for the Reality Stone - are much more promising than the main space pirate story. Can we hold the creators responsible for failing to recognize that? Hooo, yes. As usual, stellar art by Michele Bandini bravely hoists this issue out of trainwreck territory. more

Carol and her Zetas go up against the Ravagers, the eeeeevil mirror universe equivalents of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Swapping Groot for a giant walking carrot called Root is, sadly, this issue's high-water mark.

The fight goes sour because Carol loses her ability to take any of this nonsense seriously and goes into a giggle fit. Which is a pretty reasonable reaction, except for the fact that it's all being orchestrated by Margaret Stohl. It's dangerously close to her outright saying, "Can you believe Marvel pays me to write this crap? Why on earth do you pay to read it?"

With forensic care, you could piece together a rational plot buried under this issue's cringe-provoking attempts at comedy. It's clear that the Infinity Stone content was wedged in sideways, but Ms. Stohl didn't put a lot of overtime into the effort to smooth out the joints and make the finished product easy to read.

You know what this reminds me of? Carol's had plenty of sassy "Sex in the Super-City" conversations where she does funny banter with a pal like Spider-Woman or Jessica Jones. This arc would make a *perfect* crazy anecdote for Carol to tell in a situation like that: "He had a talking carrot named Root backing him, swear to God!" A few hundred words, tops, across two-three pages. It'd be perfect. Seeing it stretched across five issues by an author who doesn't really understand Carol or Marvel or comics or comedy is just bloody torture. more

Dr. Eve and shapeshifter Mim return to drag Carol into some cross-dimensional shenanigans. That's a wonderfully promising story; unfortunately, it occupies at most a third of this book. The rest is filled up with painfully flawed attempts at humor and characterization. Michele Bandini's art is as ever a bright spot. We don't need to touch the visuals or the main plot; they just deserve a script that displays a better (i.e. basically functional) sense of what is and isn't interesting to the reader.

I would love to see Margaret Stohl explain why she thinks "Brand wants to go to a spa" is inherently hilarious. I think exploring just how divorced from reality she is on that point could produce a rich vein of Ricky Gervais-type cringe-humor.
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Cap'n Marvel rehashes her part in the end of Secret Empire at greater length than SE #8, but somehow provides *less* depth. Cliched dialogue, repetitive plot points, and continuity clashes aplenty. The artwork is still decently finished, but now I'm finally putting two and two together: Margaret Stohl's scripts are lifeless and need help connecting with the reader? That's a job the art *should* be doing, but isn't.
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This breather/soul-searching episode features some pretty solid humor and superb cartoony art by Ro Stein & Ted Brandt. The first four pages are tainted with an absurdly tone-deaf "616 Jessica Jones is exactly the same as Netflix Jessica Jones, right?" assumption. What in the *world* are editors for if they don't nip ☠☠☠☠ like that in the bud? But that stupid misstep doesn't spoil the whole issue; the other jokes, the art, and the character work are refreshingly well-done.
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Carol continues her descent on being the worst published book at Marvel but this issue was decent, awful pop jokes and dialogue that is still atrocious to read aside. Nothing happens aside from the Bean Ghost appearing.

Someone should have told Stohl that Jessica Jones has a kid already.

Bonus: The alpha flight cadets don't actually show up so that raises my opinion.

Carol is so impressed by her cadets' pointless scheme from last month that she invites them along on her own pointless scheme this month. Alpha Flight's situation is unchanged and the Carol/Cadets relationship is evolved by all of two lines. This feels like the best, least error-prone work the creative team can put out and it's a real shame it's so mediocre. This arc is set up like a season finale from an ensemble TV drama, but we haven't had the chance to get to know 80% of the cast. Margaret Stohl's dialogue is also woefully stiff; we could really use an emotive actor to step between the page and the audience to bring these cardboard characters to life.
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Carol enlists three cadets just in time to get swept up in the Secret Empire mess. The good news about adding teen characters is that it plays hard to Margaret Stohl's writing strengths. The Alpha Cadets form a terrific emotional core that should make this new arc a lot more relatable and interesting than the last one. Bad news? Ms. Stohl's still not so hot at writing Carol Danvers or snappy one-liners. Michele Bandini's art is generally pretty good, although the Chitauri attack taxes his crowd-drawing skills. This issue had two colorists and they couldn't even agree on which parts of Cap'n M's uniform are what colors; it's a problem that marginally competent editorial oversight could/should have fixed. It's another point in favor of my theory that Marvel doesn't give a ☠☠☠☠ about the quality of the finished product on this title. At least there's more creative talent on display here than there was in the last arc.
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