Captain Marvel vol. 5 #14Captain Marvel vol. 5 #14
Title: “Truth or Dare"
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Penciller: Patrick Zircher
Inker: Walden Wong
Colors: Steve Oliff
Editor: Tom Brevoort
In the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Rick Jones is changing a flat tire. The jack breaks. Marv asks if that is supposed to work that way. Rick explains to him that it broke. Rick says that he’ll just prop some rocks under the axle. Marv suggests that Rick just bang his bands together and let him fly the car to the nearest repair shop. Rick is pulling on the tire, and says that there are just some things that a man has to do for himself. Marv says, “honor, integrity, changing a flat tire. Got it.” Rick flies over as the tire comes loose. Rick asks why there is no spare tire. Marv tells him to bang the bands and he’ll fly him to a repair station. Rick says that would be cheap. He says that he will walk and asks how far it can be to the next station. Marv says that it’s a lot farther by foot than it is by air. Rick tells Marv to sit bored to tears in the Microverse while “a real man sweats out the problem solving”. Marv looks around the beach he is on and looks at the green women in bikinis around him. Marv says okay. Rick says that they can talk to keep him company. Marv and Rick talk about the weather for a few seconds. Marv says that was great, but he has to go now. He tells Rick to call him before he collapses from heat exhaustion.
Rick suggests that they play a game of “truth or dare”. Rick says that he will make a statement, and that Marv has to admit if it is the truth or risk answering a dare. Marv says that it sounds like a typical way for two men to force themselves to display emotions. Rick says exactly and that he will go first. Rick says that Marv thinks of himself as a failure in comparison to his father. Marv goes silent and then replies, “I hate you.”
Marv says that Rick knows how he was born. Genetic materials were taken from Mar-Vell and from his mother. He was “born” eighteen years old with implanted memories from his father’s life. He says that they did it so that he could protect himself from his father’s enemies, but that all it did was leave him with a giant legacy and no practical knowledge of how to live up to it. Marv says that he was manipulated by a Kree general named Bel-Dann. Bel-Dann convinced Marv that he wanted him to stop a bomb from exploding at a Shiar outpost when in reality the bomb was set to go off when it came in contact with Genis’ photonic energy. Marv says that he then went on a chase to figure out why he was set up. He fought against Erik the Red, and eventually found out that it was all a plot for revenge by Zey-Rogg who was trying to atone for his father’s failures.
Rick says that he felt sorry for Marv then even though he was acting like “a bigger jerk than…” Marv finishes his sentence by saying, “You?” Rick says that Marv never told him what happened after the Shiar conspiracy. Marv says that he started to come to terms with what everyone wanted him to be… not Legacy, but Captain Marvel. Marv says that he found a planet where everyone had killed themselves because their god, Veeda Leebre, had gone missing. Marv discovered that Veeda had been arrested by God-Stalker, a kind of Celestial policeman. Marv broke Veeda out of prison in order to show him what he had done to his people. After that Genis got involved in a game of high stakes poker with Thanos and Grandmaster. Genis cheated and won the chance to go into Death’s realm and bring someone back. Genis had been playing so that one of his friends, Zoog, wouldn’t risk her own life trying to save her mother. Rick asks if Marv saw his father inside. Marv says that he was actually surprised to see his own mother there. Apparently she had died as a result of a rare space germ that she picked up from Genis. Rick asks if Genis then decided to take his own mother back instead of his friend’s. Genis says that in order to get them both out he cut a deal with Thanos. Rick asks Marv to tell him that he repaid this debt to Thanos before they were merged. Marv doesn’t reply and Rick says that he doesn’t want to know. Rick asks if this is what made Genis stop acting like such a putz. Marv says that it was actually what happened right afterwards. Rick asks what happened. Marv says that he committed suicide. Marv explains that he was attacked by a Shiar named Bloodwing that was part of the same Crystal Claws organization that Erik the Red was part of. Bloodwing’s sister had been on that Shiar station that Genis had caused to blow up. Bloodwing was there to complete the Ceremony of Purging. He believed that because his sister’s life was cut short, and she was unable to devote her lifetime to the M’Kran Crystal, her soul was stuck in purgatory.
Rick guesses that this is a story about
forgiveness. Genis says it isn’t. Rick guesses redemption
and revenge. Marv says that this is a story about his father.
Rick says that his father would have smoked Bloodwing in five
seconds. Marv says that he could have also, but that he felt it
was better to let Bloodwing vent his frustrations. Eventually
Genis got tired of that and froze Bloodwing between our dimension
and the Negative Zone using his nega bands. Marv had Bloodwing
explain to him that for his sister’s soul to pass on to
Aesir that she, and by proxy he, could kill Genis. Genis let
Bloodwing pound on him some more, and even fought back a little
to make it look like a real contest so that she/he was showing
that he/she was deserving of the final fight. While they are
fighting all over the place, Marv was distracted thinking of a
way out of the mess without actually dying for Bloodwing’s
sister. Genis began to wonder what Mar-Vell would have done if he
were in his place. Eventually Genis realized that it didn’t
matter what his father would have done, and that it only matters
what he will do. Genis allows Bloodwing to stab him in the chest
with a long claw. 
As his heart
was no longer beating Genis had an epiphany, a vision, of Eon
greeting him. Rick says that he thought Marv didn’t get the
cosmic awareness until after they had been merged. Marv says that
what he was experiencing was really a glimpse of things that were
to come. Rick asks if that was what gave Marv the will to live
on. Marc says no, but that it did show him how cool life was
going to become. After a moment, Genis takes the stake out of his
chest. Rick asks how he managed to do that. Marv says that before
he was stabbed that he created a spatial aperture in his own
chest with the nega bands. He says that the blade had slipped
into a stasis field within his body. Rick says that Genis
cheated, and that Mar-Vell never would have done that. Genis says
that is his point. He says that his heart did stop beating for a
moment, and so he was dead if only for a second. Bloodwing’s
sister’s soul passed out of the crystal that he wore around
his neck and out of Bloodwing’s body. She looks down at
Genis on her way to Aesir.
Rick asks if that is when Marv realized what it took to be a hero. Marv says that is when he realized what it took to make the first step on the road to becoming a hero. Rick says that he hopes that it isn’t as long a road as the one he is walking. Marv says that he can fly, but Rick just says that Marv mentioned that already. Marv takes his turn at the game. He says that Rick acts like he isn’t amazed by the superhuman things around him, and won’t let him do things like flying him to the next repair station because he has always been jealous of superheroes. Marv says that Rick is too insecure to try and get powers of his own. He says that Rick wants to be a hero, but doesn’t have the courage to try. Rick says that is it exactly. Marv asks if that was it. Rick says that he admits it. Marv asks if there isn’t some long gut wrenching story. Rick says no. Marv says that he hates Rick again, but Rick says that he does not.
Legacy rating: 7 out of 10
3.5 for both story and art. Zircher does a good job with the issue. Good storytelling, good style though the art could have used a little more definition in places, but I think this is “early” Zircher work and it shows much promise. Now for the writing: Holy exposition. The story is a good one, especially for a fill-in issue, but Fabian tries to tell a story while also fitting in the stories and subtext of the six issues that he wrote of Genis’ original series. In one and a half pages he describes all the six issues and their relevance, and in the next page sums up the next four never published books. This is a lot to take in and it takes a couple of readings to fully comprehend everything that is going on here (unless, I’m assuming, you read the original series, and since I don’t know any of the five people that actually read them I had to work it out on my own). Still a good entertaining read.