Warning: contains spoilers to Avengers #11!Captain Marvel‘s team of Avengers have faced world-ending threats, but their newest struggle is a moral one, as the team grapples with how to handle defeated enemies in the preview for an upcoming issue. Carol Danvers has a clear moral code, but not every problem has an easy solution, and how Carol and the rest of the Avengers handle this problem will show just how deep their convictions run.
The preview for Avengers #11 has presented an uncomfortable truth as Captain Marvel grapples with the fact that the Avengers’ new base is also a prison. Known as the Impossible City, the sentient fortress was designed to trap the Ashen Combine, and since the villains were defeated, it has once again been keeping them restrained. With the Impossible City now officially acting as the Avengers’ base, Carol must confront the fact that the heroes are riding around in an active prison.
After their defeat by the Avengers, the villainous team The Ashen Combine are being held in stasis, including Meridian Diadem, a sentient dungeon containing thousands of innocents. The Avengers now have not just one group of prisoners to deal with, but two. They don’t have a way to rescue these other captives, since they can’t risk letting Diadem free but, as #11’s preview shows, they don’t feel great about locking anyone up.
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The Avengers’ Living Base Is a Prison
Captain Marvel Doesn’t Agree with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Being Jailors
This new base – the sentient, spacefaring Impossible City – was itself built eons ago as a prison to hold the Ashen Combine. The Ashen Combine are far too dangerous to be let loose, having attacked cities across the multiverse for an extended period of time. However, the Avengers are new to the City’s tech, don’t know all the Combine’s capabilities, and have no moral or legal remit to keep prisoners. Carol’s concerns, and her voicing them to Iron Man, are a welcome conversation considering their previous history. Both Tony and Carol have, in the past, been characterized as having occasional authoritarian tendencies, which include locking up heroes and villains alike, most notably in the events Civil War and Civil War II respectively. However, on those occasions, they were acting on behalf of government-sanctioned peacekeeping groups.
The Avengers Are Facing a Huge Moral Challenge
Captain Marvel Insists “The Avengers Aren’t Cops”
There’s been a focus in MacKay’s Avengers on the team’s larger mandate and what their broader role is as superheroes, with Captain Marvel acting as a somewhat guilty voice of conscience as leader. In the preview for #11, Carol calls back to a previous conversation from Avengers #1 where she made it crystal clear that she didn’t want the Avengers to act as a police force. However, acting as jailors, even unwilling ones, forces the team into that same role of law enforcement whether they want to or not, something Carol will undoubtedly wrestle with.
Carol’s dilemma also plays into one of the themes that’s emerging in MacKay’s Avengers, which is that of control and free will. Many of the recent villains the team has faced have had control-based powers in some form, from the Ashen Combine’s worship-demanding Idol Alabaster to the dream-manipulating Nightmare, to the enslavement of the Impossible City itself. Captain Marvel affirming that the team have no right to hold anyone against their will is a rejection of these villains’ philosophies – now, however, the Avengers have to live up to that ideal.
The Avengers #11 (2024) | |
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The Avengers #11 is available March 6 from Marvel Comics.
