‘Captain Marvel’ Comic Being Relaunched With YA Author Margaret Stohl (Exclusive)

With a much-buzzed-about movie in the works, Marvel Comics heroine Captain Marvel is getting a renewed focus on the publishing side of the company.

The publisher will relaunch the character with a new series in early 2017 that will be written by Margaret Stohl, a YA author who co-wrote the best-selling book series Beautiful Creatures.

The comic, to be drawn by Spanish artist Ramon Rosanas (Astonishing Ant-Man), is intended to trampoline the character off from her fictional limelight moment during the still-ongoing miniseries Civil War 2, in which the character gains planet-wide popularity as she squares off against Iron Man.

At the same time it will spin her to a new level of real-world recognition that is likely to occur given the mounting buzz of the movie. Oscar winner Brie Larson is in negotiations to star as the character, whose alter ego is Carol Danvers, for the movie that has a March 2019 release date.

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“It’s fun to be at this moment where you’re getting to introduce the people beyond the comics fans to this powerful woman,” Stohl tells THR.

The comic will focus on how, via the events of Civil War 2, Captain Marvel has become the most well-known hero in the Marvel Universe, a household name who is realizing that with popularity also comes pain.

“She will be one of the most popular heroes on the planet — but that’s not something she is very comfortable with,” Stohl explains. “And of course she’s lost a lot of folks that she’s loved, so she has to cope with that, too. That being said, she still has a job to do as commander of the Alpha Flight, her latest mission being recruiting and training new cadets (which will give us some fun supporting castmembers). It’ll also bring with it a mysterious danger that will threaten everything Carol has built.”

Danvers now finds herself in the hands of someone who has never written a comic before but knows a thing or two about female characters. And geek culture.

Stohl co-wrote with her friend Beautiful Creature, a best-seller that begat a supernatural YA franchise (and a 2013 movie that starred Alden Ehrenreich and Emmy Rossum). Prior to that, she was a video game writer and worked for Activision writing the Spider-Man and Fantastic Four games.  

“I come out of girl nerdom,” says Santa Monica-based Stohl, a mother of three and whose husband builds robots. “I was going to Comic Con long before I came out as a YA author.”

Stohl made her Marvel publishing debut with Black Widow: Forever Red, a novel featuring the spy-turned-Avenger that came out in 2015. It was something that caught the eye of Marvel editor Sana Amanat, who tried finding something Stohl could work on.

“This works under (Stohl’s) wheelhouse of telling stories about strong female characters and exploring their inner vulnerabilities, and what they show to the rest of the world,” said Amanat.

Marvel has launched and relaunched Captain Marvel several times, the last time earlier this year. Stohl says the new book will be different simply because Danvers is different now, too.

“She can’t undo the events of Civil War II, and those events will have changed everything — most of all Carol herself,” Stohl says. “Captain Marvel has suddenly become a household name — so what now? While she finds herself at the top of her game, she’ll also discover that being there means that game is more dangerous and complicated than ever.”