Marvel continues their one-shots of, possible glimpses, of our favorite heroes’ future with this week’s Captain Marvel : The End #1. Fifty years in the future Captain Marvel is still a bad-butt, however, is she tough enough to deal with this roller coaster that we call life in the 616. Let’s find out.

The year 2051 the location space, more specifically the space above Planet N’Drelia. Captain Marvel strikes a menacing pose trying to ward off an invading insect-like space bug. She is giving the creature every chance to turn back and not try to attack the defenseless planet but the bug doesn’t listen and gets swatted as a pest should get. The people rejoice to leave Carol with some semblance of satisfaction.

That satisfaction is fleeting though as we see she is all alone cruising the spaceways with no friends or family anymore. Everyone died on Earth. That is why it is most alarming when her Avengers Assemble pager starts going off.

We are then treated to a flashback. I do wish they distinguished this flashback a little more. The scene transitions are just too similar, but once I figured it out, okay its a flashback we get the information. As so eloquently put in the issue, ”Same old story. Some Villain. Heroes rallying together.” Humans trying to protect themselves scorched the Earth killing themselves in the process. So after seeing the decimated Earth devoid of all life, Carol has been helping whoever she can in space.

Now back at Earth again Carol must tear open that sore wound to find who/where/what sent the Avengers Assemble distress call.

Earth seems more of a mess than she last remembered it. Everything is now covered in ice from the nuclear fallout or so I assumed. We come to find out that is not the only reason.

At Avengers Tower, Carol finds out there were survivors. Powerful mutants and children of heroes, now adults, were the most likely to survive the nuclear fallout. It is mainly a who’s who of characters Kelly Thompson has used in her most recent series.

After introductions and apologies, the survivors get to the point of why they finally called Captain Marvel. It’s not to get them off this uranium rod of a planet, surprisingly enough. No, it is to kill a bug that came from the ocean and is so indestructible that it can’t be beaten….(stop me if you heard this one)…until you fly into Its mouth and detonate.

Now with the monster destroyed everything is all good right? Nope! Apparently, in 50 years the sun has also decided to call it quits. It must have decided, welp! I guess I’m not needed here anymore and just stopped working because that is what happens when the story needs it to. So, Carol (stop me if you heard this one before) makes the ultimate sacrifice and restarts the sun so everyone on Earth can live in Nuclear happiness all while staring at Carol’s ship as it floats in the air mocking them…The End?

Final Thoughts:

The pencils and colors are just lovely. It really evokes emotion in great places like the melancholy scene with Carol all alone on the ship and the end with Carol’s smiling sacrifice. This issue reads really well also. Leaving the art to do the talking when it needs to make this a really good one-shot, but I just don’t feel this story does enough original storytelling to justify purchasing or recommending this book to a friend. It’s just a basic end of the world story, insert tropes here, mention some cool survivors here, heroes sacrifice The End send to print. The Art truly saves this book from going below a 7.

7/10