Captain Marvel #17 comes after the Last Avenger arc. Carol gets to enjoy a game night with friends in this long-awaited return to the Captain Marvel story written by Kelly Thompson with art by guest artist Francesco Manna, colors by guest colorist Carlos Lopez, and letters by VC’s Clayton Cowles. 

Carol is hosting a game night with a group of her superhero friends, including Wolverine and Ms. Marvel. And what starts as a good plan, to do an escape room created by supposed escape room genius The Nexus quickly spirals out of control, ruining Carol’s night of relaxation.

Captain Marvel #17 is an uncharacteristic miss for Thompson, who has been regularly crushing it with this series. The plot is disappointingly bland, and despite this being a comic book, it falls into the trap of telling instead of showing with too many dialogue-heavy panels. 

The art in Captain Marvel #17 doesn’t feel up to caliber with the rest of the series, and this is most noticeable in panels when there are multiple characters together. The focal character is drawn clearly and in detail, but the other characters are blurry and not detailed. It feels like Manna was unable to work with the number of characters that were required for the story or maybe wasn’t given enough time to draw everything. This wouldn’t be a problem if it was one or two panels, but since it’s an ensemble story, most of the scenes involve multiple characters. And while Lopez’s colors are good, they can’t entirely save the art for this issue. 

Ultimately Captain Marvel #17 feels like unnecessary filler. It isn’t interesting enough to stand on its own as fluff, and it’s too self-contained to be a bridge between arcs. 

GRADE: D