Captain Marvel #6 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

This issue is beautiful.  I can't say that I understand everything about it, since, you know, time travel.  But, it's beautiful all the same.

All right, I'll take a stab at piecing together the plot.  When the Psyche-Magnitron exploded, back in the day, pieces flew into the time stream.  Since the plane that Carol was flying was a time machine (more on that part in a minute), it seems like she was attracted to those pieces, first on the island off Peru, then to Helen Cobb.  (I think that it's theoretically possible that it's all just the same piece, since I think it might be the piece on the island that Helen discovers.)  In the last jump, Carol (and Helen) are brought to the Psyche-Magnitron itself, moments before its destruction.  Carol is then faced with the possibility of pushing herself from the blast, allowing her to live a normal life.

In fact, it appears that this "opportunity" is exactly why Carol is sent on this journey in the first place.  Using her knowledge from this encounter with Carol, Helen sets up Carol in the future to take this journey.  Unfortunately, I'm still not entirely clear on how she did that.  I assumed that she attached the Psyche-Magnitron piece to the plane to do so, but I don't think DeConnick ever states that clearly.  It seems possible that Helen Cobb found another way to turn her plane into a time machine and set it so that it would be find pieces of the Psyche-Magnitron.  But, again, we don't really address that.  All we know is that, at some point an din some way, Helen's plane becomes a time machine attuned to pieces of the Psyche-Magnitron.  I've learned not to question this stuff too much.  After all, I'm still not sure why a piece of the Psyche-Magitron finding its way to an island off Peru meant that the Japanese wound up using the prowlers that we saw in issues #2-#4.  I'm just going to try to go with it.

The reason that I'm trying not to focus too much on the details is in part because DeConnick does an OK job at least sketching out some sequence of events that makes sense.  If she had been clearer, I would've been all the more impressed with this arc.  But, at the very least, you can piece together some sort of sequence of events on your own.  Most importantly, I'm forgiving this lack of detail because DeConnick accomplished what she intended to accomplish here.  Carol gets to race her hero to claim the mantle that she has never felt sure that she truly wanted.  By the end of this opening six-issue arc, Carol Danvers IS Captain Marvel.  It doesn't matter if someone had that name before her or if she had moments as Ms. Marvel where she doubted what she was doing.  By the last page, she is who she is, and DeConnick got her there.  "And we will be the stars we were always meant to be."  Damn straight.