Captain Marvel Floats Above Earth in Cosmic Fire — Print & Oil Painting

The pose is frontal, symmetrical and deliberately unspectacular. She stands upright facing us with the weight even, both arms straight down and slightly away from the body, the fists closed. Nothing is being fired, thrown or lifted, and the only motion in the figure is in the hair, which is blown hard to her left across the cheek.

The suit is navy blue with red shoulders and a red upper chest, and across the sternum a gold eight pointed star spreads its points out toward the shoulders. Gold trim runs at the collar and a gold disc sits at the navel. The gloves and boots are red, and a long red sash is wound twice round the hips with both ends trailing out to the sides in loose curls that fill the lower half of the frame.

Light is coming from behind. A deep blue violet nebula fills the upper canvas with stars scattered through it, two large blooms of orange gold fire burn at the left and right edges, and beneath her the curve of the Earth shows blue ocean and white cloud running out of both bottom corners. Her outline is rimmed warm the whole way round.

The knuckles carry a faint glow and nothing else does. It is the one indication in the whole picture that the figure is anything other than a person standing in a good coat, and the artist has kept it small enough to miss. Blue leads the measurement with crimson second, saturation and brightness both around the middle.

She was a flier before she was any of this. The character began as an air force pilot who moved into intelligence and then into security work at a launch facility, and the powers arrived when a piece of alien machinery detonated beside her during somebody else's fight. The star on her chest is the emblem of the people whose machine it was, and the name came later still, taken up in honour of the officer who had carried it first. From our Marvel collection, alongside the same profile under deep maroon light and her profile set against a red splatter.