Carol Danvers was born to Joe Danvers Sr., a former U.S. Navy officer and construction worker, and Mari-Ell, a captain in the Kree Army. Mari-Ell had been sent to Earth on a mission to assimilate with humans and give birth to a hybrid child but had decided to abandon her former life and cut contact with the Kree. Carol's name came from Car-Ell, meaning "Champion" in Kree. Danvers was raised in Beverly, a suburban community to the north of Boston, Massachusetts, completely unaware that she was not a normal human. She also lived with Stevie and Joe Jr., two sons Joe Danvers had had with his previous, late wife.
Over the years, her father became increasingly apprehensive about potential retaliation from the Kree for Mari-Ell's desertion, causing him to drink and become abusive. In part due to her Kree heritage, the young Carol dreamed of becoming an astronaut and traveling to distant planets; as a teen, she even hitchhiked to Cape Canaveral to watch a rocket launch. Her father, however, could not accept women as men's equals and, when financial troubles meant he could only send one child to college, he chose Steve despite Carol's superior grades. Dismissing her need for a college education, he suggested she find a good husband instead.
When Danvers turned eighteen, she turned her back on her father and joined the Air Force to be a pilot and to get a college degree via the military. A promising cadet, she had the female pilot, flight recordist, and war hero Helen Cobb as an inspiration. Eventually, her brother Steve introduced her to a retired Cobb. Steve was tragically killed in military action in Vietnam, which drew Carol back to her family, but she still never felt truly accepted by her father. In the following years, she rose to the top of her Air Force class, adopting the call sign "Cheeseburger," after throwing up her lunch in a gravitational test. Located in the Karshi-Kanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan, Major Danvers was the best pilot of her unit. She was tasked with inaugurating an experimental jet built by Tony Stark, secretly the superhero known as Iron Man. The recon flight was a disaster when she was captured by a terrorist leader named Ghazi Rashid, who tortured her for several days in Afghanistan about the Project: Ascension. Despite a broken leg and serious injuries due to the crash, she managed to escape, execute Rashid, and discovered he had been in contact with a C.I.A. agent codenamed Vitamin.
Injured, Danvers made it to a safe house in Mazar-e-Sharif, where she debriefed Colonel Michael Rossi. Not trusting C.I.A., she chose not to share the intel she had collected. This cost her position for she was no longer cleared for flying due to her alleged amnesia. Danvers was trusted by Rossi to be recruited into Air Force Special Operations instead. Rossi assisted Danvers in her recovery, becoming a mentor figure she nicknamed "Ace." They had their first mission together as field operatives in Berlin to follow Vitamin's trail. Led to a tower block, Danvers and Rossi witnessed the apartment being blown up by the freelance agent Rick Mason, who was able to escape and make the investigation go cold. Rossi went on to become Danvers' first love. Though they eventually drifted apart, Danvers always remembered him fondly. Other close friends Danvers made in her time in Air Force were John Jellicoe and his wife Nancy. In the Air Force, Danvers would temporarily be given colonel status to gain access to special information on missions.
Working with secret intelligence, Danvers falsely claimed to respond to different agencies when on duty, including C.I.A. In a period when she went on missions with Nick Fury, she met the amnesiac mutant named Logan in Washington D.C., when she and his old acquaintance Fury rescued him from the combined attacks of Hydra and Sabretooth. Danvers and Logan were reunited when Fury sent them with pilot Ben Grimm on a doomed secret reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union, encountering the deadly spy Black Widow, who interrupted the ensuing attack. Thanks to Danvers' keen skills in maneuvering airships, the trio of agents could partially accomplish their mission of gathering information on the top-secret Red Storm Project. Logan and Danvers served on several missions together, and seemingly had a romantic relationship at some point. When Danvers was abandoned by the Air Force and imprisoned in the Lubyanka Building in Moscow, Rossi and Logan disobeyed orders to break her out of prison and smuggle her out of Russia. By the time Danvers investigated the death of her friend and contact Neil Langram, she was reunited with Logan, who she already regarded as a close friend. They were targeted by Sabretooth in Canada, who had been hired to hunt down people who could expose the existence of mutants to the world, including Langram. After outmatching Sabretooth, Danvers, and Logan parted ways. As a result of this mission, Danvers informed Senator Robert Kelly about the emergence of mutants on the planet.
Having served ten years as a top field agent for Air Force intelligence, Carol Danvers was appointed security chief at Cape Canaveral at the request of NASA, resigning from the Air Force and bumping her to full major at retirement. As a NASA security officer in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory located in Houston, she was involved in Dr. Peter Corbeau's favorite project. She was also assigned to watchdog Doctor Kronton's Doomsday Man project in the Pacific Ocean. NASA eventually requested her to transfer to an open position as head of security at the Kennedy Space Center, which she accepted.
As head of security in Cape Canaveral, Danvers became embroiled in the schemes of the Kree Empire. Due to a Kree Sentry #459 being deactivated by the Fantastic Four and taken into custody by NASA, a secret Kree operation assigned the spy soldier Captain Mar-Vell to get military revenge against humanity. Sabotaged by his superior Coronel Yon-Rogg, Mar-Vell crossed paths with a plane accident victim who worked at Cape Canaveral, the robotic expert Dr. Walter Lawson. Impersonating Dr. Lawson, Mar-Vell gained access to the installations where the Sentry was kept and that were also guarded by the suspicious Danvers. Yon-Rogg activated the Sentry to destroy Mar-Vell, forcing him to resist his secret warrior alter-ego Captain Marvel. This fight led Danvers to be intrigued by Mar-Vell's two identities, the eccentric Lawson and the inspiring Captain Marvel.
Ironically, Captain Marvel became a heroic figure in Cape Canaveral, consolidating the admiration Danvers came to have for him after he battled the Super-Skrull and inspiring her to investigate her trusted hero. However, she was still uneasily unsure about Lawson's activities. When spotting Captain Marvel returning to Earth's orbit from Yon-Rogg's Kree warship, Danvers strangely found Lawson instead. Though Mar-Vell denied witnessing anything, Danvers had her suspicions were raised and became determined to prove him wrong. By insisting on her investigation of the landing site, Danvers became a target for Yon-Rogg, who tried to eliminate her. She was saved by Captain Marvel, who she attempted to convince to watch Dr. Lawson. Mar-Vell indeed investigated the life of the strange man whose identity he had usurped, and a thankful Danvers met him with a kiss following a conversation about Lawson. However, becoming closer to Captain Marvel turned Danvers into a target. In the hotel room, Mar-Vell lived as Lawson, she was abducted by one of the real Lawson's assassin robotic creations, Cyberex. Amidst a fight between Captain Marvel, Cyberex, and the Aakon, she was saved. Lawson's former employers in the Organization then kidnapped Danvers while she accompanied Mar-Vell, who was mistaken for Lawson. Captain Marvel helped Danvers escape one more time, by plotting against the captors alongside her.
Captain Marvel soon had his reputation eroded after being forced to steal a moon rocket from the Cape to resist Yon-Rogg's constant attacks and to escape his former Kree brethren, which resulted in him getting an arrest warrant placed upon him by the American government to Danvers' disappointment. She correlated Captain Marvel's betrayal to Lawson's erratic behavior and gave the order to arrest Lawson as well. Mar-Vell's double life was ruined after this incident. Eventually, he made his way back to Danvers and Cape Canaveral by helping her against the menace known as the Man-Slayer. Danvers still trusted Captain Marvel, but, despite his assistance, the surrounding military treated him as an enemy for the earlier treason charges. Their standoff was broken off prematurely by Iron Man, who had been controlled by the Puppet Master. Following the battle, Carol Danvers was hospitalized and Mar-Vell was forced to leave the planet.
Upon awakening in a hospital, an obsessed Danvers fled to look for Captain Marvel when FBI agents came to question her about Dr. Lawson. Just outside the hospital, she was kidnapped by Yon-Rogg, who wished for final revenge against Mar-Vell. Yon-Rogg brought her to an abandoned subterranean Kree outpost that hid a damaged Kree Psyche-Magnitron, a machine able to synthesize pieces of Kree-devised technology. Empowered by the Nega-Bands, Mar-Vell was lured into the secret base. During their battle, Danvers was brutally knocked by Yon-Rogg into the damaged machinery. As the outpost collapsed, Mar-Vell chose to bring only Danvers to safety as Yon-Rogg perished. Unbeknownst to Carol Danvers, her genetic structure was altered by the detonation of the Psyche-Magnitron by unlocking her latent Kree powers. Weeks after the accident, she started to manifest blackouts, having her mind supplanted by the spirit of a Kree military warrior. During one of these incidents, she returned to the cave where the Psyche-Magnitron was located and collected a state-of-the-art costume that mimicked her nascent abilities.
Danvers' successful career at NASA was damaged because of the events from the months prior and she was reassigned to a secret Air Force facility in Indiana, near Chicago. As a result of a raid committed by the superhuman Nitro on the base to steal a nerve gas called Compound 13, Danvers found herself allied with Captain Marvel once again. Nitro, who had been sent by the Lunatic Legion, was defeated, but Captain Marvel was exposed to the carcinogenic element. The Lunatic Legion then ordered the Living Laser to finish Captain Marvel's partner Rick Jones at the hospital. Danvers helped to protect him alongside Hank Pym and the Wasp. Following the crisis, she administered an antidote to Captain Marvel to relieve him from the deadly effects of Compound 13. Demoted to a mere security guard, Danvers was transferred back to Cape Canaveral. There, she was attacked by an alien parasite who possessed Mar-Vell's former lover, medic Una. Fed by Una's jealousy against Danvers, the alien brutally attacked her, but Captain Marvel put an end to its threat.
Given her plummeting career due to incidents related to Captain Marvel, she resigned from NASA. Living off an accumulated salary, Danvers wrote a best-selling expose book on the space industry, burning many bridges, but also gaining her a reputation. Hired as an editor for Woman Magazine, a publication owned by the Daily Bugle, she relocated to a penthouse on Park Avenue and befriended Mary Jane Watson. As a consequence of the Psyche-Magnitron's alterations, Danvers developed a split personality to access her Kree powers, which included superhuman strength, flight, and a "seventh sense" that caused her to receive premonitions in face of imminent dangers. These abilities manifested when she blacked out and turned into a Kree warrior named Ms. Marvel, instantaneously donning the costume the Psyche-Magnitron had created to ease her body's changes. Both of her identities remained unaware of each other's existence. Under the personality of Ms. Marvel, she became a crime-fighting vigilante and saved her new boss J. Jonah Jameson from the Scorpion. However, Jameson didn't approve of superheroes and he ordered Danvers to write an expos� on her alter-ego for the inaugural issue.
In response to her blackouts, she sought the psychiatrist Michael Barnett, who used hypnosis to prod her mind. With Scorpion looking for revenge, Ms. Marvel manifested in front of Barnett and immediately left for war. Fighting Scorpion brought her to the attention of his associate, the evil scientist Kerwin Korman, a.k.a. the Destructor, and his contractors from A.I.M., who were interested in replicating her mighty abilities after observing her exploits. When covering a story about female astronauts in Cape Canaveral by visiting her old co-workers Salia Petrie and David Adamson, Danvers was targeted by the mechanoid Doomsday Man sent by A.I.M., which triggered her Ms. Marvel transformation. During the battle, she found herself at the Psyche-Magnitron site and was able to recollect her memories of being Carol Danvers. Struggling to keep her personas merged, Ms. Marvel could use knowledge from her time in NASA to disable the Doomsday Man. In the end, Korman attacked her, causing the cave they were in to collapse; he was gone, but Danvers was recovered by Petrie and Adamson after being exposed to the Psyche-Magnitron a second time.
Unable to control her transformations, a tormented Ms. Marvel clashed with the Vision over a dangerous cargo he secured for Stark International. She was able to find a devastating bomb and prevent casualties in New York as part of M.O.D.O.K.'s secret machinations. Back home, Barnett attributed her condition to her clairvoyance and suggested she give up one of her personas, which she refused despite her own uncertainties. As Danvers, she found problems with her boss Jameson, who wanted her to discredit Ms. Marvel. However, she was backed by her team, especially her new reporter and photographer Frank Gianelli. As Ms. Marvel, she involved herself in a fight with Grotesk, who had hold of the world-ending Cavorite Crystal and exploded a refinery. After being left in a pile of rubble following his retreat, Danvers was abducted by M.O.D.O.K.'s faction of A.I.M. as he wished to reestablish his control using Ms. Marvel's tech suit. She resisted his mind control and escaped after realizing her powers did not derive from her costume, vowing to bring her captor to justice. Informing S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Larry Rogers about M.O.D.O.K.'s secret operations with no success, she took her time to hire Tracy Burke, a photojournalist she admired as a child, as her associate editor at the Woman Magazine. Later on, during a date with Barnett, Ms. Marvel was guided by her clairvoyance to stop Grotesk and his last attempt to weaponize Cavorite.
As one of Earth's premiere superheroes, Ms. Marvel met and befriended rookie superheroine Jessica Jones, a.k.a. Jewel, and teamed up with Spider-Man against the Super-Skrull, which once again forced her to face her ambiguous soul. Sensing the burglar Geoffrey Ballard invading her apartment, Carol Danvers flew to it as Ms. Marvel but was taken out of the skies by M.O.D.O.K.'s winged ally Deathbird. During the battle, she found the building in flames. Despite saving most of the building being saved, Carol Danvers' treasured possessions were lost. When infiltrating A.I.M.'s headquarters to gain more intel on Deathbird, Carol Danvers found herself in the middle of two warring A.I.M. factions. In the turmoil of the internal conflict, M.O.D.O.K. and Deathbird tried to launch a rocket to take over NASA's Skylab, a NASA project that examined Cavorite crystals in Earth's orbit. Ms. Marvel stopped their takeoff, but they both managed to evade justice. With the destruction of her apartment, Danvers temporarily resided in a hotel while her duty as a vigilante gradually undermined her obligations with the Woman Magazine team.
During a visit to Cape Canaveral to cover Salia Petrie's first space flight, Danvers foresaw her friend's demise in an explosion caused by the Cavorite crystal aboard her shuttle. However, her Ms. Marvel's personality took over to answer to a different crisis concerning the Elementals and Hecate's search for the Ruby Scarab. Danvers tried to regain control of her body, but Ms. Marvel resisted by having determined that the threat of the Elementals was more pressing than Petrie's safety. When Ms. Marvel managed to get hold of the artifact, she turned back into Carol Danvers, who lashed out for having turned her back on her friend. Hecate made Carol Danvers realize that she was intrinsically Ms. Marvel beyond the personality change as she could display superpowers, which consolidated her two personalities and provided her control over her abilities.
Feeling at peace, Danvers and Barnett visited her mother in Boston and thereafter they went on a date. However, their engagement was disrupted by her fighting the troublemakers Sapper and Golden Blade. Still, in her home city, Danvers saved her father in a dispute with Steeplejack about budget cuts with the Monarch Plaza project. Afterward, her mother saw through her disguise and told her to give her ungrateful father another chance despite their difficult history. During her time in Boston, Geoffrey Ballard broke into Danvers' office. Gianelli omitted information when Detective Jean DeWolff interviewed him about the burglary and admitted to Danvers and Burke he knew Ballard; he was a former big-shot in the CIA. Gianelli then went to Washington to dig for information. Tormented by precognitive dreams about her dead, Danvers dealt with being overworked and stressed, though, during a snowball fight, she and Gianelli had an intimate moment and shared a kiss. Meanwhile, on a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, Ballard, and Mystique broke into the Centurion project to be able to assassinate Ms. Marvel. Whilst flying home, the hero was shot out of the sky by Ballard as the Centurion but was saved by the Avengers before being executed. As the battle raged across Manhattan, Mystique was urged to cease the assault on Ms. Marvel to prevent more failures and the risk of their discovery. Ms. Marvel defeated Centurion and unmasked him, realizing his unrevealed motivations implied that a war had just begun.
When Barnett was manipulated by a former agent of A.I.M. named Shaman to attack Ms. Marvel, she identified his next target to be the Defenders and approached them for help, effectively saving her friend. Around this period, Danvers accepted an offer from landlady Arabella Jones and rented a new home in Greenwich Village. When introduced to her new house, she found herself fighting the savage Tiger-Shark to rescue the Princess of Atlantis Namorita. During her investigation, she befriended the Avengers Beast and Scarlet Witch, who let her use the resources of the Avengers Mansion to design a mechanism that allowed her to combat and defeat him underwater. After perceiving the Avengers in danger in a precognitive flash, Ms. Marvel joined them to search for Jocasta wishing to return the favor of borrowing their laboratory. She was hesitantly welcomed to the mission to track and defeat Ultron. After leaving for personal business, she remained on standby. She helped the team locate an untraceable enemy, who eventually was revealed to be the godlike being Korvac. Siding with the Avengers, Ms. Marvel collaborated in a final battle against the enemy, which culminated in his demise.
Ronan the Accuser tried to apprehend Ms. Marvel for the transgression of bearing military knowledge about the Kree, but the ensuing battle was interrupted by Mar-Vell. Both were captured and taken to a starship, where the Kree Supreme Intelligence declared his intentions of using Ms. Marvel's hybrid Kree genetics to improve the Kree race using the Millennia Bloom to expunge her humanity. The mechanism failed since her soul was fully integrated, the human woman and the Kree warrior were inseparable. Overpowering Ronan and his master, Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel freed themselves and arrived back on Earth, reconciling their friendship.
In a collaboration with fellow superhero and fashion designer the Wasp, Ms. Marvel designed an all-new costume using unstable molecules, distancing herself from the Kree iconography. She traveled with haste to New Mexico to assess the disappearance of fellow reporter Sharon Cole, who had been taken hostage by the Lizard People. During her investigation into a group of disappearances, Ms. Marvel was ambushed and taken to their underground city. In a prison cell, she found the missing victims, including Cole. After killing their greatest warrior, Ms. Marvel had all the prisoners freed in exchange for the Lizard People's existence being kept a secret. Returning home, she received a baby iguana as a token of gratitude for not revealing their secret.
Following her return, she was informed she was removed as an editor at Woman Magazine by her boss and publisher J. Jonah Jameson. Throughout her tenure, the duo regularly clashed regarding the content of the magazine, over-budgeting, and her frequent absences as a consequence of her burgeoning career as Ms. Marvel. Tracy Burke was appointed as her replacement. Danvers came home to a surprise going away party, thrown by her old colleagues and friends. Among the guests, was a disguised Mystique waiting for her moment to strike as well as the musician Sam Adams, who sparked Danvers' romantic interest. Simultaneously, Ms. Marvel clashed with Deathbird once again, derailing her criminal activities. At home, she was visited by her not-quite-dead friend, Salia Petrie. Petrie was under the mental control of the Faceless One and transported Ms. Marvel to the Guardians of the Galaxy's Drydock. With the aid of crewman Vance Astro, they defeated the villain and Danvers revealed her identity to a frightened Petrie to comfort her.
Closely associated with the Avengers, Ms. Marvel was invited to join the team as a replacement following the Scarlet Witch's leave of absence. After her bureaucratic initiation, she was granted full status as an Avenger. Providing crucial assistance in several missions, Ms. Marvel came to be an efficient team player and related to Captain America, who she saw as an inspirational figure; on the other hand, she faced ideological challenges with her teammate Wonder Man over their perspectives on gender equality. As an Avenger, she also crossed paths with Jessica Jones again. Accidentally falling into the clutches of the mesmerizing Purple Man, Jones was forced to serve him as a brainwashed slave and attacked the Scarlet Witch. During the attack, she came back to her senses, but not before being violently pulled out of action by the Avengers. Ms. Marvel rescued Jones from death by being able to recognize her as a hero. As a consequence, Jones abandoned superheroics.
Following a fight against the savage Sabretooth, Ms. Marvel psychically experienced dread sensations of imminent death. The murder of Barnett in his own office prompted her to investigate the crime scene with Iron Man, who was able to exhibit how Mystique gruesomely had murdered the psychiatrist. Ms. Marvel investigated by herself despite her psychic turmoil and was brought to an arms deal made between Peter Coelho and the Hellfire Club. She approached and seduced Coelho as Carol Danvers to gather intel in Hong Kong, where Mystique's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants was found to be secretly linked to the deals. This led the Hellfire Club to assassinate Coelho, leading Ms. Marvel to a dead end. Moreover, Mystique's partner, the seer Destiny, had access to possible futures in which Ms. Marvel would ruin their prot�g�e Rogue's life. This caused Mystique to seek personal revenge against Ms. Marvel in addition to her criminal activities.
Ms. Marvel visited the Scarlet Witch in New Jersey to advise her about the limitations of having children. There, she fell unexpectedly ill, ironically and shockingly learning she was three months pregnant. She left the team following the unexplainable and unwanted pregnancy, which progressed rapidly over the subsequent days. Right before she was about to give birth, she revealed her secret identity to the Avengers. The baby boy also developed at an accelerated rate; claiming to be Marcus", the alleged son of Immortus, he revealed the pregnancy had been caused by himself to escape the temporally unstable Limbo. Marcus manipulated Danvers into falling in love with him and took her back to his home in Limbo as his presence on Earth destabilized the fabric of space-time. However, his plot backfired when his accelerated aging turned him into dust within a week. Broken free from his mind control, Danvers learned how to use Immortus' time-traveling technology to return to her time. Upon her return, she rejected the Avengers over her resentment towards them allowing the lying Marcus to effectively kidnap her for future defilement at his hands.
Seeking peace of mind after her ordeal with Marcus, Carol Danvers relocated to San Francisco and chose not to resume ties with the Avengers. She was perceived by Destiny, something that prompted Rogue to confront her in secrecy to prove her worth to Mystique. Rogue's power-absorbing abilities erratically interacted with Carol Danvers, who lost virtually all of her essence and Ms. Marvel's abilities to the mutant terrorist. Rogue attempted to murder the unconscious and soul-emptied Danvers by throwing her off the Golden Gate Bridge. Danvers was rescued by Spider-Woman, who caught her before impact. After swimming to shore with the comatose woman, Spider-Woman contacted the X-Men to Danvers' plight upon learning that her mind had become a tabula rasa. The memories stolen by Rogue were restored by mutant telepath Professor Charles Xavier, though he could not return the emotional bonds linked to those memories. Powerless and restarting her life, Carol Danvers rebuked the Avengers for having broken her trust by irresponsibly abandoning her.
