Ms. Marvel is Carol Danvers, a former US Air Force fighter pilot who was given extraordinary powers by the alien Kree Empire. Her history is long and varied, beginning as the girlfriend of then-Captain Marvel (he's back, now, come to think of it) and ranging over Avengers member, associate of the X-Men, enemy of Rogue and Mystique, mega-powered cosmic being, outer space adventurer, mother to an extra-dimensional thingy that ended up marrying her... Oh, you know how comic character bios get after a couple of decades. Her current arc has its origins in the House of M, when the Scarlet Witch temporarily altered reality, changing the lives of everyone on the planet in an effort to regain the happiness she'd lost. During the House of M, Carol Danvers was Captain Marvel, the best of the best, one of the most famous, adored and respected heroes ever. Once the world was put back the way it was meant to be, Carol found herself dissatisfied with her old life as a worthy but unremarkable hero, and set out to become the best of the best for real. Her efforts met with mixed success, but though she didn't always have the experience to make the right decisions straight away, her courage and determination always told in the end, and she has steadily picked herself up and risen to become one of the leading lights of the superhero community. Along the way, her perception of what it means to be a hero has changed too. At first she wished for fame and recognition - now, having achieved that goal, with some missteps along the way, she is coming to realise that being a hero is more than just fighting villains and being well-known. Her participation in Tony Stark's superhero task force during the superhero Civil War earned her a chance at the big league, with Stark offering her leadership of the Mighty Avengers. She accepted, but on the condition that she also be given the resources to operate her own task force, Operation Lightning Strike, with the goal of identifying and neutralising supervillain threats before they become world-threatening. Carol is still far from infallible, but when she makes mistakes, she always picks herself up and tries harder next time. She appears in her own monthly title, Ms. Marvel (with two trade paperbacks available thus far), and in Mighty Avengers, both published by Marvel Comics, and in the Essential Ms. Marvel volume, which covers her 1977 solo series.