PREVIEW: Ms. Marvel #48

CBR.com: Why did you want to renew the rivalry between Ms. Marvel and Mystique?

Reed: One of the cool things about the shared elements of the Marvel Universe is that things will often bubble up in one place and then move to another. The Kingpin started off as a Spider-Man bad guy, but if you say Kingpin, your first thoughts are Daredevil and the Punisher. Mystique is the same way. These days everybody thinks of her as an X-Men villain, but she started out as a Ms. Marvel bad guy. So it's really cool to pull her back to her roots as a Ms. Marvel villain. A huge chunk of X-Men continuity came about because Mystique wanted to kill Ms. Marvel. That gave us Rogue and several years of stories stemming from what happened between Rogue and Carol. It's also really cool because, as Carol said to Pete in "Ms. Marvel" #47, Mystique is her Norman Osborn.

Mystique is also very interesting because she's effectively immortal. She's been around forever. So why is she interested in someone like Carol? Why is she interested in any one particular person?

We're going to see a little more with the Captain Marvel character - but I can't say any more than that.

CBR.com: The solicits for the final three issues seem to suggest that this story is all about the brutal mind games she intends to play with Carol. Is that correct?

Reed: That's what Mystique is best at. What we've got here is Carol coming back with the drive and ambition that she's always had, but it's amplified by the recent events of "War of the Marvels." Now she's running headlong into Mystique's craziness.

CBR.com: February's "Ms. Marvel" #50 is the final issue of the series; will we get some resolution to long standing plot lines in this final arc, like the mystery behind Carol's publicist Sarah Day?

Reed: We'll try to get to a lot of stuff. I can't discuss too much of that right now, because there's a piece of the plot we haven't revealed yet and it ties into all kinds of other things.

CBR.com: You've been writing "Ms. Marvel" since issue #1. How does it feel now that you're coming to the end of the series? Looking back are there any stories you're especially fond of?

Reed: It's been fun, and I thank everybody who's been along for the ride and made it possible. It's always bittersweet, though, to end any project. You invest yourself in it and you get excited, but at the end of the day, this will have been a 50 issue series starring a female lead character, and not a lot of people pull that off. So I'm really proud of that aspect. It sure would have been fun to do a hundred, though.