Ms. Marvel Issue 1
Creative Staff:
Story: G. Willow Wilson
Art: Adrian Alphona
What They Say:
Marvel Comics presents the all-new MS. MARVEL, the ground breaking heroine that has become an international sensation! Kamala Khan is just an ordinary girl from Jersey City–until she is suddenly empowered with extraordinary gifts. But who truly is the all-new Ms. Marvel?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
One of the things I love about comics is that over the years, they do really manage to reinvent themselves in a lot of ways. Both of the big publishers have done this to varying levels of success with iconic characters, but also with a lot of secondary characters who can become a lot more in these new incarnations. Usually, we see it done with villains since there’s a little more disposability to a lot of the second, third and fourth tier ones, but we see it with a number of heroes as well as they’re given proper modern updates without some of the trappings that can bog them down. With Marvel make a welcome and concerted effort to add more female characters to the forefront (where was all of this twenty years ago when I was reading comics? We had a few, but now I’m envious!), working with Ms. Marvel certainly made a lot of sense since the original character has obviously gone through a lot of changes.
With this new series, written by G. Willow Wilson and illustrated by Adrian Alphona, we get something that is a lot more like a traditional origin story than most, but also one that is given room to breathe. This is pretty important because one of the things that tends to work with a lot of the Marvel characters is that you can identify with them and what they’re all about when they’re outside of the suit, which in turn influences who they are when the chips are down. With Ms. Marvel, we’re introduced to Kamala Khan, a Pakastani American who lives in Jersey City and is pretty much what you’d expect from a teenager in that world in that she’s very connected to the online world, has an admiration of a lot of the top tier superheroes out there and has a dream of being important herself, though couched in welcome ways. That she writes Avengers fanfic is amusing but it also means she pays attention to that world and understands it to some degree as it’s something she’s passionate about.
Unfortunately, she’s torn between a few different worlds like so many kids and adults are. She wants to fit in with what she perceives as the cool and good kids of the school, who are pretty much the types that you want to write off right away with their attitudes, race-baiting and other things that’s sprinkled about their dialogue. She also wants to honor some of the traditions of her family and heritage, which we see with how her family interacts and deals with each other, from her brother Aamir that has gone the fully traditional route to her father that has a lot of it ingrained in him but has adapted to being a modern day businessman in America – while still taking the role of the patriarch of the family seriously and instilling his will on things. That, of course, causes problems for everyone, but seeing it through Kamala’s eyes, we see how she takes it personally and feeds into her dreams of find a way to be who she wants to be, to discover that.
A lot of what we see of Kamala feels like what we could see with dozens of other teenage superheroes-to-be over the last couple of decades. And in a way, that’s reassuring because it means they’re not trying to go overboard or draw bigger extremes of what is a real normality for a lot of kids. Kamala’s time at a party that she sneaks out to doesn’t go well and we see that kind of problem being a part of her life that she tries to ignore but still ends up barging right in and impacting her. There’s a kind of dourness to her that feels right with what she’s facing as we see her light up when online and dealing with her idolization, her fanfic and other things that inspire her imagination. The two sides of who she is are well represented in that way. She even has this kind of problem with her friend Bruno, who obviously is interested in her and wants something more, but finds himself caught in that kind of hard place as well because his concern comes across as patronizing and controlling to her with what she’s facing from all quarters.
The superhero origin side of the book takes up the second half of it, but it doesn’t really feel like it since the first half covers so many things that it feels denser than it might otherwise. Her walking through the city after the party has her getting caught up in a whole lot of gas that’s filling the streets and it has her feeling practically drunk. She ends up waking up to a light and a really amusing dream that has almost angelic-like incarnations of Iron Man, Captain America and Captain Marvel coming to her to tell her that she’s something more in their own convoluted any verbose way. There’s a lot of good dialogue and exposition to it as she’s at this kind of crossroads with what she can be, but as Captain Marvel says, it’s not going to turn out the way she thinks it should. The fantasy and the reality are always different and seeing Kamala break out of the shell that is transforming her, making her into who she is, you have to laugh and wonder where it will go because having her as a blonde teenage girl in the traditional Ms. Marvel outfit is definitely not what was expected.
In Summary:
While I am behind on this book by several months, it’s one that after the first issue I find myself very eager to catch up on and explore. Kamala’s origin story is fairly traditional in the way of superhero tropes but that’s a strange positive in a way because it’s not trying to be all cultural or anything. It’s giving us the kind of origin story that, admittedly to me, feels like ones I’ve seen in years past through X-Men stories with mutants having cultural issues in the modern world. That gives it a kind of familiarity to me that I like while also having a whole lot of layers to peel away in exploring her Pakistani American roots and who it is that Kamala really wants to be, both as a hero, a person and a teenage girl. It looks to be a fun journey and this opening issue hits it right across the board with solid scripting and character development alongside some great artwork that really makes me like the iconic character interpretations as well as the real world itself.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: February 5th, 2014
MSRP: $2.99
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