This is again, a light moment played for laughs which I found dangerously close to the harmful stereotypes built around devout young Muslim men. The brother offers to get “his brothers from the mosque to beat the crap out” the person who has supposedly hurt Kamala. Worst of all, there is one moment in the comics when Kamala gets home super late worrying her family about her whereabouts. I question the need to portray this character as such, especially in a comics that otherwise tries to sensitively portray Islam. Kamala’s brother is portrayed as a joke, a faux-devout Muslim who is made fun of.
There is one serious misstep in this first volume though, one that gave me serious cause for pause.
One of my favourite things about this first volume is when Kamala first gets her powers and she is able to change appearance, she starts out looking exactly as the previous Ms Marvel: blonde, white, “all-American.” This concept – of an “all-American” superhero – is explored and questioned by the comics and by Kamala: can this franchise superheroine, really look like Kamala does? Can she sustain herself under the weight of this type of legacy that literally stands out as a shadow over her? The answer is of course yes, she can. Her family, her friends (Muslim and not Muslim), her duties are all part of how she perceives herself and the world around her. who is Kamala? The concepts of identity and self are at the centre of this first volume: Kamala is a teenager, a girl, a geek, Pakistani-American and Muslim and the author deftly examines all of these in a way that is neither jarring nor thoughtless. Plus, the fact that she is the “new” Ms Marvel ends up beautifully folding into the primary concern of these first issues i.e. Kamala is a superheroine of our times and her encounter with Wolverine on issue 6 and her reaction to meeting him is a mirror to my own inner geek at seeing her meeting THE Wolverine. She worships Carol Danvers as well as other Avengers – she is indeed a fangirl who writes superhero fanfic. Kamala’s geekiness about other superheroes is one that comes out of the pages of the comic to meet us, the readers. This is actually one of the coolest things for me about this Ms Marvel – that she is not the Only One, that she exists in a world of known superheroes.
Dealing primarily with Kamala’s newfound powers, the first arc follows Kamala in her first footsteps as a teen superheroine who suddenly inherits the power of one of her idols, Carol Danvers (the new Captain Marvel). Ms Marvel, Vol 1 – No Normal (October 15, 2014) collects issues #1-5 and is an origin story through and through. Willow Wilson, launched a storyline that sees the first Muslim superhero to headline a comic series. Beginning in February 2014, the Ms Marvel series written by G.
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