5. Ms. Marvel #1-10(Marvel)

Written by G. Willow Wilson

Art by Adrian Alphona, Jake Wyatt

Colors by Ian Herring

Call for Participants!

My name is Meher Shiblee and I am a PhD student at University of the Arts London, London College of Communications.

I am looking to speak to fan’s of G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel comics and/or Deena Mohamad’s Qahera webcomics.

If that sounds like you, please check out the survey below and get in touch! If that sounds like a friend of yours, please share the survey with them!

Scoping Survey

G. Willow Wilson has a great interview over at CBR. http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=51863
She talks about Kamala’s home life and how important her family is to her story and growth, her developing super powers, creating a secret identity and tease what’s in store for our heroine in the future.

One of the most interesting things she had to say was on why Kamala was given a shapeshifting power set which leads to an interesting comment on assigning superpowers in general: “Trying to think what those powers might be and what the limitations on those powers might be was very interesting. We knew going in that we wanted her to have very physical, kinetic powers. We didn’t want her to be another sparkly telepath who floats in the air and shines. [Laughs] We wanted her to have powers that were interesting to look at on the page and that were sort of unexpected for a female character. It’s most often male characters that get the dramatic growing, shrinking, stretching powers, because those aren’t pretty powers.
The more we thought about this character, the more we thought that making her a polymorph might nicely parallel, in a metaphorical sense, a lot of her struggles in her non-super hero life. Shape-shifters in comics are most often cast as villains; characters like Mystique and Morph. We’re naturally suspicious of people with fluid identities. We assume they must be hiding something.
Ironically, the people who get the explosive and destructive powers are most often good guys. The people that can shoot bolts of lightning, manipulate fire and shoot laser beams from the eyes are most often good guys. So we’re sort of turning two sets of stereotypes on their heads; the stereotype about what the life of a young, American, Muslim girl must look like and what a polymorph must look like.”

I am both excited and worried about the Ms. Marvel series. I adore Kamala Khan and the actress seems like she’ll be a great fit and have the personality for it. I just don’t know about the whole cosmic power change. I was rereading some comics and just feel like her powers match her sometimes goofy, fun personality. I’m going to try to stay optimistic about it and we’ll see.

In the meantime, if any of you are looking for a comic to read, I highly recommend checking out Ms. Marvel, she is an absolutely delightful character.

Ms. Marvel: No Normal (Vol. 1)

G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona

May 23, 2022

Possibly my favourite comic character introduction of all time. For many, many reasons, Kamala Khan will always have a place in my heart, as she has from the moment I first met her in 2014, breathlessly reading that first issue on the train.

There is so much to love in this first volume. Wilson has done a spectacular job of imbuing Kamala with humour and heart and making her relatable in way that is so nuanced and specific it crosses age, ethnicity, etc. (Having said that, as an Indian person myself, seeing a family like Kamala’s warmed my heart so much. I’m stunned at how much Wilson gets right, though I’m sure Sana Amanat’s editorial feedback proved crucial.)

Of course, the place where this comic truly comes to life is in panel after panel of gorgeously rendered art by Adrian Alphona. It’s lush and inviting, a perfect entry point for new readers, while serving Kamala’s story perfectly. It’s bright and stretches and contracts. It’s beautiful to behold altogether. I love the ways in which her teenage mannerisms are captured because it really does speak to the gawky awkwardness of that age and the unique physicality of her powers.

Launching a new character is hard enough. But to do so to universal acclaim, and achieving the kind of staying power that Ms. Marvel has earned is incredible. Re-reading this proved how well that first arc works and the way it sets up Kamala’s world and wider journey. There is so much to love about this first volume. What Wilson, Alphona, and the rest of the creative team have done is nothing short of marvellous.

gwillow:

So I was the last person on the internet to find out about this little op-ed by Jill Lepore. When Harvard professors are throwing shade on you from the rarified heights of the New Yorker, you have officially arrived in life, or at least in comics. So I was rather chuffed by this piece, though I do want to respond to some of the points raised, because they tie into some of the broader conversations we’ve been having lately in the comics community. I’d like to give a shout-out to Valkyrie Leia Calderon for drawing my attention to this piece–you can read her thoughtful and candid open letter to Dr. Lepore here.

If you are an avid comic book reader and/or follower of industry trends, none of what I’m about to say will be news to you. However, for those of you who are new to the medium, returning to the medium, or just interested in the continuing debate on the role of gender in pop culture, I hope what follows will be useful and help flesh out the conversation.

First off, a funny tidbit: Dr. Lepore and I have met, though she probably doesn’t remember, as I was a scrappy teenager with a fauxhawk at the time. Way back when I was an undergraduate, she gave a guest lecture on the French and Indian Wars in an American History colloquium I was taking at Boston University. She struck me as very intelligent and thoughtful, a passionate historian.

So I was a bit surprised that someone who obviously values rigorous scholarship would analyze the first issue of a crossover event without any apparent knowledge of what a crossover event is, or what the heavily tongue-in-cheek “feminist paradise,” Arcadia, represents in the context of the Secret Wars and the wider Marvel Universe. (Does she know about the zombies? Somebody please tell her about the zombies.) Thus decontextualized, what Dr. Lepore is left with is a cover depicting a bunch of characters about whom she admits to knowing nothing, and one fifth of a story, which is perhaps why her analysis reads as so perplexingly shallow, even snarky.

Keep reading

gwillow:

LONG COMIC BOOK RANT INCOMING:

Okay some things need to be said:

1. If you’re going to write a smug thunk-piece about the “failure” of “diversity” in comics, maybe don’t use the cover image of a book that’s had 4 collections on the NYT graphic books bestseller list, won a Hugo and cleaned up at Angouleme. Just because you HOPE it’s on the chopping block, oh Riders of the Brohirrim, doesn’t mean it is.

2. I will tell you exactly why Ms Marvel works: it didn’t set out to be Ms Marvel. We were originally going to pitch it as a 10 issue limited series. I had a 3 issue exit strategy because I assumed we were going to get canned. There was no “diversity initiative” anywhere–getting that thing made at all was a struggle. It was a given that any character without AT LEAST a 20-year history would tank. Everybody, myself included, assumed this series was going to work out the same way.

3. That freed us–by “us” I mean the whole creative team–to tell exactly the story we wanted to tell. We had nothing to lose, nothing to overcome but low expectations. That gave us room to break a lot of rules.

STUFF THAT IS DIFFICULT TO REPLICATE AND IMPOSSIBLE TO PLAN:

1. Unexpected audiences. We are at a point in history when the role of religion is at a tremendous inflection point. What I didn’t realize was that the anxieties felt by young Muslims are also felt by young Mormons, evangelicals, orthodox Jews, and others. A h-u-g-e reason Ms Marvel has struck the chord it has is because it deals with the role of traditionalist faith in the context of social justice, and there was–apparently–an untapped audience of people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds who were eager for a story like this. Nobody could have predicted or planned for that. That’s being in the right place at the right time with the right story burning a hole in your pocket. Plenty of other stuff I’ve written and liked has fallen with a huge thud. That’s the norm. Exceptions are great when they happen, but hard to plan.

2. The paradox of low expectations. The bar was set pretty low for Ms Marvel, but because of Ms Marvel’s success, that bar got set much higher for similar books that came later.

STUFF THAT IS ENTIRELY AVOIDABLE:

1. This is a personal opinion, but IMO launching a legacy character by killing off or humiliating the original character sets the legacy character up for failure. Who wants a legacy if the legacy is shitty?

2. Diversity as a form of performative guilt doesn’t work. Let’s scrap the word diversity entirely and replace it with authenticity and realism. This is not a new world. This is *the world.*

3. Never try to be the next whoever. Be the first and only you. People smell BS a mile away.

4. The direct market and the book market have diverged. Never the twain shall meet. We need to accept this and move on, and market accordingly.

5. Not for nothing, but there is a direct correlation between the quote unquote “diverse” Big 2 properties that have done well (Luke Cage, Black Panther, Ms Marvel, Batgirl) and properties that have A STRONG SENSE OF PLACE. It’s not “diversity” that draws those elusive untapped audiences, it’s *particularity.* This is a vital distinction nobody seems to make. This goes back to authenticity and realism.

AND FINALLY

On a practical level, this is not really a story about “diversity” at all. It’s a story about the rise of YA comics. If you look at it that way, the things that sell and don’t sell (AND THE MARKETS THEY SELL IN VS THE MARKETS THEY DON’T SELL IN) start to make a different kind of sense.

…OR “Wonder Woman OMG it’s GR8!”

It feels so good to be back on comic book Wednesday to gush over an issue of Wonder Woman! Steve Orlando put out a fine run and I’m catching up on the Witching Hour arc still, but you know that I *love* an optimistic, thoughtful Wonder Woman story full of kindness, ingenious fight sequences, and character development. This week’s issue gave me all of that!

1. Not a Grail fail in sight

Ok, so I cringed a little when I saw Grail, but GWW took all of two panels to highlight her potential as a character. Like, Grail is still smarmy and self-righteous but in the hands of a skilled writer she intrigues me!

Also, Ares–to whom Rucka gave a fitting farewell and fate–is back, and while he’s been reflecting on the nature of immoratility, he’s also had time to come up with some really effective insults (“little pimple” lololol). 

2. You’ve got to L-Etta me do this

In “Heart of the Amazon” Fontana showed us just what Rebirth!Etta could be, and I’m optimistic about how GWW will use her too (see: all of the varying, compelling friendships in Ms Marvel). In this issue, Diana and Etta are clearly on opposing sides, but I’m hoping it doesn’t undermine their friendship and sisterhood. I hope that Etta continues to play a big part in this arc!

3. JUSTICE (sans League this time)

The Big Theme GWW will tackle in this arc is the definition of justice, especially in our current political climate. She made it so clear that even a pimple (heh) like me understood. Is this topic too complicated for a comic book?! MAYBE FOR SOME, but not for a writer like Wilson. I feel #blessed that she’s on Wonder Woman, seriously. <3

Also, at the end of the day, isn’t Ares just asking “WWJD” but interpreting it the way only a Greek God would?

Stray observations:

• I don’t want to get hecka spoiler-y, but that last panel? Does Ares look like that because he’s resurrected?
  
• …OR BECAUSE HE STOLE SOMEONE’S BODY?!
  
• There are some panels where I’m obsessed with the art, and other panels where I have to take a minute to process what’s going on. The art is inconsistent, but most of it holds up, I think.
  
• “Stay safe…you know what I mean.” Awwww.
• “Do you have to be so tasteless, Cadmus.” Heh heh heh.