Ms. Marvel: No Normal

Marvel has scored an unlikely hit with its new Ms. Marvel series.

If you went back a little over a year and said that Marvel’s 2014 critically-adored breakout hit would star a Pakistani-American Muslim teenager in Jersey City… well, you would never have said that. Even as Marvel has made massive efforts over the past couple years to address the dearth of non-white/non-male lead characters in its books, Ms. Marvel is not something any observers would have predicted.

Marvel got a lot of praise a couple years back when they “promoted” the original Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers, to the role of Captain Marvel. Carol had long been a commanding presence in the Marvel Universe. Giving her the name associated with her late, male compatriot was almost revolutionary. It honored the earlier character and put Carol in a new spotlight. Though we should note that Carol isn’t the first female Captain Marvel (that honor goes to long-time Avenger Monica Rambeau, currently using the codename Spectrum).

Since Marvel doesn’t like to allow a prominent superhero name to go unused for too long, the creation of a new Ms. Marvel wasn’t a shock. The other characters to have borne the name weren’t likely to make a comeback in a new solo series .

But then, had fans been asked to predict who a new Ms. Marvel might be, they likely would not have guessed Kamala Khan. Mostly because solo comic book series featuring non-white female leads aren’t exactly plentiful from Marvel or DC.

Written by G. Willow Wilson, the new Ms. Marvel gets so many things right immediately. When we meet Kamala, she’s instantly relatable. She’s an all-American girl in a lot of ways. She has a couple of really close friends. She loves video games and following the Avengers. She lives in an authentically multi-cultural Jersey City milieu, where she goes to school and struggles to unravel her own identity. She chafes at the things that she thinks make her “weird”: her name, her skin color, her hair, her family’s strict rules, her religion… Like every 16-year-old in the real world, Kamala hasn’t yet learned that the things that make her different are also the things that make her special.

In an act of understandable impulsiveness, Kamala defies her parents to sneak out to a party. Except the party immediately makes her feel more like an outsider. But it puts her in place to be affected by a strange fog (in a nod to Marvel’s massive Infinity event and related Inhuman series that Wilson is confident enough to incorporate without exposition related to those other books). Kamala passes out and when she comes to, she finds herself in the form of her hero, Carol Danvers, in her classic Ms. Marvel uniform.

The bulk of the No Normal arc focuses on Kamala learning about her new powers and embracing the old Spider-Man ethos of “With great power comes great responsibility.” Watching a new hero work out her identity and powers is a classic rite of passage in comic books, but Wilson writes it really well and makes it very entertaining.

The real power of Ms. Marvel comes from the strong depictions of Kamala’s family and culture. Kamala and her immigrant parents struggle to understand one another (“I didn’t understand one single word of that sentence,” her mother notes at one point). But the elder Khans aren’t drawn as one-note cultural stereotypes, or worse, object lessons in multi-culturalism. Yes, their Pakistani roots and Muslim faith are important parts of the characters. But they’re depicted as real, complex people. Kamala’s vigilant mother wants her daughter to become everything she can and is willing to be hard on her to facilitate that. Her somewhat softer father is protective, but also wants his daughter to know he already thinks she is extraordinary. Even her devout brother, while used for a couple of easy laughs at points, is more complex than his surface presentation would suggest. Wilson creates a realistic, believable family that’s interesting and relatable. The particulars may differ from fans’ own experiences, but in locating the universal within the Khan family’s dynamic, Wilson provides a strong foundation for the evolving superhero action that unfolds. There’s a lot of humor in the book, but it’s situationally appropriate and never strives too hard. Perhaps Wilson’s greatest strength is that she’s unafraid to write a book with heart and optimism, instead of the kind of cynical darkness that’s trendy in other series.

The warm, imaginative artwork from Adrian Alphona is a great match for Wilson’s writing. The slightly cartoonish feel to Alphona’s line work serves the story, giving a nice visual impact that develops an identity for the series that’s all its own. He makes Kamala expressive and vibrant, the perfect focus in a landscape that mixes the familiar with the outlandish.

Ms. Marvel demonstrates what can result from giving inspired creators the freedom to come up with something different and interesting. The “comic book fan” tent is getting bigger and more diverse all the time, it’s good to see comics like Ms. Marvel tapping into that, crafting something that all fans can enjoy.