When three Marvel heroes confer her powers upon her, they address her in mellifluous Urdu (which Wilson translates): She cleverly folds Kamala's Muslim heritage and teen angst into her emerging hero identity. It's good, then, that Wilson has plenty to offer other readers. Yeah, that's the kind of thing only superhero fans find interesting. But then she was kidnapped by evil Colonel Yon-Rogg and caught in the explosion of a Kree Psyche-Magnitron device. Introduced in 1967, she was a feminist who edited a magazine called simply WOMAN. Marvel has a particularly volatile heritage. by adding pants? (Die-hard fans were outraged by the new look, but Project Runway's Tim Gunn loved it.) And, of course, who could forget the 2010 fracas when DC ventured to update Wonder Woman's outfit. A new rendering of Batgirl gives her a leather motocross jacket and bright yellow Doc Martin boots. Marvel now has nine solo titles with female leads to DC Comics' eight, according to Comics Alliance. Marvel costume gives her "an epic wedgie."Īctually, though, even the key perpetrators of superheroine objectification have been catering to women lately. Kamala has no use for the typical heroine outfit either, finding that the original Ms. I'm just concerned."Īlphona triumphs too, giving Kamala an expressive face and a normal girl's physique. nobody pressured you to start wearing it, right?. "Your headscarf is so pretty, Kiki," a blonde princess tells Kamala's best friend. Wilson, herself a Muslim, distills the enormity of culture shock into a few potent incidents. Everything from Kamala's postmodern mindset (she's a superheroine who reads superhero fan fiction) to Alphona's elegant line work make this a comic for the discerning reader. Marvel, Kamala Khan, is an utterly believable teenager, and the art is pure grown-up. Marvel name over the years, but Wilson and Alphona's re-imagining is the most dramatic yet. Several different characters have used the Ms. Marvel - Wilson and Alphona rise to it and burst through. Faced with one of the trickiest problems a creator could imagine - rebooting Marvel Comics' decades-old heroine Ms. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona, that's how. How can the timeworn superhero format possibly express the complexity of a modern teenage girl's experience - all without objectifying her bod? And then there's the matter of her struggle to define herself as she approaches adulthood. Now imagine that your protagonist is A) female, B) 16, C) a Pakistani-American and, oh yeah, D) Muslim.Ĭould there be a tougher assignment? If you avoid gross errors in depicting halal meat or headscarves, you might lurch in the other direction and fail to endow the heroine with any meaningful cultural signifiers at all. How?Ĭonsider the ways you could misstep in updating a classic comic-book superhero. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Ms.
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