get in losers, we're getting shawarma
Okay, so Thor: Love and Thunder is “indefinitely postponed” (translation: probably banned but they’re not using the words banned cuz our LPF cowards who want people to blame Disney instead) but MCU fans did get one of the best Disney+ shows so far. Of all the current D+ shows only Falcon + Winter Soldier was a bit of a disappointment to me, but Ms. Marvel is definitely in the top 5 in terms of storytelling/quality, and on a personal level? It’s #1, tied with Moon Knight. Of the upcoming shows, I’m expecting to love She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (pleeease use mostly Charles Soule’s comics!), and am not really that keen on Secret Invasion unless Carol makes an appearance. In fact, She-Hulk is the last bit of MCU I’m truly looking forward to this year, as I don’t know what Wakanda Forever is going to be like sans T’Challa.
Anyway, Ms. Marvel.
To be perfectly honest, I was expecting to be slightly disappointed. Not because I expected it to be bad (Iman Vellani who plays Kamala is oh so charming and adorbs, and the showrunner is Bisha K. Ali, who did one of my favourite Loki episodes!) but because I am such a big Ms. Marvel fan that I expected to just poke holes into everything and go “the comics was better because…”
It was what I felt like with Captain Marvel - I am as much as a Carol Corps member as I am team #KamalaKorps, and I watched the movie 4 times in the cinema, and many more online, and I agree with a lot of the positive criticism it received from feminist pop culture writers, but at the same time, there was a tiny bit of me that was just a little disappointed. I wanted Carol to be more brash, more arrogant, more unlikable and cocky. After all, she ought to be a female equivalent to Stark/Strange, personality-wise. I wanted Chewie to be named Chewie instead of Goose, and I wanted Chewie to actually be Carol’s cat instead of a cat who gave Fury an interesting and funny backstory. Little nitpicks, that doesn’t matter to anyone else.
There were a lot of changes made to MCU’s Ms. Marvel from the comics - and I may even prefer if the changes were not made in some cases, but for the most part, I wasn’t unhappy about any of it.
changes!
- Powers
The main change that got people talking, of course, were to Kamala’s powers. In the comics, she’s a polymorph witch stretchy and embiggening powers with some little bit of time travel involved (don’t worry about it.) In this MCU version, she’s given a Green Lantern-esque “hard light” that she could shape into anything she imagines - “like imagination come to life”, as she says. I did worry about this a little before the series started, but the teasers and interviews with Iman Vellani/Sana Amanat alleviated that somewhat. They promised that her powers would stick to the “essence” of what makes her Ms. Marvel, and that it did. We did get to see some of the stretchy effects, and her Donkey Kong-inspired lilypad moves help her move faster across the city very much the same way her embiggening powers do in the comics. Also, ngl, the hard light looks cooler.
- Characters
This, I can understand the POV of angry fans somewhat. Especially when it comes to everyone’s favourite girl, Nakia. In the comics she’s Turkish American and really very awesome, and can easily be headcanon-ed as aroace which is why I would like her to stay as is. In the MCU, she’s half-white and not at all Turkish (angering some Turkish fans, understandably) and is as into boys as Kamala is. But you know what? She’s just as kickass as the comics Nakia, so I didn’t mind.
Aamir in the D+ series is a bit nicer and more lenient when it comes to Kamala, and I didn’t mind that, either. Muneeba’s character has way more depth and nuance in this series compared to the comics. Abbu/Yusof is just the Best Dad in the MCU for real (sorry, Scott Lang) while he was just a pretty awesome dad in the comics.
Bruno is still a genius, but I think this fact is made even clearer in the series, because some people I knew that casually read the comics had no recollection of him being that smart. Zoe is now a tiktoker, and I think it suits her pretty well. Oh, and speaking of tech/generational updates, since these kids were/are Gen Y in the comics and are now Gen Z in the MCU, Kamala now is a fan artist who posts YouTube videos instead of a fanfic writer. Also not a change I’m mad about because it still keeps to the spirit of her character.
Red Dagger probably deserves his own entry as he isn’t one person anymore - in the MCU, the Red Daggers are like a secret clan that protects Pakistan from supernatural threats. At least Kareem is not alone!
- Origins
Because of the events when Kamala was first introduced in the comics, and the events currently in the MCU are so different, she couldn’t get the same origin story. But what she did get was pretty similar - instead of sneaking off to Zoe’s party and getting hit by the terrigen mist, in the MCU series Kamala sneaks off to a convention (similar to her origin in the Avengers game) and gains powers from a family heirloom. The inhumans haven’t been introduced in the MCU yet, so we couldn’t get the terrigen mists anyway, and well, if the comics weren’t being written at a time when X-Men film rights didn’t belong to Marvel, she would’ve probably been a mutant rather than an inhuman.
So… the MCU made her a mutant. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH but okay let’s unpack that later.
things that didn’t work
I wouldn’t say it “didn’t work”, exactly, but there was a point where I thought this could easily go wrong. And that was… tying the MCU Kamala’s origins so closely to her heritage. This doesn’t bother me personally, but I’ve seen op eds on how orientalist it was that the two main Asian heroes in the MCU now both have origins so closely tied to their culture, when other heroes could just happen to have things happen to them. And… I guess I can somewhat see their point? Especially in the beginning, when they were shoehorning all the djinn stuff into her backstory. But this was quickly handwaved away and the way Kamala’s heritage was tied to her story was actually made into an important plot point, so I would say it was done well.
things that worked
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Kamala Khan as a paladin. The comics emphasises the fact that Kamala’s deal is helping and protecting people, rather than just fighting some Big Bad. I love that the MCU never once forgets this. In Karachi, she shields the civilians at the market with her hard light. In the finale, she saves them from the vehicles being thrown their way first, and while another hero might have easily fought back against Damage Control when they escalated the fight, she instead chooses to coccoon the two of them in a protective bubble, and calmed him down. And again in Karachi, even when the veil to Noor was torn and her entire world could be destroyed in that moment, her first thought was that Najma couldn’t, shouldn’t abandon Kamran. G. Willow Wilson had said that one of the things that she thought of when creating Kamala was how her culture/family/religion affected the kind of superhero she would become, and this was reflected really well in the series.
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Community. The comics was great at depicting Kamala’s family and friends - but community is a big part of her life/hero identity, and I love how the MCU series makes that very clear. From the gossiping aunties in the beginning, the way the community got together during Eid, the way the mosque politics worked, the way they found a way to protect Bruno and Kamran even though they knew Damage Control would not respect the mosque granting the kids sanctuary, the way they all came together to shield Kamala against Damage Control in the end. While most superhero show finales focus on a big power battle, this one is more focused on Ms. Marvel saving people. I just love that this is shown so early in Kamala’s superhero career, and whether or not she ends up starting her Champions movement in the MCU (where she empowers everyone, powered or not, to do their bit in making their communities better) I’m happy that this introduction to her character already cemented the kind of hero she will be.
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the reimagining of Ms. Marvel’s aesthetic/origins. In the comics, her first costume was literally a burkini that she never wore, with Carol Danver’s Ms. Marvel lightning bolt logo painted on by Kamala. Since Carol was never Ms. Marvel in the MCU, they updated this by tweaking the “s” in Ms. Marvel’s title to look like the ک in her name written in Urdu instead of a lightning bolt - something I noticed in the earlier episodes, and was confirmed in the 5th ed when her name necklace was broken. And that’s not the only thing! Reaffirming this series’ message on the importance of family and community, and that Ms. Marvel’s foundation is her family, she gets her powers from her nani’s bangle, her domino mask from Bruno, her red scarf from Kareem (Red Dagger), her costume from her mother, and her name from her father. I don’t know, this got me in the feels more than all the Peter Parker/Uncle Ben stuff, just like “good is not a thing you are, it’s a thing you do” is something that resonated with me more than “with great power there must also be great responsibility.” Although the Spidey stuff is cool too! This is just personal preference! (Plus I don’t have “great power”, or even “little power”, so cannot relate lolol.)
other notes
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the depiction of microaggressions and racism with Agent Deever (her never taking off her shoes in the mosque, the comment on why “people like them” should never get powers, etc.) is just perfect, as was the mention of how mosques were already being watched by almost every government agency for supposed “terrorist” threats. At the same time, I also like that this series made it clear that it was DEEVER who was racist, and that the rest of Damage Control were just doing their jobs - Agent Cleary did tell her not to be more sensitive when dealing with the mosque, and the way other agents treated her in the finale made it seem like no one else liked or agreed with her/her attitude much. Also, speaking of Damage Control, is this going to lead to something like the Mutant Registration Act??
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this is already a popular fan theory for obvious reasons, but the post-credits do seem to point to the bangle being a nega band or something similar? I can’t wait to know more, but at the same time, knowing that this gets fleshed out in The Marvels doesn’t feel like enough, because lately the movies just felt too rushed and not as fun as the Disney+ MCU series, because they didn’t have the space to do proper character moments and proper exposition that the series do.
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I had like dozens of other things that I wanted to bring up but at the moment, I am not feeling well enough to do more thinking. Let’s just end this with the fact that I did actually have shawarma for lunch today. Yum! Also? Mahal.
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Also I just remembered that my MCU-related rants were supposed to go into my in-the-works MCU-related zine, and er… I’ve accidentally put my Loki rant in the next superfairyanimal. Oops.
The title of this newsletter is from Ms. Marvel, as spoken by Nakia to Kamala and Bruno.
Stay safe, and remember that Covid is not over!