I looked all over for a thread dedicated to this title, but couldn't find one.
I read issues #2-5 this morning. I really like this. I'm not sure why I like this one, because my cranky old man ways normally hate stories about teenagers. I had read issue #1, and I did like it, so that's what kept me buying it without reading it.
Here's what's different about this and, say, Young Avengers.
- The protagonist, Kamala, isn't annoying. She is kind of a dork, but she has a great, awkward sort of uneasy confidence in what she is doing. There was a fantastic character piece at the end of the arc, where she has been threatened by the local gang, and instead of her knees shaking, she lifts her head up and throws her shoulders back and says, "Bring it." (That's all paraphrase...you get the idea.)
- Her family isn't awful. She has a pretty normal life. But they do worry about her, and they want to protect her.
- She has kept her cultural clothing as part of her costume.
In spirit, Kamala is an all-new, all-different version of Peter Parker. But I don't want to undersell this as another Spider-Man. It's so much more than that.
I know I saw Adrian Alphona's art on Runaways a time or two whenever I would take a look at that book, but the art never looked like this. Wow. In the first issue, it looked a little bit shaky (but still cool...I mean literally "shaky"), but by the fifth issue, the art had already evolved into a much cleaner line, and I love how exaggerated some of the characters are.
Years from now, I believe this will still be seen (perhaps even more) as a very important book.
Replies
Maybe, I'm curious but I'm not going to take the chance. A young heroine in the mu has in my experience zero chance at happiness and I expect SHIELD will be grabbing her off the street and threatening her family if she doesn't work for them.
It's nice of them to try a fresh face, but I find it hard to believe that in an mu filled with Original Sin and AvX and the governments current war against the FF (where they've swiped the kids from the FF and booted them out of their own headquarters) that any young woman with powers won't be gone after. When I think of the kids like her after cw and what they went through at Camp Hammond and what the current FF kids are going through at Camp Hammond and what they went through in Avengers Accademy... Sorry the kind of misery she has to go through being part of that sort of mu just doesn't appeal to me.
Mark S. Ogilvie said:
That said ...
I've been reading Ms. Marvel since the beginning, and I've enjoyed it very much. I find the young heroine, Kamala Khan, very relatable, but then, I like coming-of-age tales (such as Good as Lily, under discussion over here). I like how they're taking their time with her discovering her abilities.
I also appreciate the window into her community, which, I believe is being plausibly and authentically represented. I still remember the introduction of Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung Fu, in which his mother was delineated as White -- a decision by Stan Lee himself -- so readers could relate to him. I don't understand that decision. I have never understood that decision. I cannot understand why having two Chinese parents would make Shang-Chi a chararacter readers can't relate to. I cannot understand how having one White parent makes Shang-Chi a character that is easier to relate to.
Over in the thread "Randy Jackson Reads Luke Cage Hero for Hire/Luke Cage Power Man", people are looking at Luke Cage's origin and discussing the horrible melange of stereotypes that we fused into Cage's character. I believe the creators of Ms. Marvel are doing a better job at depicting someone who comes from a culture that isn't the white-picket-fence version of small-town America.
ClarkKent_DC said:
Somebody let me know when and if that sort of thing stops. I'm going to stay in the Silver and Bronze Ages until then.
Mark S. Ogilvie said:
Ron M. said:
Hey, look fellows, if you don't want to read the title, that's fine. But what's described above has not occurred in this title. I know; I've actually read the stories. You -- and I'm looking at you, Mark -- by your own declaration have not read the stories. It's not fair to criticize a title based on things that aren't even in stories that you by your own declaration haven't even read.
True.
When I saw the title of this thread I thought it was on the real Ms. Marvel, not the latest one. Sorry.
Mark, I amended the title of the thread so that there's no reason for you to be confused anymore. This thread is officially about a title you haven't read.
Thanks, Clark, for bringing us back to the purpose of the thread. I agree that there is no reason to we can't relate to someone from another culture. Especially when the themes are so universal. What I really like is something you touched on; they introduce us to this culture without an infodump, tons of tedious text boxes, or anything like that. It all just unfolds organically. Beautiful book!
In defense of Stan on the issue of Shang-Chi's mother, Lee was a pro in an era where comic publishers were occasionally punished by distributors for veering too far from what they approved of -- and evidently they were pretty conservative. EC got into trouble with them a couple of times, once with an anti-Klan story, and Warren's Blazing Combat was literally killed by distributors refusing to distribute a war book that wasn't hawkish enough for them. (EC's "New Trend" was killed the same way.) Martin Goodman had the Black Panther adopt a full face mask in his intro -- rather than a half-mask exposing his chin -- for fear the book would not be distributed in the South. And so forth.
Stan was (and presumably still is) a New York liberal, but he was well schooled in staying within the parameters established by the distributors, especially in the South.
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