Poor Kamala Khan — a star that burned too bright, she was unceremoniously killed off and brought back to life all for the purpose of MCU marketing. I talked already about how the intense push for MCU synergy has always been a problem the comics have faced since the Disney buyout and rise of the MCU as a pop culture superpower, but the current direction of Kamala might be the worst yet.
I always feel the need to say as a disclaimer that, yes, I know Kamala was originally planned as a mutant but was made into an Inhuman by the time of her debut because the Inhumans line was being pushed. But drawing board changes are completely natural and part of the creative process. Wolverine was supposed to be a teenager with claw gloves, and Nightcrawler was originally supposed to be a DC character — these early-stage changes don’t take away anything because fans never had teenage Wolverine or Nightcrawler at DC in the first place. It’s the early changes that are the building blocks for characters to start from and, ultimately, what was built afterward is everything we know and love about these characters. To act as if these drawing board stage changes are superfluous is ludicrous.
I also always feel the need to say as a disclaimer that, no, Kamala becoming a mutant/Inhuman hybrid isn’t inherently a problem in itself. If a creator had the story and decided that what would best serve Kamala’s character would be this new direction, I’m sure they could have made it work. But the fact is, prior to Iman Vellani taking the reigns of Ms. Marvel for her miniseries Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant, nothing that was done with this character for the mutant arc was actually done in service for the character.
Kamala is the newest MCU child, and after some years, Disney finally has the rights to the X-Men and are attempting to set the stage accordingly. Kamala being a mutant in the MCU is one thing — she was never an Inhuman there and so this is completely new lore they’re building– but because Kamala is the earliest confirmation of mutants in the MCU, she’s absolutely being used as marketing and a starting point for the X-Men in the MCU. And because of the parasitic relationship the comics have with the movies, it’s intertwining Kamala’s story with the X-Men because she’s probably going to be on that team in its first incarnation.
Historically, one of my favorite things about mutants in the Marvel Universe historically was how they could exist anywhere. Mutants are a blanket metaphor for oppression in the Marvel Universe, borrowing aspects from multiple real-life marginalized groups to create the metaphor. The X-Men are the premier mutant superhero team, but not every mutant is an X-Man, and that was a story beat I thought really worked for the worldbuilding of mutants.
There’s something hard-hitting about that narrative of “someone you know is a mutant” and that they are everywhere. One of the most striking mutant-related pieces of imagery I’ve ever seen to this day is the “Do you know what your children are?” ad (see below). It’s so easy to look at this image and draw parallels between the “hidden mutant” and the experience of masking your disability from neurotypical peers or the fear of being outed as a closeted gay person.
Courtesy of Marvel.
And the child in this image is Franklin Richards, which adds a whole new layer of meaning to it, I think. That global feeling to mutants and the idea that they are everywhere was a strength to the metaphor, and the idea that Franklin Richards, the child of beloved superheroes could still be targeted like this and othered like this, was extremely real. That’s part of the reason the Franklin retcon disappoints me so much — it takes away from what he represented within that global metaphor. It took away from how the greater Marvel Universe interacted with that metaphor like the Fantastic 4 hosting playdates for Franklin and his mutant friends Artie and Leech.
I loved how mutants weren’t synonymous with the X-Men, but the X-Men were the mutant superhero team who dealt with mutant-related problems at large. Namor isn’t on the X-Men 99% of the time, but he’s still a mutant. Namor has his own solos even. Firestar was primarily in Avengers books for years, and she was still a mutant. Mutants are everywhere — just like disabled people, gay people, trans people, and people of color are, and I loved having all these characters who were still mutants but didn’t have to be tied primarily to X-Men stories because it said something on a grander scale.
And I think in an ideal world — or perhaps at this point, an ideal future years down the line when the MCU has less control over the comics’ stories — Kamala Khan could be that character, too. There’s nothing really stopping Marvel from allowing Kamala to be one of the aforementioned mutant characters who have their own stories and aren’t primarily X-Men characters except Marvel themselves.
I’ve said it before, but I think as X-Men fans we’ve become accustomed to being defensive because we’ve had the worst of the MCU’s synergy push since AVX, and so there’s always a bit of touchiness when criticizing any story choice that happens to involve the X-Men. But limiting this conversation to, “Oh, so you think this X-Men related thing for a character is bad” is a complete misunderstanding of the problem that’s taking place. The problem isn’t that she is a mutant — it’s the direction that was taken and is in danger of being maintained by writers.
The problem is that not a bit of this story exists for Kamala, her character, or her story. It’s that it’s MCU marketing first and foremost — and a rush job to line up with future MCU projects. What does it say for a medium that relies on the creativity of its writers if said creativity is ultimately stifled by the direction of its “adaptations”? Not even her death, which spring-boarded this retcon, was done for Kamala — it was a Spider-Man event in which she was just a prop. That death story is still one of the most insulting ways to treat a landmark character like Ms. Marvel I’ve ever seen. And it’s not just insulting to the stories that made that character so beloved that she’s already got an MCU adaptation in the first place, it’s insulting to the fans.
Kamala is intrinsically tied to the X-Men in the comics because Kamala is the starting point of the X-Men in the MCU. That’s it. Her presence in X-Men and the publicity Marvel gives her stories right now are almost like joint marketing both for the future direction of MCU’s X-Men and MCU’s Kamala rather than any desire to tell a story with this character or expand on her lore.
I’m sure some creatives and folks working on her stories over the next few years (particularly Iman Vellani) actually do love the character and want to write a meaningful story and will do the best they can. Still, the direction and specific synergy mandate is beyond them. It’s a problem that stems from the system and the corporate demands, not the talent.
I look at the current state of Ms. Marvel and I’m sad. Her death told me that characters like Kamala aren’t seen as important enough to get their own event or even told in their own story. Even though I knew she’d be quickly resurrected (and brought back as a mutant to please the MCU overlords), I’m still incredibly sad at the state of her comics as a Ms. Marvel fan. I even look at her current costume and I’m sad.
Though I wanted a new solo venture for her, I was hesitant to read Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant because of how rushed and forced and divorced from Kamala this whole retcon had been. Vellani practically had the weight of the world on her shoulders when she was given this project because of how hated the handling of her mutant story had been thus far among fans. Still, in every single way she could deliver, she absolutely did. I truly think it’s the first time I’ve enjoyed anything Kamala has been in since her unfortunate Amazing Spider-Man venture.
And yet I don’t see very many people talk about it.
Part of the reason I think Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant has flown under the radar is because the marketing surrounding it and the writing prior to this series really almost set it up for failure — or at least overt apathy from fans. The new costume, the publicity Marvel had been giving this miniseries through social media marketing and its own publications — all of it centers around Kamala as a mutant and this new status quo far more than Kamala herself or the existing lore fans love about this character.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24788457/Ms_Marvel_New_Mutant_Design_Sheet.jpg?resize=740%2C1124&ssl=1 "Ms Marvel New Mutant Design Sheet")
Courtesy of Marvel.
Ms. Marvel, the self-made hero of Jersey City, has roughly 12 Xs across her costume. Her own logo is small and relegated to the bottom of her shoes and off-center on her top. I notice a lot of the cultural elements of the original Ms. Marvel costume are missing from Jamie McKelvie’s redesign, and again, that’s something that never had to disappear even if she’s being rebranded to X-Men status. That’s something that never should disappear from any Kamala costume.
I think there’s a misconception that Kamala’s costume isn’t her own and that she needed to rebrand from an Avengers character to an X-Men character. But the truth is, Kamala’s costume was entirely her own — she made it in her bedroom from her burkini (which is a swimsuit marketed for Muslim women).
Courtesy of Marvel.
Arguably the most famous Kamala Khan line (adapted in both the TV show and the Avengers video game) comes from this very scene where she designs her superhero costume in her bedroom.
Courtesy of Marvel.
Kamala becoming Ms. Marvel happened because she accidentally shapeshifted into Carol Danvers’ Ms. Marvel (in universe she was already Captain Marvel at this time) as she ran to save her classmate. And because of that inciting incident, Kamala continues to do heroic deeds but keeps shapeshifting into Carol to do them, leading the townspeople to say Ms. Marvel is in Jersey City. In that first volume of Ms. Marvel, we see Kamala othered by her classmates and feeling insecure at times and there’s this running motif about how none of Kamala’s heroes look like her. In the initial scene where she turns into Carol’s Ms. Marvel and declares she wants to be “like them,” she’s surrounded by some of her heroes: Carol Danvers, Tony Stark, and Steve Rogers. It’s a story beat that’s very meta as well because Kamala really was such a unique hero, becoming the first Muslim woman at Marvel to headline her own solo.
Kamala had never seen a hero who looked like her, and she’d experienced teasing from her classmates that othered her, making her doubt her own ability to be a hero. It’s not the Avengers or Carol Danvers who give Kamala the strength to take her own name and actually be the hero she wants to be — it’s her family, her friends, and her community.
Courtesy of Marvel.
Carol Danvers didn’t even know who Kamala was when she became the new Ms. Marvel. Kamala doesn’t even meet Carol until the end of her first solo series, which is long after she’s taken the name for herself and established herself as Jersey City’s hero. Kamala making her own costume to go along with the name she’d accidentally been granted was literally how she became her own hero. It had nothing to do with the Avengers, Carol, or any superhero team — Ms. Marvel was hers and she redefined what it meant to be Ms. Marvel entirely.
So much of volume one of Ms. Marvel is about how Kamala learns to become a hero and claims this identity for herself that she never thought she could have. And to see her own logo and own identity so nonchalantly pushed aside is a huge disappointment. It feels like pushing such a vital part of her character and her own journey aside. It feels like they want to say “Kamala is another X-Man” rather than “Ms. Marvel aligns herself with X-Men”.
The Inhumans are, quite honestly, barely a fixture in Ms. Marvel, which is why the Inhumans of it all never hindered her character. The Inhumans who appear most in Ms. Marvel and the most prominent Inhumans stories in Ms. Marvel are characters like Kamran, who were created for her book. The hands-off approach with the Inhumans allowed Ms. Marvel to tell a story that centered Kamala and her cast. That’s part of what makes her book so good — you just fall in love with this setting and this cast and how it’s brimming with warmth. Jersey City practically feels like a character in its own right, and you get those scenes where Kamala gets a pep talk from Sheikh Abdullah at the Mosque or is comforted by her father at the dinner table.
There’s quite literally nothing stopping the X-Men from operating the same from a narrative standpoint. However, Marvel at-large and The New Mutant especially proves this point just as much as it proves my point of how hiring a writer who cares about and loves this character and her cast can make the new status quo work in a meaningful way.
Until The New Mutant, Kamala’s family and city were barely seen, which is something any Ms. Marvel fan would tell you is ludicrous for a story centered around her. Until Vellani took the reins in her miniseries, we didn’t even see a single member of her supporting cast. It’s almost like her family, her friends, and her life is completely secondary in X-Men. And where it feels as though Vellani’s knowledge and love for the character allow her to make lemonade out of the lemons she’s been given, it feels like the X-Men writers have no clue what to do with her. The first time we see Kamala’s family, Emma Frost erases their memories so they would never know she died, was resurrected, or was Ms. Marvel in the first place.
Courtesy of Marvel.
And, once again, I have to wonder what good this does for Kamala’s character or her story because of what we’ve lost in the process. It’s not just the fact that these integral pieces of Kamala’s story have been removed from the chessboard following a major story change for her, it’s how unimportant they feel. Kamala’s family’s memories of her being a superhero were removed first in Saladin Ahmed’s Magnificent Ms. Marvel, which was arguably one of the most disappointing points of that series because Kamala’s family previously knew about her moonlighting as Ms. Marvel. One of my favorite scenes in any comic book I’ve ever read was when Kamala’s mother tells her she knows she’s Ms. Marvel and that she’s proud of her.
Courtesy of Marvel.
It’s her family who instilled in her the values (like her kindness) that make her a great hero in the first place. And Kamala’s relationship with her family is a breath of fresh air for comics in so many ways. Her family not knowing she’s Ms. Marvel anymore is a huge disappointment, and instead of correcting this clear bit of wrongdoing, X-Men erases their memories once again, allowing her family to be background characters for the foreseeable future.
I think a lot about how so many mutants have a negative relationship with their families or were disowned for their mutant status, and how that is sometimes a really relatable reality for many queer kids whose families prove unaccepting. But no minority experience is universal, and there actually are some people who have good relationships with their families who support them through their hardships even if they’re different from them personally. Kamala’s family knowing her identity and loving her, all the same, was such a heartwarming part of Ms. Marvel and something I do think is important to keep. It’s a grander sentiment that I think could be strengthened by the mutant retcon, showing a family who loves their daughter and supported her even after discovering the superhero secret she was terrified they’d learn.
Iman Vellani has to work with what she’s been given in The New Mutant, but even while Jersey City and her family are being left behind for her arc to infiltrate and spy on Orchis, there’s a weight to them that feels so natural. Even their voices (Kamala’s included) feel completely in line with who we know these characters to be after so long. I look at this scene with her family and compare it to the one in X-Men and it really feels like night and day. This actually feels like a Kamala comic even despite the fact that Jersey City nor her family are here very long.
Courtesy of Marvel.
X-Men and any X-Men content she’s had thus far removes her farther from her family, friends, and city, making it feel like she’s being moved farther from her own story and journey and closer towards X-Men lore entirely when these two ideas never had to be oppositional to begin with. Vellani seems to understand that even within her first issue of Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant, which moves her out of Jersey City and away from her family but still manages to find a way to keep her community close to her. Her culture is present in Vellani’s book –that is perhaps one of the most vital aspects of writing Ms. Marvel in any capacity and yet it’s been a part of her character that’s been missing from many of these writers’ interpretations of her as of late.
Bruno appears heavily within the first issue, and while X-Men stresses the importance of keeping her loved ones away from her new life, Vellani has Kamala tell her friend the truth about her instantly. Because clearly Vellani understands that Kamala wants her loved ones to be a part of her life and that she trusts them and values their contributions to her life as her superhero alter ego. The way Kamala thinks, talks, and acts feel more in line with the hero I knew from Ms. Marvel historically than anything I’ve read in the last year.
Courtesy of Marvel.
While McKelvie is a very talented artist, his costume for Khan is more of an X-Men costume first than anything, which perpetuates the problem her character has at the moment with the prioritization of her X-Men status. Vellani didn’t design the costume, and I don’t think she had any input on it whatsoever, but the way she explains the costume in The New Mutant once again feels completely organic and natural. I still feel strongly that her new costume shouldn’t erase the cultural elements or the homemade feeling of the original costume –and yes, I do think the new X costume could still feature her own logo more than it does. However, to explain the reasoning behind having an X-Men costume/logos and new color scheme in the first place as a political statement by Kamala is one of the greatest strengths of how Vellani writes this character in this era over anyone else thus far.
With anti-mutant hatred once again at a new high, Kamala wants to show herself as an example of what mutants really are as opposed to the fear-mongering myths the people have been fed. It hinges on Kamala’s ability to put herself out there for people in need and her hope for the goodness in others to prevail — two things quite imperative to the very framework of her character.
Courtesy of Marvel.
And just as the Inhumans lack of presence physically in the original Ms. Marvel run was a strength for that narrative, Vellani does the same with the mutants. And by doing so, she proves that it is possible to write this character as a part of that cast without having her story consumed by it entirely. When the X-Men show up in Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant, they aren’t all-consuming. Kamala’s interactions with them once again feel natural and authentic to her character — while being both good story fodder and character moments for Kamala first and foremost. These little moments serve the X-Men narrative as well since she’s forming a rapport with these people who are a big fixture in her current status quo, but it really is Kamala’s book first and foremost.
Courtesy of Marvel.
I can read Kamala at the Hellfire Gala and her appearances in X-Men the same way as I read Amazing Spider-Man; it’s soulless. It’s not her story at all, and she’s more of a plot element than anything else. But I read something like Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant and feel like I’m coming back to Jersey City sometimes even though I’m clearly not. It’s the difference between writing an X-Men story or a Spider-Man story featuring Kamala and writing a Kamala Khan story where the X-Men and her status as a mutant are present and important fixtures.
X-Men, and the way in which Marvel chooses to speak about Kamala’s current status quo, proved my fears as emphatically correct. Luckily, in the same breath, Vellani proved my greatest hopes correct –all it takes to make any character change like this work is the right author. The prevailing problem with X-Men and Spider-Man was that they weren’t her stories, but Vellani’s book is —finally, she gets to be in a book about her own status quo change where something major happens to her and it is in a book that actually has her name on the title. Anyone who knows anything about Iman Vellani knows how much the character of Kamala meant to her even before she got the coveted role in the MCU. As such, that robust love and passion for her shines throughout her writing.
Currently, the most we know is that The New Mutant is a miniseries, and once it concludes, Kamala is without a solo once again. She’ll likely appear in the X-Men ongoing for quite some time during this new era for the mutants, especially as the MCU puts all its focus into setting up the X-Men’s impending arrival. Still, as long as that title treats her as a prop instead of a character with her own history, it will never understand the character or magic of Ms. Marvel.
The truth is, until the MCU marketing isn’t dictating the direction of her stories entirely and she’s allowed to be treated as her own character with her own lore primarily once again, I think I’ll be sad with the current state of Ms. Marvel. This series was once a breath of fresh air in so many ways, and now it feels like that air has been polluted by corporate demands. Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant is a beacon of hope for how this character and this change could be handled, but I don’t know that I have the faith in Marvel to recognize that in full.
Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant #3 is out now, with issue #4 due out November 29.
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