A brand new hero in her own solo book comes to the Marvel Universe in 2014.
Ms. Marvel is the code name now used by a teenage girl from New Jersey. When Kamala Khan develops shapeshifting powers she decides to become a hero and adopts the code name once used by her favorite Avenger, Carol Danvers.
Writer G. Willow Wilson tells Marvel.com what makes this Ms. Marvel very different:
“The Ms. Marvel mantle has passed to Kamala Khan, a high school student from Jersey City who struggles to reconcile being an American teenager with the conservative customs of her Pakistani Muslim family. So in a sense, she has a “dual identity” before she even puts on a super hero costume. Like a lot of children of immigrants, she feels torn between two worlds: the family she loves, but which drives her crazy, and her peers, who don’t really understand what her home life is like.
This makes her tough and vulnerable at the same time. When you try to straddle two worlds, one of the first things you learn is that instead of defending good people from bad people, you have to spend a lot of time defending good people from each other. It’s both illuminating and emotionally brutal. That’s what makes this book different.”
Kamala will be part of a larger event – the Marvel Universe in the aftermath of Infinity and Inhumanity but the initial story is of the young hero at odds…with herself.
“In the first arc, Kamala is her own primary obstacle. She has to grapple with overwhelming new powers, decide whether it’s safe to tell anybody, and juggle becoming a teen super hero with the expectations of her conservative, Pakistani family.
It’s an origin story in every sense of the word. She’s so young—only 16—that the normal trials and tribulations of being in high school are still very much a part of her life, even as she’s becoming something different and amazing. Crises. Kebabs. Coming-of-age. It’s all there.”
Runaways artist Adrian Alphona designed the new Ms. Marvel – you can see more the supporting cast here in these sketches.
Ms. Marvel #1 arrives in February.
By Editor