Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #2 – “All Mankind”

* Part 2 of 5 of the No Normal storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #2 – “All Mankind”! In the previous installment, Kamala Khan is a typical Pakistani-American teenager in what I presume to be a very stereotypical Pakistani-American household in Jersey City. She has racist high school peers, she feels weird and alone and abnormal, and she writes a lot of Avengers fanfiction!

One evening, in typical teen movie fashion, Kamala wants to go to a party but her father forbids it. She sneaks out of her house anyway, goes to the party for three minutes, and gets racisted at! She walks away in a pout when her friend Bruno tries to help. A fog envelops her on her walk about, she sees visions of the Avengers and they grant her superhero status!

You’re all caught up. Let’s see where the fuck this is actually going!

SMITE YOUR ENEMIES, MS. MARVEL. LET’S SEE SOME SMITING.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #2 [May, 2014]
Written by: G. Willow Wilson
“All Mankind”

Jersey City – 12 Hours After the Terrigen Bomb – Well, I don’t know what Terrigen is or whether or not I should be capitalizing it at all, but that explains the strange fog that started to envelop the city.

“Okay. So. I passed out in the fog and had a dream that I asked Captain Marvel to make me like her. Apparently she took me literally.” Kamala Khan is all dressed up like a superhero, man. Orange hair, raccoon eye mask, tasteful gray spandex. Yes, that’ll do nicely.

Kamala’s not taking it well, though. She keeps trying to wake up from a dream. Her muscles are all tight and tense. She’s gonna hurl…

…but then she doesn’t, and she’s back to normal. In her normal clothes. She calms down, but then it happens again: all garbed up and doubling over. Her limbs and fingers stretch uncontrollably like putty to impossible lengths. Something ain’t right with Kamala Khan! She tries to stumble her way to a familiar street, phasing in and out of her super form.

I personally wouldn’t want to be caught dead out in public in a superhero costume, let alone out in public accidentally in a superhero costume.

She passes through the peculiar fog, noting that there’s something wrong with that too. As if it “smells like secrets” (and whoever smelt it dealt it, as the old universal law dictates). But she didn’t deal this! Maybe! Or did she? Maybe we’ll find out that she did, indeed, dealt it.

She makes her way back to the waterfront, near the party, and a view of the city skyline shrouded in misty fog. Three helicopters hover, patrolling the area. Maybe something governmenty is going on! Nah, never.

INTRODUCTION SPLASH PAGE! “Meet Kamala Khan. She’s 16 years old. Into Avengers fan fiction. Good at school. Bad at fitting in. So when a strange mist descends and morphs Kamala into a shape-shifting superhuman…fitting in is the least of her problems.”

Thank you, introduction splash page, for filling in some knowledge gaps that, you know, proper storytelling would have been suitable enough for the task! Also, I’d like to point out that I almost wrote “shape-shifting” as “shape-fisting”. Let me tell you, WAY more of an impressive superpower.

Back to normal, at least for now, Kamala keeps on walking and ruminating. Was there something besides vodka in that drink? It felt real though! “Right down to the horrifying realization that superhero costumes don’t include underwear.” Yeesh, that’s dreadful! So Captain America is only a few loose threads away from completely hangin’ brain during an epic fight? Atrocious.

Kamala tries to replicate the event consciously, but nothing happens. Same ol’ boring Kamala. In the sky, though, she sees a humanoid streak of red light zipping away! Maybe something happened to someone else! Or maybe that’s Iron Man? Thor? Captain Marvel? Todd Rundgren? Frank Costanza? Bert and Ernie?

As she thinks, she hears drunk singing coming out of the fog. “Great, it’s Zoe. The party must be winding down.” Josh is completely trashed, and Zoe is annoyed. And then it happens again! Super Kamala! As if it’s an involuntary reflex. As if it happens because she feels the need to not be herself at this moment. Like she has to be “someone cool”. She frowns sheepishly.

Instead of feeling cool, she feels small.

So she shrinks to match. For the first time since the fog rolled in, Kamala is impressed with herself and reveling in the magic.

That is, until she finds her first villain…

Get some bug powers while you’re at it, like that Spidey Boy. What’s his name again? Ol’ Spider Face?

So Kamala jumps around, screaming like a bug herself, while Josh continues to stumble around and yell like a drunk piece of shit. They’re near the end of a small wooden pier. Josh keeps asking and forcing Zoe to dance while Zoe keeps trying to push him away.

And wouldn’t ya know it, Zoe falls into the water! Josh starts howlin’! “HELP, SOMEONE, HELP! BLAHHHBA! BLAAAHB!”

Kamala, having successfully extracted the cockroach from her current situation, has been watching this scene the whole time. “He’s drunk and she’s panicking. If he jumps in, they’ll both drown,” she thinks, priming herself for some real deal superhero action!

Coming to mind immediately is a quote from the Qu’ran that she often hears her father tutting while watching TV: “Whoever kills one person, it is as if he has killed all of mankind – and whoever saves one person, it is as if he has saved all of mankind.”

Hmm? Kill or save? Kill or save? Kill? Save? Kill! Wait, no! Save! Save! Save?…no, kill! Yeah, kill! I mean, save!

Ooooh, “embiggen”. Very cromulent word.

So Ms. Marvel springs into action! Not even really knowing the full extent of her powers yet! Is that wise? I don’t think so! But fuck it, it’s too late now! She pushes Josh out of the way and starts trying to give Zoe words to help her calm enough to stop thrashing around in the dang, like, three-feet deep water. That doesn’t work! So she uses an extendo-hand and reaches in to grab the blond wretch. She scoops up a giant handful of wet dirt, garbage, and Zoe.

Some passersby watched the action from the boardwalk. “Dude, no way! Look! It’s Captain Marvel!” exclaims a woman. They run over to take photos. “Oh my God, your old costume looks great!” They ask for autographs. Zoe is grateful to be saved. “I’m never gonna get wasted ever again…”

And there’s just this look on Ms. Marvel’s face. It’s the same look that Jon Arbuckle always has after one of Garfield’s trademark snappy, decimating comebacks! “I…uh…” and her arm is still overgrown. “Gotta go!” she yells and starts running off into the shroud of mist. The lookie-loos are like “the fuck was that?” and then talk amongst themselves about pasting this shit all over the internet.

How embarrassing! That didn’t seem very heroic! Do you think Captain America was all like “buuuhhh hrfrf?” the first time he ever saved someone?? And I say, yeah, probably! That dude is like that all the time.

Disembiggen? Now you’re just making words up!

I’m starting to notice a distinct FROWN motif here going on, this time when attempting to drag her out-of-control willy-nilly giant extremity around. She hasn’t had much time to get used to all this, I suppose. Feels very alien. Like a sixth sense that doesn’t seem very sensey. She also realizes that “being someone else isn’t liberating. It’s exhausting,” and that’s a fantastic lesson for a teenage girl to figure out all by herself already in Issue #2 of her own series! A lot of growth going on here! Uhh…in more ways than one.

Kamala looks at all she’s got going for her right now. Orange hair! Cool boots! A leotard giving her a big ol’ wedgie! She doesn’t want any of it! Fuck this!

She did like the whole Zoe-saving part though. That was worth it. “Maybe putting on a costume doesn’t make you brave. Maybe it’s something else.” she muses as she wanders back into the city again. A homeless man pushing a shopping cart like Bubble’s Depo gawks at Ms. Marvel; she asks to “borrow” a filthy-looking yellow sweater on his cart. He visually undresses her as she runs off to find her way back home.

Around midnight, aka Mom-and-Dad-are-gonna-be-fucking-pissed-o’clock, Kamala shambles up her street. Lights are still on in the house. Eep. She scales the tree near her bedroom window and regales us with the tales of the two other times in her life she snuck out of the house. ONE!: when she was ten, just to see if she could do it without killing herself. Success! TWO!: when she was a freshman, to go watch the midnight screening of a Harry Potter movie with her delinquent buds Nakia and Bruno.

See? If you got bit by a bug you could just, you know, bug your way back in.

Kamala’s good-for-nothing loser brother, Whatshisname, is still awake. She doesn’t make a very graceful entrance. Kinda sounds like someone falling out of bed, actually. He stops to check on her. Frantically, before he can turn the lights on, she thinks to herself “Kamala. I’m Kamala. Kamala has dark hair and dark eyes and is sort of short and has actually never owned a pair of thigh-high boots–” Presto! Lights on. Kamala’s home.

“I can explain!” she yells, lookin’ like Kamala wearing a homeless guy’s jerkoff sweater. She doesn’t know she looks like herself yet, so she starts raving about her appearance being a big ol’ magic trick. Ha ha! And her brother is like “uh huh, fucking weirdo”.

But no, he’s concerned. She’s acting strange. She admits something did happen, and her brother is all like “MY STARS! WHAT A HORRIBLE SITUATION! TIME TO GET MY MOSQUE NERD BUDDIES TO COME BEAT UP WHOEVER DID WHATEVER TO YOU! OH ME OH MY!” And Kamala pushes him away, all like “get off me, shitbird, I’m fine.”

And her brother wears an expression of smug righteousness: “Oh. In that case, you’re screwed…because Abu and Ammi know you snuck out.” And wouldn’t you know it, there’s Abu and Ammi now in the bedroom doorway, each spinning a FROWN MOTIF of their very own.

And guess who was the big snitch? NICE GUY BRUNO. Blech.

“He was worried sick about you. He said you disappeared from this shaytani [translation: devilish] party alone and wouldn’t answer him,” her mother howls. Kamala can’t believe what she’s hearing. Fucking BRUNO? What a kiss-ass piece of shit.

Here comes the very special episode stuff. Abu “Danny Tanner” tells Kamala “DJ Tanner” that he and her mother have been worried SICK, young lady, waiting by the landline rotary phone in 2014 for the police cops to call about their DEAD ASS DAUGHTER. DJ Tanner tells Bob Saget that it was just a dumb party. Bob Saget is like “then where did you get this filthy sweater? From some homeless man while you looked like Captain Marvel?” This paragraph is starting to run off the rails! Bob Saget’s fuckin’ dead! I’ll regroup.

Abu ain’t even mad. He’s disappointed. And as we ALL know, that’s so much WORSE! But parents just don’t understand! They have no idea what Kamala’s been through tonight. She saved a LIFE, idiots.

“Then tell me, jaanu [translation: sweetheart]. Tell me why my precious Kamala has suddenly become a reckless, disobedient girl I barely recognize,” Abu asks sadly. Dad’s really laying it on thick here, son. And, certainly, the truth wouldn’t make a lick of sense. So all she can do is apologize and work on it. She’s a teenager. Shit sucks right now.

But Ammi doesn’t like that answer. Not enough for Ammi! Ammi demands justice! Ammi wants blood! And now she starts yelling at pops, blaming him for dragging them to this dumbass country in the first place full of heroin-addicts and Joe Rogan fans! One child is a disobedient maniac! The other is practically homeless!

Abu, always the level-headed one, announces he’s going to bed now. Bye!