Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #3 – “Side Entrance”! In the previous installment, we barely learn that a Terrigen bomb had hit Jersey City about 12 hours before the mysterious fog started creeping in, turning Kamala Khan into some shapeshifting weirdo. She has problems adjusting at first. And still does.

She makes her way back to the waterfront, where drunk, douchebag, jock Josh knocks a shrill, can’t-swim Zoe into the water. Ms. Marvel steps in to save the day! And then goes “buhhh” when she’s thanked by Zoe and congratulated by random lookie-loos.

Kamala gets caught trying to sneak home and gets hella grounded. It doesn’t take long for her to decide that she’s going to unground herself. Let’s see how that works out for her. Beginning to think she ain’t smiting no enemies anytime soon.

Just a reminder, these posts are about Ms. Marvel. If you want the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, that’s two doors down on the left.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #3 [June, 2014]
Written by: G. Willow Wilson
“Side Entrance”

OK, introduction splash page! Time to give you Issue #3’s version of the backstory and see how it gels: “Kamala Khan has always felt different. Strict parents, nerdy interests, and now… strange shape-shifting powers? After accidentally morphing into her childhood hero, Ms. Marvel, Kamala saved her frenemy Zoe Zimmer from drowning. It was exhilarating! Until, that is, her parents grounded her.”

No mention anywhere of drunk, douchebag, jock Josh, which means you gotta stick with Tom Writes About Stuff to get anywhere near flavortown with these recaps, boyeee.

There are news reports all over the TV about Ms. Marvel (or, “a woman dressed as Ms Marvel”) saving Zoe’s life in the midst of the “bizarre outbreak of ground fog that covered Manhattan, Newark, and Jersey City”. Reporters talk to Zoe at her home, who mentions that Ms. Marvel is a sudden inspiration for her to “be responsible and help people and stuff”.

The Avengers couldn’t be reached for a comment. Carol Danvers hasn’t worn her Marvel costume in years. Is this a copycat crusader? Is she affiliated with these Avengers dorks? Is she acting alone in the city, just like that one vigilante bat-like DC hero we can’t name or else we’ll get our genitals electrocuted? Questions, questions! Kamala freaks out at the TV while eating a bowl of GM-O’s cereal. “I am so dead,” she panics.

Bruno and his brother Vick are watching the news through an electronics store window like it’s 1972. Bruno asks Vick where he was last night; mom and dad were practically having a stroke during the fog and Vick was nowhere to be found. Vick’s just like “pffft”.

Being a teenager is so hard. Nobody understands me.

Upstairs, Kamala scours the internet looking for anything that can explain her brand new X-Men-style mutant powers. Incognito mode is your friend, sis. Your brother Aamir is going to start snooping around like a dickhead soon enough.

Oh, there he is now! “Kamala? Ready to go?”, and she’s like “BALHABAH! NOTHING’S WRONG, I’M FINE, DICKHEAD,” and they both head out to Sheikh Abdullah’s Saturday youth lecture, which really sounds like a ball of a time. Aamir sits up front like an ass-kisser while Kamala and Nakia are in a different room, as is tradition in any religion of keeping the women far, far away pretty please and thank you. Sheikhy hoots and hollers about chastity, guarding pussies, look what almost happened to that girl who fell in the river! Alcohol and Satan caused that, everyone!

Kamala gets Nakia’s attention and starts asking her vague questions that are going to end up making her feel worse about herself. Stuff like “do you think it’s possible to just wake up one day and be a totally different person where the normal laws of physics don’t apply?”. Nakia asks if she’s on drugs and the Sheikh tells them both to pipe the fuck down. Kamala apologizes, but states that its hard to concentrate on anything when they can’t even see him.

Shiekhy McShiekhface tries to rub out a migraine and explain, once again, that the partitions and side entrances are there to maintain the modesty and dignity of the female congregants. So zip the lip. You can already see Aamir’s horrified surprise that Kamala is even speaking up at all.

Kamala continues to be feisty with the Shiekh while Nakia asks her to stop interrupting the congregation. She offers for she and Kamala to step out to visit Bruno at the Circle Q and get some knock-off Slurpees! They’ll be back before the lecture is over, no one will even notice they’re gone. Kamala is worried about upsetting her family further, but she succumbs to the dreaded PEER PRESSURE and tags along with Nakia.

On their way, Nakia asks Kamala to elaborate on whatever the fuck she was trying to ask her. Plus, she tried sending Kamala a bunch of texts last night. What was that about? So Kamala tries to explain, but she’s still vague about it, and she either thinks she’s going to be in trouble for the rest of her life OR she’s going to have the most amazing life anyone has ever had.

Nakia thinks she kissed a boy. Kamala is like “Ew! What? No.”

Bruno greets them as they walk in. Kamala wonders if that whole scene where she walked away pissed yesterday is just going to be treated like it never happened, and then she decides that she can’t handle it and storms off. “You know what, I really don’t want a squishee right now. I’ll see you at school on Monday, Nakia.”

Yeah, that’s a good way to quell all the arousing suspicion.

Check those BLTs again, you can’t rule them out.

The weekend must have been rather uneventful, because we’re already on Monday morning. I want to know if Kamala ever returned to the mosque! I want to see her parents chew her out for another fifteen pages! I want to see her brother sniff disapprovingly!

It’s science class during free period, so Kamala is doing some more research into her personal Alcohol + Satan matters. Across the room, Bruno stares at her. Kamala can sense it and wishes he would stop. “Okay, she is totally ignoring me,” Bruno tells Vick, “I mean, she is completely turned around like I’m not even here.” Bruno’s bald-headed brother Vick doesn’t give a shit, he wants Bruno to turn around like HE’S here and give him a hundred bucks! Steal it from the Circle Q cash register if you have to! Bruno says he’d punch his butthole so hard that he’d break his teeth if he weren’t his brother. Well, I say that. Bruno should’ve said that.

Bruno’s trying to make a “biokinetic polymer”, aka Flubber. He’s trying to make Flubber. It’s for his scholarship application to Rutgers (boooo). Applying the Flubber to something flexible will make it super stretchy. Like shirts or pants or jeans or shoes or gloves or hats or anything you want to wear, really, if you are super stretchy or something.

Pooping your pants in high school. The worst fear.

Kamala can’t concentrate, she can feel Bruno’s eyes on her. She can feel her parents’ anger all the way from her house. She’s also getting nothing but World of Warcraft Dungeons & Dragons shit on everything she tries to look up. Tension’s rising! Tension’s ri-… oh no!

Like that feeling when your stomach drops and you’re about four seconds from diarrhea all over the place, Kamala gets up and runs out of the room with similar urgency, drawing the attention of WAY more eyes than she’ll be able to feel at all! She tries to hide her right hand as she runs out, which has grown involuntarily, again. In the hallway, she yells at it to “Shrink shrink shrink!”, and it shrinks all right. Now she’s got a little rat hand. She runs into the gym locker room to hide and regain control of herself.

Since the smelly locker room is empty, Kamala takes the opportunity to talk to herself and try to work through getting used to her new powers. In the process, she grows big enough to crash a hole through the ceiling, and then rips benches off the floor to test her strength in giant-size form.

All right, that’s enough of that growing and shrinking and shrinking and growing. More to do! What’s next? Can she morph to look like anyone, not just Carol Danvers Captain Marvel? Yes! Sorta! She successfully attempts to turn into her mother after actually going for Taylor Swift, but that’s close enough! Very similar people, it’s all good. Not Freudian at all.

A rapping on the bathroom chamber door snaps Kamala to attention. “Nevermore” she tells herself, and she turns back into regular ol’ Kamala before the gym class shows up to all yell at her for destroying the locker room ceiling. “I found it like this?” she attempts to tell the coach, grinning widely. No sale. Detention time! Yet another reason for her family to be disappointed. Let’s keep racking them up!

Touched by a Marvel.

On her way out of the gym, Kamala bumps into Zoe and her entourage of jocks. “Oh my God, Kamala, you will not believe what happened when you left the party on Friday night.” And Kamala’s like, “what are you talking about, bitch, I was more there than you were.” But she keeps that to herself.

Detention time! Two rows away from the front of the classroom, Kamala tries to be slick and calls her mother to make up some excuse like “I’m sorry I’m not home yet, I lost track of the time.” Her mother calls her a degenerate and the coach tells her to shush. After the call she sees a text from Bruno who is like “stop ghosting me, bro”. So she decides to stop ghosting him and agrees to visit him at the Circle Q, putting off going home even longer in order to get in even greater trouble. For the love of the sport, of course.

On her way to the convenience store, Kamala has a deep philosophical conversation with herself. Topics run through head about her identity, her role in life now, if these changes are going to be too drastic to ever feel like her old self again. I say, it’s only been three fucking days, kid. Gotta break it in a little bit! She does wish, though, that she could be honest to someone, ANYONE, about all this. But who? Whom. But whom? Who’m. Maybe Bruno if she wasn’t still pissed off at him. Maybe Bruno’s dick? Even better…

“I’m not sure who owes who an apology, but somebody’s gonna come out of this really sorry,” Kamala groans as she enters the store. Here’s what I have to say about that: “who owes whom an apology”. Grammared again!

“Bruno,” she begins as she walks through the door, “I’ve been really pissed at you all weekend, but I’ve thought about it, and–” bzzzort! No time for that weaksauce apology bullshit right now, Kamala Chaka Khan! The store’s getting hella robbed by a hella ski-mask-wearing guy! Start growing some hands and whacking him around a bit.

Sometimes I don’t need to caption anything. Sometimes a panel is perfect as it is.

It looks like a somewhat genial conversation, though, so it’s probably Vick dressed up like an idiot, waving his gun around in this only slightly pre-John Crawford III era. Silly Vick! Kamala doesn’t know that it’s Vick, though. We the readers don’t know that for certain yet either, obviously, but Kamala’s heart is definitely racing more than mine is right now! So, without a doubt, she’s going to do a lot of acting-before-thinking right here! Ready?

She thinks to try 911, but her phone ain’t got no more battery. But that doesn’t matter! She has superpowers! “I am 911!” she remembers. But people are expecting Ms. Marvel, not a “sixteen-year-old brown girl with a 9pm curfew”. Bah! Don’t worry, Bruno Mars, help is on the way!

Yeah, it is Vick. Bruno is lucky he’s not going to call the cops on his dumb ass for trying to pull this armed robbery stunt. “Where did you get that thing, anyway? You don’t even know how to use a gun.” Bruno scoffs, and Vick takes that in stride. Gun’s not loaded anyway, watch: *trigger* *click* *Hiroshima blows up*

Anyway, Vick says this whole idea was Bruno’s fault for not lended him $100 like he had asked. It’s always Bruno this and Bruno that! Bruno, the smart son. Bruno, makin’ Flubber on his own time! “When the Inventor comes, things are gonna change. You’ll have to start treating me with respect,” Vick says mysteriously, to Bruno’s irritated confusion.

Vick doesn’t have time to expound upon this, since Ms. Marvel Kool-Aid-Mans her way into the store at this moment. “Put the gun down and step away from the cashier, you wannabe hipster punk,” she declares, uh, “menacingly”.

It took three issues to make the Bill & Ted joke.

She revs up a giant fist, ready to squash this piece of shit like a little twerpy bug, but Bruno tells her to hold her dang horses. She does not hold any horse. She slams her fist down on the counter, splintering it into kindling. Vick leaps out of the way just in time, then circles back to gut-punch her. “You shoulda stuck to rescuing bimbos, lady!”

Ms. Marvel scoops Vick up with her large fist and lifts him high up in the air. He thoroughly empties his bowels. “Hey! Lemme go! I’m sorry!” he gibbers while Ms. Marvel scolds him as if he were her good friend’s dumbass teenage brother. Before Bruno can admit that this is all a misunderstanding and this ski-mask jabroni is his brother, Vick yells to put him down. “You’re squeezing me really hard–” he whines. Ms. Marvel tells Vick that she’ll drop him if he promises to leave and never come back, and he agrees to these very diplomatic terms.

Kamala feels fuckin’ POWERFUL, man! Like she could really derail a freight train with her dick right now! High as a kite on this stuff! Destined to do great things! And, furthermore, sh–

BLAM!

Whoops! Oopsy! That’s the sound of Vick’s actually-loaded gun firing a round in Kamala’s stomach. Vick, distraught, stares at the gun like it has a mind of its own. Bruno is like “you’re shot ma’am”. Ms. Marvel, catatonic, is like “huh, how about that”.

Final Thoughts

It’s all fun and games until the teenage superhero gets a bullet in the gut!

Things are really spiraling out of control here. Throughout this whole issue I was imagining just how pissed off Abu and Ammi were going to be with each successive act of brazen, semi-delinquent behavior, but I never expected a goddamned gun to go off! Bravo, G. Willow Wilson, you certainly don’t see that in a tropey teen movie!