Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #6 – “Healing Factor (Part 1)”! Back at it sooner than I thought with Kamala Khan and her abnormal Pakistani-American teenage existence! In the previous storyline, we see the origin story of Kamala Khan’s tenure as Ms. Marvel (Terrigen bomb gas), her awkward attempts to come to terms with her new powers, the emotional tension between she and her family, and the friends that we made along the way.

Also, her best friend Bruno has a shitty brother who’s involved with some twerp who calls himself The Inventor. The Inventor is a giant chicken or something. Hopefully that gets fleshed out a little bit. Kamala fucks with the Inventor’s plans, so now she’s a target.

Other than that? I dunno. Kamala’s brother is a jobless bum. I learned about five Urdu words.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #6 [September, 2014]
Written by: G. Willow Wilson
“Healing Factor (Part 1)”

Hahh, yes, teenagers and their cell phones, am I right? She’s probably getting a selfie right now of her foiling the bank robbery. Fuckin’ zoomers.

Let’s go through another G. Willow Wilson recap:

“Kamala Khan has always felt different. Nerdy interests, strict parents, and now…strange poly-morphing powers. After resucing her best friend, Bruno’s brother from a shady crew, she discovers that Jersey City has a villain lurking in its midst named the Inventor. Good thing the city has a hero now, too. Kamala Khan is the all-new Ms. Marvel.”

Wow, how exciting. No exclamation points or nothing. Maybe I should read something else.

Ahhhh, fine. Looks like we got a different artist this time! Jake Wyatt instead of Adrian Alphona! Maybe Adrian “accidentally” fell into a woodchipper. At any rate, I kinda like the new art. A little more cartoony; should gel well with the super-stretchy cartooniness of Khan’s powers.

On Westside Avenue in Jersey City, a creepy patrol-bot is scouting the alley. Ever since Kamala stormed that abandoned house in Greenville, these robots have been popping up everywhere. Searching. Seeking. Plotting. Scheming. She has to go out every night now to keep them at bay! It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it! Like prostitution. Or making ham.

Ms. Marvel masquerades as an old dumpster sofa. The little patrol-bot figures it out, so she springs into action! “HRRRAAAAH!” she cries as she punches one into a pile of nuts and bolts. It explodes. Sometimes it also explodes after you pulverize it. Makes it a little more interesting.

Her phone rings, and it’s her lazy older brother Aamir. She says she’s studying, but Aamir tells her that her father is ranting and raving about her needing to speak with Sheikh Abdullah, the Most Boring Guy on Earth, about her new delinquent ways! Tomorrow, at the mosque, after the food drive. Capisce?

Kamala tries to bargain her way out of this one. She’ll do dishes for a month! She’ll lick all the paint off the walls! She’ll crawl around the lawn like a worm! Anything! Anything but that!

I’ll make millions selling NFTs! I’ll cure prostate cancer! I’ll align all the planets perfectly to bring good fortune to the Khan household so that mom’s herb garden will finally flourish! I swear!

A bespectacled, stern, non-nonsense, and beardy Shiekh awaits her at the mosque. He, too, is very concerned about her behavior and wants her to sit and hear a very dull lecture from him about it, but Kamala asks to “just get to the part where I say I’m sorry and skip the rest.” Afraid not, sister!

So she tries to ease him into the idea of what she’s been doing around town without, you know, really telling him. “I help people,” Kamala tells him, but that ain’t gonna fly too far. It ain’t got wings. “Sometimes– people get into bigger trouble than they know how to get out of. So I help. Not very well, which is why I end up breaking curfew.”

Sheikh Yerbouti is very suspicious, so Kamala reroutes and attempts another way in. “I don’t mean to disobey Abu and Ammi. It’s just that sometimes I have to in order to do the right thing.

He seems to understand, sorta, kinda, not really, no. BUT, if she claims she’s not good at helping, then perhaps she needs a teacher? Now it’s Kamala’s turn to be suspicious! The room is thick and heady with suspicion! But, there’s no catch. He’s not going to tell her to stop. He’d rather make sure she’s as smart as she can be about it. Whatever it is.

Feel free to come by after hours, though. I’ve got enough tales of Satan and boys to make your head spin!

So now what? NOW, little lady, promise the nice Sheikh that you’ll do your late-night unmentionable deeds with courage, strength, honesty, compassion, and self-respect. Here’s a little mnemonic device for that: CSHCS! Rolls off the tongue. Now, shoo, I’m trying to get the good stuff from the food drive before it’s all snatched up! Ta-ta, now…

WAIT! Where is Kamala Khan supposed to find a teacher? At, like, a SCHOOL or something? Seems like an impossible task! Here’s Sheikh Abdullah’s final words: “When the student is ready, the master will appear.” And then he decides he’s had enough of talking to this annoying teenager and walks out without even a goodbye.

Kamala makes a stop at the comic book store on the way home. Outside the shop is a giant pothole big enough to fall into and die forever. It’s hard to notice the inhuman growling noise emanating from the unfortunate-sized hole in the street. “Hey Roy,” she calls over the kid working in the comic shop, “Does the Coles Street Pothole usually growl?” Roy’s like, what are you, high on pot?? ‘Cause I am! Heh heh.

Roy hears it too, though, and is appropriately alarmed. Kamala takes off like a rocket to “alert the proper authorities” (a bathroom mirror), leaving Roy hanging to possibly get snatched up by giant sewer monsters! Wouldn’t that be fun?

Kamala has an inkling that someone named the Inventor who does a lot of Inventing might use the Jersey City sewer system to hide something WEIRD and UNSETTLING and DANGEROUS. She makes a stop at the Circle Q where her Bruno Buddy is trying to enjoy his uneventful work shift. “Bruno! Costume!” Kamala yells as she speeds through the store. We’ve been through this before with Bruno: stop telling Bruno this stuff. Bruno’s just going to worry. Bruno’s just going to dissuade. Bruno be Bruno. We don’t talk about Bruno.

Ms. Marvel gears up, looking heroic and ready to kick some poop-covered sewer demon right in the balls. Too bad sewers are gross.

Look, kid, Batman spends 19 hours a day in the sewers for fun. You gotta build up that iron stomach!

There might not be any monsters or alligators in the sewers at all. Just a lot of partially-digested White Castle. Kamala starts to feel a little stupid for splashing around for no reason…

…that is, until she rounds a corner and sees a large, makeshift oasis with alligators swimming around. The alligators are strapped with night-vision head gear. So these aren’t your mother’s alligators! Certainly not MY mother’s alligators. They might be YOURS for all I know. I can’t speak for any of my Florida readers.

The Inventor awaits. A tall chicken, who is rather smartly dressed in at least TWO pieces of a three-piece suit and then a large duster jacket, introduces himself as Thomas Edison. He’s sorry he can’t be down in the sewers to greet Ms. Marvel in person. A hologram will suffice, no?

“…you’re a bird.” Kamala states, unable to say much more.

“I AM NOT A BIRD!” Edison squawks birdly into Kamala’s face. A stout, mustached fellow with a sweater vest, Knox, appears and explains that his pet cockatiel contaminated Edison’s DNA when he synthesized him. Knox made a brief appearance at the end of Issue #5. He looks like an annoying little office accountant. Edison tells him to pipe down.

Cockatiel Edison is supposed to be a Thomas Edison clone! The Thomas Edison! The Wizard of Menlo Park! Let me look that up… Menlo Park is only 24 miles from Jersey City! Wow!

Kamala’s like “………so why are you trying to kill me?” And Thomas Alva Birdbrain laughs and hoots! He’s not trying to kill you? Are you serious, little girl? With bionic alligators and weird house-roaming replicant bots? That’s inefficient! Trust me, kid, you’ll fucking know when I’m trying to kill you, you little bitch. Because you’ll be dead! Hahaha! Just kidding, relax, do you want an IBC root beer or something?

Edison’s just experimenting, is all. Can animals be controlled to act against their natural instincts? By the way, the scary part here is that Edison doesn’t want to kill Kamala Khan. He wants to keep her alive. That’s way worse!

Or perhaps you can fight for your right to party instead, if you wish. As long as you fight for something, I’m cool with it.

Edison’s menacing intentions are undercut by that Knox pipsqueak. Apparently, someone has breached the infrared sensors, sir. Someone else approaches the Big Weird Alligator Pen. Edison is furious. A sword flies through the air and impales the headgear of one of the roaming alligators.

“Great, more bad guys with swords? How much worse can this day possibly get?” thinks Ms. Marvel, regretting even walking by the growling pothole in the first place. Buy all your comics online from now on.

A shadowy suited figure approaches. Kamala readies herself and starts running full steam ahead to the assailant. She hollers her war cry: “POWER ATTACK!” It’s showtime baby! It’s…it’s…

It’s Wolverine.

Wolverine, the Pointiest X-Man, is hanging around the sewers today.

We’ve got a new contender for the single worst panel I’ve ever come across during my comic-reading adventures!

“Are you outta your mind, kid? I could’ve killed you! What in heck are you doin’ down here?” Wolverine growls in that husky, sweaty, delicious way he does. Kamala squeals with glee and starts hopping up and down. “I totally put you first in my fantasy hero team-up bracket!”

Wolverine ain’t got time for this and starts to walk away. Kamala starts rambling about her Wolverine/Storm erotic fanfiction placing third on the most-viewed list last month on her favorite fanfiction website Freaking Awesome. “I had you fighting this giant alien blob that farts wormholes!” Wolverine stops for a second and thinks. “Wait– so what was the MOST upvoted story?” he asks, and, unfortunately, it was a Cyclops/Emma Frost romp. Of course it is, that fucking boring-ass loser Scott Summers and his frigid bitch!

Enough of this child’s play! Time for alligator wrasslin’! Wolverine pounces and scrambles and hoists one up, holding it squarely in front of Ms. Marvel. “Hit it, kid! Right in the gullet!”

Kamala gibbers and twitches and refuses to punch an animal, but Wolverine tells her that she will DIE if she doesn’t, so she does, and it gets punched, and she feels bad. She probably killed it! Wolverine walks off while Kamala looks like she’s about to cry.

The two of them amble down a sewer pipe and come across a surveillance camera mounted on the ceiling. “I’ve totally got this,” Ms. Marvel declares heroically and stretch-punches the thing into pieces. While Wolverine appreciates the help, she’s still a kid and shouldn’t really be here. She argues that this is her fight; her friend’s brother was kidnapped and the kidnapper started coming after her? What are you doing here, Logan? Stinking up the sewer a little bit worse than it already is???

No. A runaway from the Jean Grey School named Julie is missing. The trail goes cold right here in this sewer. Hey! Ms. Marvel might have some insight! There were quite a few burnout-lookin’ weirdos at that abandoned house in Greenville. Perhaps Julie is one of them? Yeah, ok, sure, fine, maybe, whatever, you can come along and help.

Enough speculation about what might be going on at the Inventor’s abandoned stash house, because the here and now is this stinky sewer and they’ve got to get out of there alive first, and–

SLAM!

Looks like it’s the Gulag for us, kid.

Prison bars drop from the ceiling! They’re trapped! I’ve seen this part a lot in video games, this is the part where Dr. Robotnik comes out and you have to beat him before you can move on to the next level. Eh, well, what happens instead is that a trap door opens below them and they start water-slidin’ down the sewers. Eventually, they reach a break in the pipes about 20 feet from the underground…subway station?…below. Ms. Marvel tries to hold onto both the pipe and 400-lb-ass Wolverine, but she’s weak as shit so she needs to drop him. And she does. And he’s fine with that. He does a majestic swan dive into the shallow water below.

Now it’s Ms. Marvel’s turn! She flails as she falls, begging herself to shrink enough to avoid too much damage as she breaks through the water. It works. She’s ok. Wolverine scoops her up in his hands and congratulates her on a cool little bit of quick thinking! However, bad news, she’s not supposed to get the Flubber costume wet. It ain’t good for it.

Wolverine struggles to get up after falling 20 feet into a 1-foot depth of standing water. Unbeknownst to mine own self, Wolverine has healing powers? That is to say, he did have healing powers. He doesn’t anymore, and I’m sure I’ll find out why that’s the case in 2014 some other day. So he’s hurt pretty badly! But, he’s good-natured about it! You know, because “good-natured” is how I would describe Wolverine if I had to throw away the first 10,000 adjectives I thought of first.

Ewww, no thanks. No offense, present company excluded, but I believe all mutants should die in a fire.

She gets him up and helps him hobble his way across the underground train station-like catacombs they now find themselves in. Ms. Marvel wastes no time boosting Wolverine’s spirits! He may have been in the superhero game for the last 750 years and Kamala’s been doing it since her last Chemistry test, but she’s getting pretty good at it! So don’t worry, Wolvy Old Boy, Ms. Marvel will handle the superheroing while you recover!

“You a mutant, then?” Wolverine asks, and Kamala’s eyes get as big as dinner plates. All “what the fucking fuck, fuck no, dude” about it. She doesn’t have too much time to think about that right now, though, since she gets distracted by the enormous alligator that approaches them in the shallow water. Enormous, as in, enormous. Godzilla. They’re both screwed.

Dungeon Boss: Most Ginormous Alligator Ever.

Difficulty Rating: 10.

Group Size: Solo.

Final Thoughts

Honestly, How-Do-You-Do-Fellow-Kids jargon and memeing aside, this is probably one of my favorite comic book series I’ve so far started reading through. There’s something very down-to-earth and familiar about it. I’m a sucker for a good coming-of-age story, and this is a good coming-of age story. Too bad there’s only 19 issues. I may have to jump ahead to future Ms. Marvel volumes once I’m finished with the Marvel NOW! series.