Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ms. Marvel (Vol. 4), Issue #4 – “Army of One (Part 2)”! In the previous installment, Ms. Marvel chews out her own ass after failing a task for the Avengers. She has a lot going on, though! School. Homework. Her brother is getting married so there will be a thousand family events between now and the wedding. How’s a gurl supposed to do everything at once??

Bruno has the solution, albeit one that he disapproves of wholeheartedly. He has been synthesizing Loki’s golems and is able to make a couple in Kamala’s image! Now she can do Avengers things while her doppelgangers go to school and participate in family events!

Except, the next morning, Bruno discovers about 12 Kamala Khans running around the science lab. Shit’s about to get ugly, and I’m not just talking about Bruno’s wispy facial hair.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 4), Issue #5 [May, 2016]
Written by: G. Willow Wilson
“Army of One (Part 2)”

Ms. Marvel is already feeling the benefits of using clones to do her dirty work. She’s free to pummel bad guys during daylight hours on a weekday! Too bad her bubble will be burst pretty close to immediately: her phone rings and it’s Bruno to tell her that her doppelgangers have multiplied. And, indeed, the science lab is full of clones. Way more than 12 now. They’re like spores, reproducing asexually and all that. Isn’t that gross? Get your skinny butt over to the school now and fix this problem. *slams phone 400 times*

“Can you just… stick them in a closet or something until I get away?” Ms. Marvel asks as she punches mooks with one hand free. Meanwhile, the Kamala clones are trashing the place like they have no fucking manners whatsoever. Raised in a barn, they were.

Meanwhile, downstairs in the gym, a smiling, brainless Kamala clone waits in line to run an obstacle course. Nakia and Zoe notice that they’re being ignored completely. Something funny is going on, they think. Like, maybe Kamala is some sort of pod person now. “Sometimes I feel like I’m losing her,” Nakia says. “Even when she’s standing right there in front of me. We talked about it, but it’s just getting worse.”

How’s this for worse? Kamala runs the obstacle course like a robot and ends up tangled up in barbed wire.

Hmm, but she has good form! I give her a B+

The Khan household has their own ridiculously unrealistic Kamala clone getting ready for a meet and greet with Tyesha’s family. The rest of everyone is downstairs drinking tea and coffee and looking quite grumpy. “Thank you for the wonderful spread,” says Tyesha’s arms-crossed father, “but, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to get to the point.”

So he gets all high and mighty about wanting to take care of his only daughter, how it’s fine that Tyesha wants to be Muslim I guess even though she was raised with a good, correct Christian upbringing, and–

Tyesha’s brother aggressively chimes in with some anarcho-atheism hooey, which their mother waves away as merely a phase.

Needless to say, things are tense here in the living room. Who wants Ritz crackers with E-Z Cheese? Oh hey, there’s Kamala! Everyone wave and say hi, she’ll be the diversion that everyone needs!

“Shaadi mubarak!” she says, entering the room. It means “Congrats on the wedding.” This clone will probably say nothing else, so get ready for the mix-em-ups and the goof-abouts!

Anyway, Abu presents his own concerns for this marriage arrangement. They had never met Tyesha before either, but they had come to know her as mature, steady young lady. Congrats, Mr. Tyesha’s Dad, sir. Now how about those crackers?

It is now time for the celebratory vacant stare and brainless smile.

After a hearty handshake, the Hillmans and the Khans have reached middle ground! Now Tyesha gets to marry a jobless, overly religious loser. Have fun.

Out on the mean streets of Jersey City, Ms. Marvel does hero things while 100 people try to call her on their phones. Nakia, Zoe, Ammi, Bruno, and 96 others that are probably telemarketers telling her to vote for Fredrico Hornhonker in the next election. “Why can’t people just respect my space?” she says, not realizing even for one moment that she totally fucked the butt on this whole situation.

A ninja kid that Ms. Marvel is fighting stops dead in his tracks and points behind her; tells her to turn around and take a look at this shit. The sound of dozens of footsteps hit Ms. Marvel’s ears as she stares in disbelief at a street thronged with Kamala clones. All the ninja kids that Kamala is fighting – four, I think – run the fuck away while Ms. Marvel stands there with her mouth agape.

She finally gets ahold of Bruno. The school is completely overrun. “What do we do?!” Ms. Marvel grimaces in abject horror. “How do we get rid of them?” It’s like, hey sister, Bruno doesn’t know shit. Just stop yappin’ and come to the school.

Oh yeah, and by the way, ingesting fluids will cause the clones to start dissolving into goo, so hopefully the one that’s currently at the Khan household hasn’t drunk any tea or anything lik–

Oh dear.

I’m melting… meeeellllttiiiiinnngg…

The melting girl causes a panicked ruckus at the house while Ms. Marvel is outside behind another house trying to shimmy out of her costume. The families run out the lawn screaming. Aamir is yelling things about God and Satan while Ammi throws her hands up to heavens asking where he daughter is. Kamala runs up garbed in her Sunday best like “I’m here! I’m here! I can explain! Hello, you must be Mr. Hillman, great tie, sir! It was just a science experiment! Hey look, a penny!” while Abu is losing his fucking mind. “You listen to me, young lady,” he spits. “The engagement party is tomorrow night, the nikkah a week later – if you are not present at these events, I will be utterly humiliated.”

Abu playing the guilt card worked. Kamala feels awful for not wanting to be there with her family. She takes off running toward the school. “What if I can’t just put my ordinary life on hold and be Ms. Marvel all the time?” she thinks. “What does that mean about who I am – and who I want to be?”

Kamala makes it to the school and stands out among the crowd wearing red like a living Where’s Waldo? page. Bruno flags her down and debriefs: he and Mike have been working on specs that he plugged into the 3D printer and they may be onto something. For example, there are too many clones! That one they figured out early on.

But what else? I’ll let Bruno explain:

Thanks for the technobabble, Geordi La Forge! Where’s your visor, nerd?

Neurotoxin, eh? Is Hydra involved? Where did this shit come from, huh? Wait! Yes! Hydra! But also, and get this… it was also Kamala. “Faustus was shipping an experimental neurotoxin through the Port of Jersey City illegally. And I stopped his goons, but…” she looks down at the floor with shame. “I never checked myself for possible contamination.”

Bruno has nothing to say but “Well, crud.”

Mike pokes her head through the door and tells them she has a breakthrough. The exact spot in the golems’ biometric code where things got messed up! The bad news is that there’s no way to fix it unless you’re some sort of Einstein Feynman Kardashian super-genius. The good news is that maybe the guy who made the original golems can destroy these new golems! Someone get Loki on the horn. “Zoe’s friend Jacob’s boyfriend Raven says if you light a candle at midnight, turn around three times, and fart, he appears,” smiles Bruno with satisfaction. Kamala remembers that Loki spiked the punch at the Valentine’s Day dance, so fuck him. Last resort.

That night, the engagement party is Kamala-less. Abu is utterly humiliated. Aamir and Tyesha are by themselves reveling in their disgusting, romantic love.

“I hope my family isn’t driving you crazy, yet,” says Aamir.

“Everybody’s family drives them crazy sometimes,” responds Tyesha. “That’s how we stay humble. Look at my family. We argue all the time, but we love each other like nobody’s business.”

What a perfect moment. Nothing could ruin it!

…except for some 40-foot tall Kamala clone busting through the party. Heh. Whoops.

Final Thoughts

WHEN WILL THE INSANITY END?? Kamala Khan just wants to do karate on nerds and now she has to destroy hundreds of versions of herself before things go completely nutso cuckoo in Jersey City?? All this because of some lousy Terrigen mist. Life ain’t fair, I tells ya.