Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #9 – “Generation Why (Part 2)”! In the previous installment, Kamala gets to keep her new, giant, magical teleporting dog. She follows a lead to the outskirts of Bayonne, New Jersey, and discovers a large robot that she had to fight! While the ruckus was happening, a little tracking robot slipped onto her person and, eventually, into her backpack.
The large robot followed the tracking robot and crashed through the fucking school! Kamala gets hurt, drains all her energy healing, and can’t help.
But her dog is there. So that’s good.
Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #9 [December, 2014]
Written by: G. Willow Wilson
“Generation Why (Part 2)”
I don’t get it, does Lockjaw have a mustache? Sure looks like he has a mustache. Who made the artistic decision to give Lockjaw a mustache? Why is this the world I live in?
In the large pile of rubble that used to be Coles Academic High School, Kamala Khan kneels next to her mustachioed dog, frowning. Her powers didn’t work at the exact moment she needed them to. What gives?
“I can’t go out there looking like me. Why can’t I transform?! What’s going on?” she panickily rambles. Lockjaw, the Dog with the Fucking Mustache, this is always what his speech bubbles say: “Hrrr– Hurr-uhhh– Hrururru HRRR uhhhh– hrr”. What the hell am I supposed to think with that? Lockjaw has Down syndrome? Is that what I’m supposed to think here?
Walls and ceilings continue to occasionally crumble around them. There’s no more time to wallow! She asks her faithful giant dog (with the mustache) to create a distraction.
She trusts that the giant dog with the mustache has created a suitable distraction as she grows her hands and starts punching and throwing large pieces of anything she can find at the robot. She still looks rather Kamala-y. “Embiggened fists of rage!” she bellows like a nerd as she takes a leap.
It’s a musical dog! Laa laa laaaa, see? Distraction!
“Hey– look! Who’s that fighting the giant robot?!” yells a girl, maybe it’s Zoe. Remember Zoe? Who cares, Kamala’s cover is blown! That’s it! It’s all over! She’s–
“…it’s a dog.”
And what a good boy!
The police finally respond to the scene, looking all incompetent and shitty. Bruno tries to scramble to the school too, not sure why he wasn’t in the school in the first place. Playing hooky on a day the school is mysteriously destroyed is super sus, dude.
“I gotta remember that there are people inside this thing,” Kamala tells herself as she battles the robot, “Somehow I have to make sure they don’t get hurt.” Is she talking about the people in the school, or people in the robot? And if it’s the robot, why the plural? How do you know it’s plural? It hasn’t been plural before!
Kamala ain’t doing so hot here. The robot punches her, whipping her across the room. Or, I suppose, “the room” if it were still a room at all.
The same fool-ass cops from Issue #4 are arguing amongst themselves about whether or not to shoot their bullet guns in the vicinity of somewhere! “It’s gonna be hard to get a clean shot at that robot without hitting the– the ‘giant girl’,” says the red-haired lady cop. The fat-ass black cop tells her to hold her fire; the “giant girl” appears to be the infamous Ms. Marvel!
The robot starts charging its photon beam, whatever that means. Flashlight! Kamala hides behind a slab of concrete while it gets blasted with a photon beam (flashlight). She then picks up that slab with her huge hands and launches the sucker at the walking pile of nuts and bolts.
Kamala is now drained of strength! Good going, Hoss! Now what are you going to do? Lie down and calmly die?
Lying down and calmly dying doesn’t seem too bad in practice, actually.
Bruno sees that Kamala is losing the fight, so he uses the power of TEENAGE LOVE in order to bypass the cops and jump to her rescue! Nothing empowers a lanky 105-pound teenage boy like his crush getting the piss beaten out of her by a robot at the high school.
And even though Bruno gets to her first, a blinding light envelopes both of them for a second and the red-headed Avengers lady whom I do not know the name of appears out of thin air. “Goodness, Lockjaw–you were right to summon me,” she says disapprovingly, as if it were Ms. Marvel herself who made a big mess of this place. And, technically, it was all her fault if you think about it!
Bruno doesn’t recognize this lady either, so at least I feel better.
Avenger Lady scoops up the serene, unconscious Kamala, and gets Lockjaw to teleport all four of them to New Attilan. It must be better than Old Attilan. Newer, at least. I hope everyone can call their mom from there! I don’t think anyone is coming back soon.
These stupid fucking cops try to stop them as they are teleporting. That’s fun.
New Attalin looks futuristic and oppressive, like the Planet Express building without the lobster aliens or the Jamaican bureaucrats! Bruno is pretty calm about this whole thing, I guess he’s seen quite a bit in the last few weeks. What’s an alien city to add to the dang mix?
“Your phone has been ringing non-stop. Your parents are probably freaking out,” Bruno speaks to the out-cold Kamala Khan, as if Ammi and Abu have any other disposition separate from “currently freaking out”. She seems to be floating in a sensory-deprivation tank. I’d say nearly all her senses are pretty damn deprived! Bruno also tells her that the one fat cop recognized her as Ms. Marvel, so they should probably kill him! Just kidding! But seriously. Stick him like a pig.
Whatever. Medusa has snake hair. I ain’t hearin’ no hissin’.
“You gotta rethink your work-life balance, K,” he tells her, chock full of Circle Q burnout clerk wisdom. If she keeps cutting class to fight monsters and robots and Thomas Edison birds, her grades will start slipping. Enough about that though, I get to finally learn who this lady is. Medusa, Ruler of Attilan, Queen of the Inhumans, Owns a Summer Home in Donut Plains 2 from Super Mario World. I feel so enlightened now, thanks.
Vinatos is the alien doctor guy tending to Kamala. He’s got long fingers and he looks like he smells.
Kamala’s sensory-deprivation tank is brimming with blue liquid, which Bruno hypothesizes is “cellular peptide mixed with liquid oxygen”, and he’s almost correct! It’s neuropeptides and oxygen, you dumbshit! And it supports her body’s special healing powers. So let’s wake her up and see if it worked.
A-BLUB-BLUB-BLUB-BLUB-BLUB-BLUB!!
Looks like we’re all good!
“What the what?” she says, a regular Liz Lemon, “Where am I? Why am I covered in slime?”
Oh hello there, Kamala Khan! Welcome to New Attalin! This is your home now, apparently. Enjoy!
I mean, whatever, your home is in Jersey City, fine, but New Attalin is your origin. This is where she is among her own people.
“Long ago, one of your human ancestors was genetically altered by the Kree – an alien race. That genetic legacy has been passed down through the generations – to you. You’re Inhuman.”
Come back whenever you’re ready, you will find that I can shoehorn the topic of puberty into tons of seemingly innocent conversations.
Kamala is just staring at this woman and chewing on her hair. Best buddy Wolverine said she was a mutant like him! As it turns out, though, he also had other theories. “Your powers awoke after you were affected by the Terrigen Cloud, Not at birth, not at puberty–”
Yeah yeah yeah, big scary mist unlocked achievements. But, since you’re already here, “Medusa”, Kamala does have a question that you might be able to field. “My powers– when they first started, I could turn into other people. Even other stuff. Then I found out I could heal, but only in my true form. But today, after I healed when I was fighting that robot thingie, I couldn’t change my face. It was a little scary.”
OKAY, windbag, there’s not one question whatsoever in any of that yet rambling. Medusa doesn’t have time for your life story, else you’re gonna get stoned. Bruno is already stoned, so he’s unaffected, but don’t make me stone you, little miss.
Bug-eyed Vinatos jumps in to answer the question he thinks she was eventually going to get around to asking any day now. Her Inhuman powers possibly become more difficult to revert to after healing. That is to say, healing returns things to their original shape, and more healing prevents that shape from shifting! Like one big mass of scar tissue! That’s all you are right now, just a quivering lump of ugly scar tissue! Feel better?
To put it in gamer terms that only the worst people on earth will understand fully, Kamala likens it to “when you get a really good build going, then the devs decide to nerf your class”. Sure, be a virgin forever.
Finding an identity is already hard when you’re 16 years old. Now Kamala’s a Pak-American part-alien morphogenic nerd. “I am alone in the universe,” she breathes.
Not alone! Unique! Medusa cares about you, she’s cuddly. “There are many others who share your Inhuman legacy–and one day soon, you’ll meet them,” assures Vinatos with all the charm and warmth of a weird bug-eyed alien creep.
Stay here and rest for now, though! Bruno is on board with this idea too! They have a bunch of cans of Dinty Moore beef stew! Is that halal enough for you? Listen, there are about 900 other superheroes who can deal with this Inventor bird guy, you just relax and watch some Teen Titans Go! I mean, uh, heh heh, what even is DC Comics, right?
“Nope. This is personal,” Kamala stands up with heightened determination, “He attacked our school. With our friends inside it.”
Bruno facepalms. This shouldn’t even be a discussion! Vinatos says she’s too young and important to handle this on her own. Stay in bed, you little shit.
“Lockjaw! Zap us back to the non-Star Wars universe please,” Kamala calmly instructs her mustache with a dog attached. Vinatos throws his arms up like a martyred Jewish mother attempting her final guilt gambit. “Fine! Have it your way! Queen Medusa will have my head for this…”
Nice joke, Bruno, or should I say, Jabba the Slut.
So they leave. They’re back in Jersey City breathing in the shitty air or whatever they have over there. Kamala’s parents are yelling at her for going to school on a day that it was attacked by a robot, so I imagine she’ll be grounded for 14 years for this. No more school for her! Home school from now on! Aamir can teach you how to jerk off.
Ammi wants to send Kamala back to Karachi with her grandparents. You know. Where it’s safe! She was driving all over near the school looking for her, what were you thinking being almost-dead! Kamala tells her she didn’t see her, so she came home. That’s it. End of story.
“We came here so our children would be safe– safe from the chaos and corruption and bombings back home. Only after we arrived did we discover school shootings, date rape drugs and gangs. And now giant robots! What did I do to deserve this?…” Ammi laments, bawling her sad little eyes out while Abu stands there like a plump garbage bag of marshmallows. He removes his hysterical wife from the room so that Kamala can be left alone to enjoy her Dinty Moore beef stew!
Kamala knows she needs to stay inside, but there’s an Inventor out there fucking everything up! She immediately calls Bruno and tells him to arrange a meeting between her and Bruno’s lowlife brother Vick over by the abandoned crackhouse for an afternoon of fun and/or games.
She plans to run over to the Circle Q to get her costume, but she discovers a copy of one hanging in her bedroom closet.
The “V” obviously stands for “Bob Vila”. Thank you, Bob Vila!
At the abandoned crackhouse, Ms. Marvel and Vick stakeout the abandoned crackhouse to keep lookout for abandoned crack. Or the Inventor. Whatever comes along first.
“You do remember that this is the place where we got our butts kicked, right?” Vick tries to remind our barely-masked Marvel.
She corrects him: “I got my butt kicked. You stood around being useless.”
They both look pretty useless at the moment, eating McDonald’s and taking turns looking through binoculars. Sorry, a monocular. Like pirates.
Ms. Marvel wonders why this is being called a “stash house”. Ain’t no stash here, unless the “stash” is “runaway kids”. Then it makes sense! Vick says she still has it wrong, but Ms. Marvel spots Doyle coming out of the house before he can continue. He and an assistant are taking a passed-out kid in a wheelchair, hooked up to an IV fluid bag, somewhere. Vick claims that it must be “harvest day”, when they take a bunch of kids to the power plant.
“Not today they’re not,” Ms. Marvel says, getting up to prepare herself for a little foot-in-the-ass and THIS TIME, she’s Red Forman and not Eric!
Vick begs her to stay back, but she’s already gone.
Now you look like Jake Gyllenhaal! Take that, Bubble Girl!
“You’re not taking him anywhere!” she yells, kicking Doyle down with a giant foot. He just laughs. He was prepared for this, no bout a-doubt it! The Inventor really cooked up something for her, check this out:
*unzips pants*
*a big robot appears on the roof to encase her within a menacing, red force field*
*the pants unzipping was inconsequential*
Her powers are powerless against the powerful force of bubble power! “It’s too bad you came down on the wrong side of this fight, bendy girl. The Inventor could really use someone like you,” Doyle tsk-tsks with a smug Joseph Gordon-Levitt smile, “Instead, you’re stuck here all alone.”
“That’s what you think,” she declares, summoning her mustache. Dog. Whatever. Lockjaw shows up on the roof above Doyle and his lackey, then drops his 450-pound bulk right on top of them. So now they’re all distracted, summoning robot minions to help get this smelly dog off of them.
Ms. Marvel takes this opportunity to try to figure out a plan. Not much she can do within her little bubble…except she can take advantage of the beam that serves as a path between her bubble and the robot transmitter.
So she does a little extendo-arm action along the beam and starts fisting the robot.
Yeah, you like that, don’t you? Elbow deep. You’re a bad robot, aren’t you?
She really reaches up into its guts and tears all up in its insides, pullin’ wires and tearing circuitry. The thing explodes! It blows the automaton to smithereens and disrupts the force field. Look at that, some real superhero shit.
A few other miserable, sad-sack lackeys had exited the house to check out the scene. Now there’s not gonna be a harvest! Whatever that is! “You’re free,” Ms. Marvel tells these delinquents who all look like they just left the mothership, “we are shutting down this insane operation.”
They just stare at her like she just came from Mars. Or, if you will…Venus.
“Wait, wait. You got it all wrong, lady,” says one of them, “the harvest has to go on. We’re volunteers. We’re here by choice.”
Final Thoughts
Ah, so it’s a cult! These kids aren’t being kidnapped, they’re being groomed for Kool-Aid drinkin’ and comet-worshippin’ and Trump-votin’. Good for them. Sounds like it’s really going to work out.
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