Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1 – “Meta Morphosis”!

I don’t know Ms. Marvel. I know Captain America, Miss America, and Captain Marvel, but I don’t know anything about Ms. Marvel other than she’s a Pakistani-American teenager, and neither of those things might have been true ten years ago. THIS incarnation of Ms. Marvel is a Pakistani-American teenager, and that sounds too absolutely different from what I’ve been dealing with so far to pass it up now.

G. Willow Wilson grew up in New Jersey with white atheist parents. She converted to Islam at age 21. I suppose that’s close enough. Get a Pakistani-born Muslim woman writing Ms. Marvel one day. SOMEONE GET NIGAR NAZAR IN HERE. For fuck’s sake.

Anyway, I expect a coming-of-age story where a New Jersey teen shoots lightning out of her eyeballs, smiting her bullies with surreptitious glances during geography tests. Let’s see how off the mark I am with this one.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1 [April, 2014]
Written by: G. Willow Wilson
“Meta Morphosis”

Young Kamala Khan is at a place called “Easy Greasy BLT” where she all but has her nose pressed against a hot case filled with bacon sandwiches. “Delicious, delicious infidel meat…” Kamala mutters to herself while her friend, Nakia, chides her by her side. The cashier needs them to shake a leg, because, I don’t know, why would he give a shit? At all?

Kamala calls Nakia “Niki”, which she doesn’t like. “Sorry. Nakia. Proud Turkish Nakia doesn’t need ‘Amreeki’ nickname. I get it.” Nakia tells her to go get some veggie bacon. Bruno, the cashier, grits his teeth as a young woman named Zoe enters this fake-ass Subway.

“Zoe, every day you come here, and every day I tell you this isn’t Starbucks.” moans and groans the facepalming Bruno. Women! Always wanting coffee! Ha! Zoe looks like she weighs about 70 pounds. Now another guy, some jock in a DAVID LETTERMAN jacket walks in to ask Bruno if he’s going to “the party”. Bruno’s answer depends on what the “meathead quotient” is gonna be.

I’m going to stop right here for a moment. I’m only about nine panels in and this is the most John Hughes high school bullshit I’ve had to endure throughout my comic book reading journey so far. Here’s how real high schoolers talk: “uuhhhh, there’s a fart in my butt.” “Yeah, your face looks like a fart in your butt.”

Wooo baby! Let’s see just how racist we can get!

So everyone in this Marvel Universe Subway Shop (with its own in-universe Jared Fogle pedophile mascot, I’m sure) knows each other. The jock asks Kamala and Nakia if they’re allowed to come to the party. Kamala frowns and says she isn’t allowed. Nakia isn’t going if there’s alcohol. Zoe starts running her mouth about Nakia’s headscarf like a dumbass gawking at a zoo animal. Nakia is patient, but cold; lets Zoe know that her dad actually wants her to stop wearing it. “He thinks it’s a phase.”

Josh, the jock, tells Zoe that class starts in 10 minutes so they’d better go. She throws out a few effusive, giant-smile goodbyes and they leave. “I hate her,” broods tall, swarthy, ratty peach-fuzz-faced Bruno. Kamala says she’s nice, but Nakia scolds Kamala’s naïveté. “You are not allowed to defend Zoe Zimmer. Even your sad nerd obsession with the Avengers is less irritating.”

Great, the main character in this series has a sad nerd obsession with the Avengers. Booooo. Boo to that.

The girls leave the store to make their way to school, with Bruno following suit after a quick shift change. “Let’s face it, my chances of becoming an intergalactic superhero are even slimmer than my chances of becoming blond and popular,” Kamala mopes. Well, good things come to those who wait, Kamala Khan. Pretty soon you’ll be smiting your bullies with lightning eyeballs, I assure you.

I wonder if Planet Unicorn is in the middle of a global warming crisis.

Later that evening, Kamala is reading through her own Avengers fanfic that she had posted to freakingcool.com! Go ahead and click that link, it’ll take you somewhere freaking cool! I promise!

The Avengers are battling a massive, pointy, dragon-like creature! Captain America! Iron Man! A lady with a giant spiky club! Captain Marvel? I still don’t know any of these superheroes, you guys. But when Mother Khan calls her daughter down to dinner, Kamala tells her that this particular fanfic got almost 1,000 upvotes so far on Freaking Cool! Mrs. Khan is frowning, obviously uninterested in online matters. And who could blame her? It’s all just Twitters and Snapchats and Ask the Jeeves Man. “I didn’t understand one single word of that sentence.” her mother snorts, “I thought you were up there doing homework.”

They both slump their way to the dinner table, where Kamala’s older brother, Aamir, is already praying at the table all garbed up in Islamic attire. Their dad is wearing a dress shirt, tie, and slacks. “Prayer is noble, but when you spend all day praying, it starts to look like you’re avoiding something. Like finding a job, for example.”

Aamir is ready with a smug retort. He tells his father that he’d rather not offend Allah with a profession, like his, that benefits from usury. “My job at the bank allows you to sit here at home contemplating eternity, beta,” Dad says without batting an eye. I see the Khan family dynamic is rife with petty passive aggressiveness, just like my own, so it’s certainly relatable! Mrs. Khan is supportive of her slacker-ass son, but Mr. Khan huffs.

Kamala takes this opportunity, which I can already foresee is the very wrong moment, to ask her father if she can go to that party tonight. “That depends, what’s the meathead quotient?” asks her father. HA! Wouldn’t that be something? No, he shoots it down almost immediately.

“Come on, Abu! I’m sixteen! I promise I won’t do anything stupid! Don’t you trust me?!” Kamala gripes, and even though her dad starts his reply with “Of course I trust you, beti”, he finishes with a couple of points that suggest that, no, not really, he doesn’t entirely trust her. Or any boys that might be there. Classic dad stuff! Classic fat dad stuff! Classic fat banker usury dad stuff!

“Look at your friend Bruno – working hard for his family and getting top grades…does he complain?” he says, and Kamala has had about enough of this conversation. After pointing out that Bruno’s a boy, and that Kamala would be likely allowed to go to the party if she were a boy as well, she excuses herself from the table and heads to her bedroom. Looks like Daddy’s going to be the first to get smited once Kamala falls in a nuclear reactor, or whatever it will be to cause her to gain her powers!

If you get your homework done fast enough, we’ll also allow five minutes of something rated PG-13.

“It’s just a party. One party. It’s not like I’m asking their permission to snort cocaine.” she mutters on her way upstairs, although even I know that asking to go to a party with boys is a slippery slope to that sweet, sweet nose candy! Why, just the other day I was playing a game of Outburst Junior with the fellas and, haha, well, one thing led to another.

Here comes the part where she wishes that she wasn’t so different from all her high school friends and peers. SHE’S the only one who doesn’t have permission to attend health class! SHE’S the only gets packed deep-fried, greasy, gross pakoras in her school lunch! SHE’S the only one who celebrates the “weird holidays” (i.e. September 19th, Talk Like a Pirate Day?). WELL NO MAS, SASSAFRAS. She’s going to be normal for one night! She sneaks right the fuck out of this House of No Goddamned Fun Whatsoever to go to what will probably be the Party of No Goddamned Fun Whatsoever (the Libertarian party).

We are treated to a full-page spread of the party in progress. It’s on the grass by the waterfront. The music goes “BOOM BOOM SHAKA SHAKA”. There is a man on fire in the corner of the page. Kamala, alone, approaches Josh, Zoe, and their circle of popular kids. “Oh my God! Kamala! Hi!” Zoe gushes, “I thought you weren’t allowed to hang out with us heathens on the weekends!”

Obviously, Kamala is merely spitting it out in protest of Russia.

Continuing this so-far uneventful trope of a story, Josh offers Kamala a drink. When asked if there was any alcohol in it, Josh just says it’s orange juice…plus some vodka! HAHAHA! IN YOUR FUCKING FACE, YOU STUPID NON-CHRISTIAN GIRL! Josh and another douche do a mid-air chest bump while Bruno, Mr. Khan’s secret crush, barges into the circle to demand from Josh what his CUNTFUCK problem is. Zoe tells Kamala that she smells too much like curry, so they’ll be standing somewhere else now.

Bruno walks away with Kamala and asks her if her parents know she’s at the party right now. She answers in the negative; Bruno advises that she leaves before the meatheads get too drunk and rowdy! That’s when the roofies start coming out! Har har, but seriously. Josh himself is probably weighed down by his pockets full of roofies. She should walk into the ocean with them Virginia Woolf-style.

Kamala starts getting short with Bruno, insists she’s not a child, insists she can take care of herself, and then takes a little bit of aggression out on him. “God, you sound just like my parents. Too bad you’re not Pakistani. Otherwise they’d totally throw me at you.” And as Kamala stomps away, Bruno, under all the “BOOM BOOM SHAKA SHAKA”s, softly says “Yeah…too bad.”

At this time, a large, billowing, ominous fog rolls in from the direction of the city and starts enveloping the partygoers. Everyone seems only minorly concerned. Bruno yells for Kamala, but she’s already huffily walking back home. She feels like a dang fool trying to fit in with all the other kids! What was the point? The fog around her grows more and more dense; she feels drunk. Could one sip-and-spit of vodka cause this? OoooOOOooooo, all woozy!

Thump. That’s her passing out alone on a street corner.

RIP Kamala Khan, 1998-2014. The role of Ms. Marvel will now be played by Peter Dinklage.

She is awoken from her sluggish, sloshed slumber by a beam of light from the heavens! She sees a vision of her beloved Avengers reciting an old Urdu Sufi poem. Kamala’s like “what the shit is this?” She’s incredibly suspicious of this bizarre vision, especially after Captain Marvel claims that they are all “faith”. Captain America tells her to start using her noggin’. “You thought that if you disobeyed your parents – your culture, your religion – your classmates would accept you. What happened instead?” Kamala admits that they all laughed instead; that it gave Zoe permission to make fun of her all racistly! But that’s not the point, it’s not like she feels entirely Pakistani anyway! She’s from Jersey City! She likes Avengers movies and, like, I don’t know, Pokemon! And skateboards! And Dr. Pepper Red Fusion! Remember that stuff? That was some good stuff. Kamala probably never actually had that, they discontinued that a long time ago.

Why am I here jawing about Dr. Pepper when Kamala Khan is SEEING VISIONS OF SUPERHEROES? “I don’t know who I’m supposed to be,” she laments, and when asked who she wants to be, she immediately answers that she wants to be them…except her costume would involve wearing giant wedge heels! And the three Avengers available – Captain Marvel, Captain America, and Iron Man – are like “ok!” and with one caveat: it’s not going to turn out the way she thinks.

The Avengers disappear. Kamala stands alone on the street corner. The mysterious fog envelops her and creates a cocoon. She busts her way out of the cocoon. Reborn!

She regrets her wish immediately.

Don’t you hate that part of high school when you pass out in the middle of the street and become a spandex-clad superhero? Embarrassing.

Final Thoughts

Cool origin story, bro. A teen movie where the teenage girl gets magic powers only because she worships the Avengers so much.

Rocky start! But intriguing. I look forward to seeing where this goes. I still want to see some smited bullies! There’s still plenty of time for that.