Things are almost back to normal for Kamala Khan. She’s back to life, back in New Jersey and back to saving the day when Ms. Marvel is needed — with one significant change. The word is out now that Ms. Marvel is a mutant, and with ORCHIS hot on her trail, Kamala is left to wonder — will her community still stand beside her now that she’s out as a mutant? Find out in Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace #1, written by Iman Vellani and Sabir Pirzada, drawn by Scott Godlewski, colored by Erick Arciniega and lettered by Joe Caramagna, with design by Tom Muller and Jay Bowen.
Armaan Babu: With the Fall of X in its final stages, some series are already peeking out from the rubble, looking at a post-Krakoan X-comics landscape. We’ve got Cable exploring stories outside the ORCHIS conflict, a team of Wolverines hopping dimensions over in Weapon X-Men, and in Ms. Marvel, we get a glimpse of what an ongoing might look like once the Fall of X is finally done.
This book definitely does not have the same urgency as the last miniseries did, and despite the changes, it’s back to feeling like a regular Ms. Marvel comic again — something we’ve not had for a long time. I enjoyed it. How about you, Tony?
Tony Thornley: I dropped off Ms. Marvel early in the Saladin Ahmed run, and I skipped all the minis between (except Jody Houser’s team-up mini). None of them felt like Ms. Marvel. The previous mini felt closer than we’d gotten in years. This issue nails it.
New #1, Who Dis?
Armaan: The book takes a little time to re-establish the new status quo. Her friendly neighborhood isn’t quite so friendly anymore now that her new costume marks her clearly as an X-man. This is charmingly sold. I don’t know a lot about New Jersey (despite like … half of our esteemed ComicsXF colleagues apparently residing there), but Ms. Marvel has always presented the place like a small town, full of friendly, quirky people. Even the criminal Kamala’s beating down in the opening pages politely tells her how much he used to admire her — that is, before he found out she was a mutant.
Not everyone’s against her, though — her controversial new costume appears to have Jersey split right down the middle as to who’s on her side and who isn’t. Hey, having 50% of a city on your side is 50% better than Spider-Man usually gets, and he’s doing just fine!
We have Scott Godlewski on art, which keeps the book much in the same cutesome style as Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant, but I’ll admit, I’m missing the expressiveness Carlos Gómez brought to his characters. Godlewski’s work, though — his layouts especially — play out great on the page, keeping things lively. It’s a good fit for the book.
Tony: I think this issue hits exactly the right balance for the quirky small-town feel that G. Willow Wilson gave Jersey City, while acknowledging that it’s right across the river from New York. The prejudices of a misinformation campaign (too real), countered by the more open-minded population, sums up a town that’s got so much influence from its metropolitan neighbor. This is the only part of the United States where all these huge places are within this distance from one another.
I like Godlewski’s art. He’s been working over at DC for a while now, but his expressive, lighter style definitely fits more of what we see at Marvel. I think you’re right that there’s something more expressive about Gomez’s work, but it’s such a thematic match that I barely blinked at the change.
Armaan: Trying to take her mind off New Jersey’s divided residents for a bit, Kamala heads down into the Morlock tunnels for a little breakfast with the X-Men (and Deadpool), and ordinarily, this would be a very charming scene. Wolverine’s making eggs. Deadpool’s acting like the annoying brother who won’t stop fooling around. Psylocke’s sternly admonishing Kamala for being late to school. It would be very sweet — if it wasn’t for how the rest of the X-books are being handled right now.
Specifically, the X-books being written by Gerry Duggan.
Now, normally, I would avoid criticizing a book outside the one I’m writing about, but it’s relevant here — and not because Duggan is the lead writer on most of the current mutant-related whatnot. It’s specifically because of how comfortable those books are with murder.
I’m not going to go heavily into that, especially since we’ve already got people talking about those books already, but the X-Men are superheroes. For the most part, that means they’ve avoided killing — and even when it did happen, it came at a cost, either situationally or emotionally. They’ve never been comfortable with it, and if it’s happening, given these characters’ histories, there needs to be some kind of indication of just how much their backs are against the wall, and how much that position is affecting them. Sure, the X-characters in this scene have killed before, and sure, the bloodshed in those books is targeting fairly evil people, but even so — for the characters who are gleefully and flippantly massacring hordes of human agents to be the same people charmingly serving a young girl breakfast leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
I’d love nothing more than to be able to enjoy this scene as written, but this book is now deeply intertwined with the Fall of X, and this is tonal whiplash.
Tony: So here’s the thing about what you’re saying: You’re exactly right. The issue here isn’t just that there’s so much bloodshed — and there’s a lot of it. I mean in Uncanny Avengers, Psylocke maimed the Struckers. Deadpool is always murder-killing someone. Hell, look at Wolverine right now: One of the main characters is a head in a jar who was otherwise eaten alive. The line has been next-level dark and violent for the past nine months.
My issue is that there’s a tonal mismatch to that darkness. The characters are jokey and flippant in quieter, interpersonal scenes. They’re quipping during fights against enemies like Nimrod and the Stark Sentinels, both of which are life-ending threats. Matt Lazorwitz and I talked about it in X-Chat recently — why is a story that’s about the X-Men narrowly avoiding a slaughter at Nimrod’s hands being treated as just another issue of Marvel Team-Up? There’s no gravitas or urgency in what’s happening in the flagship book, and that’s bleeding into this story.
Do the characters need to be sad and depressed all the time? No, absolutely not. But there should be a weight on their shoulders. And that’s not to single out this book. It’s still one of the best Kamala stories since Wilson. This is just an issue that’s lacking the gravitas the series needs.
Back to School
Armaan: Nothing quite says things are back to normal (relatively speaking) like seeing a teenage superhero back in school. Kamala’s school and friends are still a pretty big part of her life. Her friends and family have even been mindwiped into forgetting she was Ms. Marvel in the first place, to say nothing of the fact that she died for a bit (I sympathize with those who have decided that this issue, of all issues, is their first Ms. Marvel comic).
Not that school is much of an escape for Kamala. Even her friends seem to take issue with Ms. Marvel’s newfound status as mutant. I admit the fact that Zoe was so quick to turn was unsurprising, but that Nakia has apparently done so too was a real gut punch for me — though not as much as it is for Kamala. She still has Bruno on her side, however; the one person who knows who’s really underneath the mask and is on her side no matter what.
Tony: This scene works for me. Yes, it’s hard seeing Zoe and Nakia being so against Kamala. It felt like what a real high school feels like, though. Zoe and Nakia were being absolutely believable little high school shits. I think Wilson’s work with them captured that well, but I don’t know that anyone else quite has.
Kamala’s struggle to not metaphorically rip her mask off to her friends is one of the best parts of this issue. I think you and I were the ones to discuss how poorly handled the mindwipe was. It just stunk. This is a good example of how a crappy plot point can be turned around into something well written and interesting instead.
Armaan: I agree wholeheartedly! This creative team is making great lemonade out of some bad lemons.
Another person who definitely isn’t on Kamala’s side, however, is our old foe Dr. Nitika Gaiha, who has arranged for a copy of Ms. Marvel’s classic costume to be made in the streets of Mumbai.
I admit, I still don’t quite have a handle on what her whole deal is. Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant positioned Dr. Gaiha as a major foe for Kamala, possibly a nemesis — someone sorely needed, as Kamala doesn’t really have a villain to call her own. At the same time, I am not quite sure what her motivations are, and her plans remain shrouded. This book gives us a little — she sees Kamala as a threat unlike any other mutant — but I’m still not quite sure if that’s enough to justify Dr. Gaiha singling Kamala out for whatever elaborate plans she has in store.
I could, however, guess at what that plan is — it looks like she might be setting up someone to pose as the “real” Ms. Marvel and have New Jerseyans consider the mutant Kamala to be a fraud. What d’you reckon?
Tony: Yeah, Dr. Gaiha has this vibe that I can’t quite get a handle on. It almost feels like she’s about to make a face turn, but then she just spits out something vile. The costume throws me, but I like her storyline. If Vellani and Pirzada continue Kamala’s adventures in some way past the end of this series, I’ll be very interested to see how Gaiha can develop.
The Planter
Armaan: Kamala has little time to worry about threats to come, however — not when there’s clear and present chaos happening right now, in her own city! A new mutant, calling himself Planter, appears on the scene causing mayhem — a scene that’s further complicated by the arrival of plant-themed anti-mutant octogenarians Hordeculture!
I want to take this moment to say that the creators clearly have a lot of love for continuity, without making it too obtrusive. There are a lot of little throwaway remarks that call back to Ms. Marvel’s long history. In this scene, note is made of all of Hordeculture’s little personality quirks, a small but delightful touch for those who remember their previous appearances. The writers strike a really good balance, and it’s appreciated.
While we’re here, I like the Planter. He’s got a great, memorable design, and his powers make him about as goofy as Ms. Marvel’s own. There’s a lot of fun to be had with him on page. This whole sequence, really, is just great young superhero chaos. The banter, the escalating trouble, inventive new uses of powers — it’s all a delight. This team has a good handle on what’s fun!
Tony: Remember how surreal the earliest issues of Ms. Marvel were? Like her first supervillain was a parakeet man? Planter reminded me so much of that. Godlewski even shifted his style slightly to give Planter a weird edge that wasn’t unlike Ms. Marvel co-creator Adrian Alphona’s work. Otherwise this fight felt like the requisite five pages of punching. It was at least much more creative than many superhero brawls are, and I liked that about it.
Armaan: The last page kind of threw me — Kamala’s randomly teleported to a Lila Cheney concert, but you know what? This creative team is doing great. I’m all in for what’s going to happen next!
Miscellaneous Menaces
- It sure was nice of Marvel to do some promotion of Battle of the Atom by featuring Lila Cheney in a comic on the week of their Lila-themed episode.
- It’s hilarious how much the anti-mutant posters are paying attention to the real seller of X-Men comics, using a silhouette of Wolverine’s mask to represent mutantkind.
- We know we sound like a broken record, but Ms. Marvel’s lack of bangles in her costume is always going to be a sore spot.
- We had a lot of characters reintroduced on the page here, but we’re missing two very important ones: Where are Kamala’s parents?
- The idea of Hordeculture just showing up for plant-themed mutants is hilarious. Are they waiting around for Black Tom, too? Are they keeping an eye out for Nature Girl? Will they cross universes just to hunt down Poison Ivy?
- Lila’s apparent rescue of Kamala on the last page raises so many questions. So, so many …
Buy Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace #1 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
