From Wired
by Laura Hudson
Late last year, Marvel Comics announced that it would reboot Ms. Marvel in February and put an all-new superheroine at the helm: Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old Muslim girl who lives in New Jersey. WIRED has the first look at Kamala from her Ms. Marvel debut, a preview that also will appear in the All-New Marvel NOW! Point One issue on sale in print and digital versions tomorrow.
Kamala, a second-generation Pakistani-American, isn’t Marvel’s first Muslim superhero, but she is the first to get a solo title — and certainly the first to get the title of Ms. Marvel. Although the most popular superheroes tend to be white guys created decades ago, legacy heroes who pass their familiar names to new characters are one way publishers like Marvel and DC Comics have brought greater diversity to their fictional worlds. (They do tend to revert to their original hosts as time goes on, however, making the added diversity seem a bit more tenuous.) If you’re wondering what happened to the original Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers, she’s the star of her own title under the moniker Captain Marvel — another legacy title.
The new Ms. Marvel, which comes out in print and digital on Feb. 5, is illustrated by Adrian Alphona (Runaways, Uncanny X-Force) and scripted by G. Willow Wilson, a writer and novelist whose work includes the comics Cairo, Air and Mystic, as well as the World Fantasy Award-winning novel Alif the Unseen. Wilson, a convert to Islam, spoke to WIRED about the challenges of writing a high-profile Muslim superheroine who struggles with identity issues even before acquiring shapeshifting powers.
WIRED: There’s been a lot of scrutiny of the character since the announcement, particularly because of her Muslim faith. Do you feel like there’s extra pressure to treat her as a representative for all Muslims?
Wilson: There’s a burden of representation that comes into play when there aren’t enough representatives of a certain group in popular culture. So the few ones that do exist come under increased scrutiny and pressure, because they’re expected to represent everybody. Obviously, you can’t do that with one character and you shouldn’t, because it would stifle the narrative and prevent them from becoming a fully-realized person. So I think in situations like that, you just have to tread lightly and trust your gut. Kamala is not a token anything in any way. She’s very much her own quirky, unique, wonderful person. She’s not a poster girl for her religion and she doesn’t fall into any neat little box.
