Ms-Marvel

In 1962 Marvel Comics changed the face of the comic industry by creating Spider-Man. Peter Parker was a teenager who wasn’t stuck in the role of sidekick. He was able to be the hero of his own story and he managed to do it while balancing the struggles and drama of teenage life. Over the years from the X-Men to the Young Avengers, Marvel has continued making dynamic teen heroes that struggle to come of age against the backdrop of superhero life. The most recent addition is Kamala Khan, a young Muslim girl trying to find her place among her peers in New Jersey while taking up the mantle of Ms. Marvel. This title has already drawn a massive amount of attention because it’s the first time a Muslim character is headlining their own book at Marvel. Now, just to be clear, Kamala is not the first Muslim hero at Marvel. She’s not even the first Muslim heroine, but creating a title around her and giving her a beloved legacy title is an extremely important step toward diversifying comics and broadening representation.

As you may remember Christina Blanch is running a class on Canvas.net about gender in comic books. This week we were assigned to read three different interpretations of Carol Danvers. Last week we read three interpretations of Superman, but one key difference is that Marvel Comics tends to (with few exceptions) stick to the same origins for their characters. Unlike DC, resetting their universe every 15-20 years, Marvel characters tend to just get more things tacked onto their origins, but the basics don’t change. We read the following three Carol Danvers books: (technically we had a lot of issues to read for the final one, but I thought it’d be interesting to limit the comparison to #1 issues) ...