The Curious Case of Kamala Khan

A Brief History of the "First" Muslim Superhero.

Previously, I commented on the floundering Marvel Cinematic Universe’s newest trash-fire, The Marvels. Nominally the second outing of Brie Larson’s blonde, resting-bitch-face righter-of-wrongs, Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers is joined in her intergalactic quest to stop generic villain from doing generic villain things by Monica Rambeau - played by Teyonah Parris - and Kamala Khan - played by Iman Vellani. If you didn’t give it a read, or perhaps you’ve been living beneath a rock, the unthinkable happened.

Cue the music.

In fact, during the time it took to write this piece, The Marvels box office run lived and died in it’s entirety. Two days ago as of this writing, Disney announced that the movie’s box office reports would be ceasing. The plug has been pulled. The monitor has flat-lined. For Danvers and her motley crew of Marvel Misses, I’m afraid that it’s all over save the crying.

After three years languishing in production turmoil, several re-writes, millions of dollars worth of reshoots, and four release date delays… well, I think we can all agree that this turn of events was beyond the scope of anyone’s prediction. I heard that even the Oracle at Delphi choked on a piece of gyro meat when she opened her Twitter X feed to see the news that The Marvels had flopped harder than me jumping off the high-drive board at the local rec center. Even Apollo’s, God of Prophecies, can’t get ‘em all right, all the time, it seems.

Everyone seems to have something to say about it as the aftermath continues to fizzle. Hit horror author and certified sex pervert Stephen King -

I’m never going to let anyone forget about it. Ever.

Took to Twitter to whinge about the whole affair. He outright admits to not even liking Marvel movies all that much, but, for some reason, he still feels the need to address his seven million followers on the matter. I’d be a hypocrite if I said that I didn’t understand the appeal of offering some unwarranted opinions on topics that don’t have anything to do with you, but, at the same time, I also think if I had Mr. King’s money, I’d be be too busy relaxing on the beach of some remote Greek island, smoking that good buffalo soldier tamarind Jordanian jimmies in the company of enough Ionian beauties to beat the armies of Xerxes himself to give any commentary. Mr. King, in another shocking twist of events, blamed adolescent fanboy hate for the movie’s poor reception.

I know, right? Yuck!

Even Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a small, undignified part in the movie where he tells Teyonah Parris to work black girl magic - yes, really - commented thusly earlier this year.

Yes - incels, despite being basement dwelling, antisocial, lonely and isolated societal pariahs, also somehow have possess the unique ability to torpedo the success of a movie that most likely cost upwards of half-a-billion dollars, and their pernicious influence is singularly responsible for sabotaging The Marvels out of the gate.¹

That makes sense.

Given that the movie has fared quite poorly with professional critics, I suppose that means that even the enlightened and sacred circles of accredited movie critique have been infiltrated, colonized, and compromised by a cordyceps—esque invasion of incel brain-rot. One shudders at the thought.

I also like Iman Vellani’s reply, which was basically, That’s Bob Iger’s problem, not mine. She got her bag, and that’s all she cares about. Real G shit. Stone cold. I can respect that.

Anyways, I already said my piece on the movie. It looks bad. Everyone’s saying it’s bad. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that it’s probably not very good. I think that’s about the last of the brain power that needs to be dedicated to the film. The Marvel Machine will move briskly along, anyways.

After all, in early January of 2024, Echo releases on Disney+, in which the eponymous superheroine will be the first Native American and Deaf superhero in the Marvel roster. Not a bad idea, honestly, if her abilities were something unique and cool like summoning ghostly spirit animals to tear apart enemies or, like, being able to throw a tomahawk with expert accuracy, but that would all be racist, I assume, so her claim to fame is that she can mimic other fighting styles.

Sorry - I didn’t mean to post a picture of the other Marvel character that is both older and more popular who’s main gimmick is that he can mimic any fighting style he sees.

There we go. As you can see, they removed any interesting and unique elements of her character design because racism, I assume, and made her indistinguishable from the Panamanian chick who works at the coffee joint I always hit up when I'm in Seattle's university district. Seriously. It's uncanny. I think it's actually her.

I’m sure this series will do just fine.

Shortly after, in February, fans will be treated to a new Captain America film, subtitled Brave New World. The original title was going to be New World Order, but, well - we can’t be feeding any of those silly conspiracy theories about New Worlds or Ordering them.

This will be Anthony Mackie’s first theatrical outing after inheriting the mantle of Captain America from Steve Rogers, and, based on what can be inferred from information we can glean from pre-release, he’ll most likely do battle with Harrison Ford’s Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross - who will most likely turn into a giant, ugly CGI monstrosity when he becomes the evil Red Hulk - and Tim Blake Nelson, who will most definitely be a giant, ugly CGI monstrosity called the Leader, because he was in that Incredible Hulk movie ten years and two different Hulks ago, and God forbid they leave one stone unturned for the fanboys to soyjack over.

Mackie is a fine actor, but they never really gave him much to do as Sam Wilson. Even after Sam Wilson graduated from being Steve Roger’s token black friend to the new Captain America in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, he was given so little to actually do in his own Dinsey+ series, The Falcon and Winter Soldier, that the antagonist… anti-hero… well-meaning but misguided rival upstaged him as the breakout character of the show. U.S. Agent, real name John Walker, was tapped by the United States military to be the real Captain America following the retirement of Steve Rogers, and played by NHL athlete and son of cinema legend Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell in one of his first major acting gigs. I didn’t know that he was Kurt Russell’s son until after I finished the show, but it’s kind of incredible I didn’t pick up on it since he looks like exactly what you’d get if you put Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn’s pictures into one of those What Would Your Baby Look Like? image generators that you used to find on so many websites back in the day.

By virtue of Russell inheriting his father’s natural charisma and John Walker having an actual intriguing plot and character arc throughout the show, it was almost unfair to set him opposite to Mackie, who must have been told to just stand there and look mildly upset and constipated the entire time. Until he begins to finger wag politicians about racial discrimination. Because that happens.

Anyways, I’m sure that this movie will do fine, too.

Either way, that’s a lot of Marvel content in not a lot of time. Given the diminishing box office returns and dwindling mainstream interest in the franchise as a whole, I’m not sure shotgun-blasting more hastily made content featuring D-listers from the comics is the right strategy, but, then again, I’m also not beholden to a contract with Michael Mouse like Kevin Feige is. Part of this glut of content seems to stem from the entire studio being in the midst of a course correction, but one that is probably too-little-too-late to successfully execute. With Brie Larson looking to escape the contract-shackles binding her to the role of Carol Danvers, who was once poised to take the position of leader among the Avengers, and new additions to the roster like Shang-chi, the Eternals, and She-Hulk being total non-starters with audiences… where do they have to go?

Two potential paths are to lean hard into the X-Men and Fantastic Four. Now that the rights to both sets of characters are in the hands of Marvel Studios, previously having belonged to now-Disney-Subsidiary 20th Century Fox, the Marvel Cinematic Universe can draw on the large roster of characters that were included under the umbrella of both these teams.

But what to do with many of the characters they already have? Well, judging from second post-credit scene from The Marvels, it looks as if Kamala Khan is going to wrangle together the Young Avengers. This isn’t particularly surprising - several characters that have constituted both core and tertiary members of the Young Avengers teams have been floating about the movies for a while. Mainstay Kate Bishop was already featured as a lead in the Disney+ series, Hawkeye. This guy showed up very briefly in The Falcon and Winter Soldier. Apparently, in the comics, he’s The Patriot, who’s basically black Captain America - yes, another one - but also young, because Anthony Mackie is in his forties and probably doesn’t have all that much Captain America-ing left in him.

He does fuck all in the show and, out of all the Young Avengers comics I did read, he wasn’t actually in any of them, so I literally know nothing else about him.

Loki’s first season also introduced a child variant of the God of Mischief, who ends up being one of the few to survive the events of the series. Given that Kid Loki is a mainstay of the team in the comics, I think it’s safe to say he’ll pop up again.

At the end of the She-Hulk series, they also had Hulk introduce his son, who he just… had at some point and never thought to tell anyone about. As stunningly poor as the quality of that writing is, I find myself more galled by the design of this character.

I don’t even need to say anything, do I? Like, the fact this made it past not one, not two, but multiple rounds of testing, workshopping, tweaking and fine-tuning just… how? How?

Anyways, I’m sure this ugly lug will turn up in a future Young Avengers team, because there was no other reason to drop his ass in at quite literally the last minute of She-Hulk to stand there, say nothing, and look like a fool than to set up that plot thread.

And, then, from the god awful, flaming, miserable trainwreck that was Dr. Strange and the Multi-Verse of Madness, which, in my opinion, is one of the worst entries into the MCU, and certainly the most disappointing, audiences were introduced to… America Chavez.

Oh, Miss Chavez… we’ll have to talk about you later, nena.

Because, today we’re talking about another one of Marvel’s strong, brown, leading women - Kamala Khan.

Why? Because she’s having a moment. That, and, as I said before - she occupies an interesting space in the Marvel Comics pantheon, if not the entire cultural zeitgeist surrounding both the comics, movies, and expanded media under their purview. Despite being at the forefront of many Marvel projects, I can’t imagine that Iman Vellani’s turn as the character on the silver screen won’t be the first time the grand majority of audiences will be introduced to the name Kamala Khan.

Or not, since it seems like no one’s actually seeing The Marvels, and, while viewership numbers for the Miss Marvel series on Disney+ are sketchy at best, it didn’t make much of a splash. Also, despite being one of the most obvious attempts to shoe-horn in a character for the purposes of diversity and representation… I don’t actually think she’s a bad character. Poorly utilized, maybe, but bad?

Well… it’s complicated. Let’s take a look, shall we?

But, to do that, we have to start from the beginning. Take it back to 2013, just one scant year into Obama’s second term. At the time, we were all #BostonStrong, Obamacare had just face-planted right out of the gate, Edward Snowden revealed just how fucked we really were, and the number one song of the year was this goober rapping about buying piss-stained, second-hand sheets from Goodwill.

It may seem strange to those who weren’t there, but, yes - there was a time when people wanted more mackling from Macklemore.

It was a simpler time.

In the waning days of Macklemore’s Seattle-style reign over the charts, it was announced that the Ms. Marvel title, after several years of lying dormant, would be renewed by Marvel Comics.

The name had been carried by several characters over the years, but the original, the most recognizable, and the one to hold the title for the longest time was Carol Danvers. Debuting in 1968 as a potential love interest of Captain Marvel, you might be surprised to know that Carol has always been a surly fighter pilot for as long as her character has been around. However, only one brief year after her introduction, she was trying to, er - get close with Captain Marvel when -

Those kind of things happen when you try to get strange an alien, I guess.

She disappears for a good decade before resurfacing in 1977 under the alias Ms. Marvel, with new super-powers like flight and energy blasts because Captain Marvel’s alien DNA merged with hers and, uh… ah…

Yeah. That. Don’t ever mess with alien reproductive fluids, kids.

Anyways, the Ms. is important - you see, she’s a strong, independent woman who never needed no man. The funny thing is, a lot of people will complain about the feminist slant of the Captain Marvel character - and understandably so - but, in actuality, Carol Danvers has always been a strictly avowed feminist. The only difference was, back then, even feminists were allowed to actually, y’know, look like women and embrace their femininity. I’m not going to say wearing a costume with her whole doggone booty-ass hangin’ out is exactly empowering, because it isn’t, but…

Hi, Momm- I mean, Ms. Marvel

Well, she was popular for a reason. And I don’t think it was for her sparkling personality.

Anyways, Carol hem-haws on the identity of Ms. Marvel for a long, long time. Sometimes the name passes on to someone else. Sometimes, she takes it back. It’s all very back-and-forth, as comics tend to be. She headlines her own comic series under the name Ms. Marvel off and on as well until, finally, in 2010, her on-going series was shelved and Carol Danvers went on to claim the name Captain Marvel from her former lover because, uh… look, it doesn’t matter and if I try to go into the nitty-gritty details, we’ll be here all day. Just - go with it, alright?

Carol Danvers? Ms. Marvel is out. Captain Marvel Carol Danvers is in.

So, who was gonna be Ms. Marvel, then? If there’s anything comic publishers hate doing, it’s leaving a copyrighted name on the table when they could slap it on a new character? But who? How could they make the new Ms. Marvel stand out like the original did when she first debuted as a modern-minded, empowered feminist in the 70’s?

Sana Amanat had an idea.

Born to Pakistani immigrant parents in Jersey City, Sana Amanat is a divisive figure in the comic community and beyond. Amanat, after years of working in the indie comic circuit, joined Marvel Comics in 2009, where she was brought on as an editor. She admits - no, she outright brags - that she was able to rise through the ranks rapidly due to her different viewpoint of the world that was different from the average comic fanboy, which is apparently what one of the executives at the company told her when he promoted her. Which executive, exactly? She didn’t name names.

But I’m sure it happened.

She got to meet the President. That did happen. Gool ol’ Barry was quoted as saying, "Ms. Marvel may be your comic book creation, but I think for a lot of young boys and girls, Sana's a real superhero.”

Very cool, Sana.

Anyways, 2015, in only a scant six years with the company, Amanat Director of Content and Character Development at Marvel Comics, which is a pretty big leap in responsibilities. By 2019, she was also brought on to Marvel Studios to oversee the integration of newer, more modern characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For this reason, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, around this time, it was announced that Kamala Khan would be coming to the MCU.

Amanat, if it wasn’t already apparent, has trouble keeping her foot out of her mouth. Figuratively speaking, of course. She’s the kind of neo-liberal ideologue that simply can’t resist the siren call to say… silly things, let’s just say, which has gotten her into hot water more than once. Not that it really matters, because she’s got a degree of job security that most Millennials would actually, literally kill for.

Anyways, Amanat and fellow editor Steve Wacker were bullshitting in the office one day, with the former regaling the latter of a whimsical, humorous, zany and off-the-wall anecdote about her Muslim upbringing in the urban jungle of Jersey City. Wacker was so tickled that he said, Why, Sana - your semi-charmed Muslim-American life is so humorous… I think we could do something with this!

So, the idea was taken to artist Adrian Alphona and writer G. Willow Wilson, who collaborated with Amanat and Wacker to create a character to be pitched for the position of the new Ms. Marvel. Out of this line-up, G. Willow Wilson is an interesting character. You see, like Amanat, Wilson, too, is a Muslim.

With a surname like Wilson, I’m sure you could have already guessed.

She converted to the faith after teaching English in Cairo for a while and married an Egyptian man. Now, this is all well and good - if she wants to practice Islam, well, she’s a grown woman and that’s her decision to make. But she wants you to know. Oh, she really wants you to know that she’s a Muslim. She is. Did I mention that already? Even Amanat will mention she’s a practicing Muslim less than Wilson does, and, trust me, Amanat plays that card for everything it’s worth. Methinks that Wilson may be compensating for… something. What could it be? I’m not entirely certain, but… well, I won’t waste my time baselessly speculating.

Anyways, putting their heads together, the team ended up creating the character of Kamala Khan - a seventeen year old practicing Muslim, born to of Pakistani immigrants, born and raised in Jersey City with a love for superheroes where… wait a minute… hold on there just a samosa-snapping second…

A teenage girl… who practices Islam… born to Pakistani immigrants… in Jersey city… who loves superheroes?

Miss Amanat… you - you didn’t - no. No, no, no. That - you must forgive me. The idea - it’s absurd. I wouldn’t want to cast undue aspersions. After all, there isn’t much worse than accusing a creative… of making a character a self-insert.

Of which Kamala Khan is most certainly not. I’m sure the fact that the two have identical histories and heritages is all just a crazy coincidence.

Though, too be fair… the majority of Marvel’s biggest stories and heroes take place and spend most of their time in New York, so, it makes sense that Kamala would be from nearby in order to keep her plugged into the biggest action happening in the Marvel universe, and make sure she rubbed elbows with all the right people. To give credit where credit is due, Wilson’s original idea was to make Kamala an Arab from Dearborn, Michigan, which has the largest Muslim population in the United States, but decided against it because Dearborn was too far from New York. In fact, the reason she’s not in New York proper and relegated to the other side of the Hudson River is because they wanted to - and I’m quoting here - create a second-string hero for a second-string city.

Ouch?

I’d also like to point out that Kamala is, again, Pakistani. This is very important. They want you to know that she has Pakistani parents and you are not to forget it. But, my question is - what type of Pakistani? Because Pakistani - that’s a pretty vague term, actually. Pakistani isn’t an ethnicity. At least, it usually isn’t used as one. It’s a nationality. When it comes to ethnicity in Pakistan…

Look, I used to be tight with a Punjabi Pakistani back in college, and he did not like being mistaken for anything else, and God help you if you ever made the mistake of calling him Indian. Which is Kamala? Well, Khan as a surname isn’t very helpful, as it’s commonly found in every country across the Indian subcontinent and every region within them, and extensively beyond, to boot. Is she Pashtun? Punjabi? Sindhi? Balochi? For people who are so proud of her being Pakistani, the authors didn’t seem to care much about clarifying this bit to make it more accurate, so, you know what? I don’t care, either. She might as well be Kuwaiti.

Now, I understand that they might not have decided to settle on an ethnicity for Kamala beyond ambiguously Pakistani because most Americans are so geographically illiterate they probably couldn’t point to it on a map, and, in my experience, they usually think that Pakistanis are Indian because there’s only one ambiguously brown race of people from that part of the world, so, hey - better not confuse them. But, if you’re goal to educate and represent a minority in America, as the creators of Kamala continually bandy about in the press… well, it seems like half-assing it on the representation and educational bits to me.

But what do I know? I’m just a deracinated cracker myself.

Anyways, there was a lot of hubbub surrounding Kamala’s announcement. After all, it’s not every day that a Muslim superhero is picked to headline an on-going series. It’s not every day there’s a Muslim superhero, period. Did we mention that Kamala is a Muslim? Because she is. She’s a Muslim. Don’t forget. She doesn’t wear a hijab because most Pakistani-American teenage girls apparently don’t.

I can believe that. I’ve met Muslim women who didn’t wear hijabs. I’ve met Muslims of both genders who consumed alcohol. When I asked an Egyptian transfer student who hung with us crackers in college why he was downing Pabsts like they were going out of style once, I expected him to give me some sort of religious loophole, but he just shrugged and said, I’m sinning tonight. To which I say -

I don’t mean to encourage vice, but honesty is a virtue, and he was not bullshitting anyone.

A lot of the news surrounding her debut erroneously labeled her as the first Muslim superhero. If you google first Muslim superhero, pretty much every result is for Kamala Khan, which is because Google is fucking worthless, and it isn’t true. While Kamala is the first Muslim superhero to get her own title and headline her own series, there have been a few others before her, like, ah… um… hm…

Oh! Wait - I got this.

It’s, er… y’know. Dust! From X-Men? She, ah… um… hm…

In all seriousness, Dust was introduced in 2002, created by the storied Grant Morrison and the infamous Ethan van Sciver, who… you know what what? Not today. If you know who is though, you know who he is, and I’m kind of surprised he was responsible for this character. Dust was actually a mainstay of the X-Men lineup through the early 2000’s and, honestly? She’s cool. But she never did get into any of the cartoons or wider media, which means she effectively has zero presence outside of the comics, and, thusly, the actual first female Muslim superhero might as well be Kamala. Sorry, Dust.

There’s also some minor controversy around Dust being overly-sexualized because you can still see the fact she’s a woman despite wearing a niqab. Seems kind of silly, since, if you look at the image on the Wikipedia article for niqab - which is this:

You can clearly tell this, too, is a woman. Then again, I’m no Mega-Mufti or a Rock-n-Rolla Ayatollah or a Grand Poobah or whatever you call the various types of Islamic scholars who get hot under the keffiyeh about this kind of stuff. Not that they’re the ones getting mad about this stuff - that’s solely the domain of terminally online Twitter-ettes with undercuts and pride flags in their usernames - but I digress.

So, is Kamala Khan the first Muslim superhero? No. But, for all intents and purposes, she might as well be, so, we’ll let her have that little sticker on her sheet and move on.

For you, Miss Khan.

So, Kamala’s the first Muslim superhero. Very stunning, very brave, I can feel the razor sharp shards of the glass ceiling showering down upon my head in a rain of death. Yaaas Kween. Slay. Werk. My wig has been snatched and is currently in trans-Neptunian orbit, as reported by NASA’s latest findings. But, there’s a lot of superheros, and a lot of them are actually lame. So, the question is - what makes Kamala a superhero? And I don’t mean any of that cheesy it’s her noble soul and good heart :) crap. I have a noble soul and a good heart and I ain’t no superhero and ain’t no one ever tried to say I was. I mean what can she do?

Well, aside from the ability to write extraordinarily bad fanfiction, maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of trivia and minutae relating to the Avengers (which is a little weird considering they’re, like, actual, real people in her world and not just made-up characters), and a tendency to get into Twitter arguments that would test the mettle of Thanos, her superpowers are… well, how can I put it. Body manipulation, I guess?

Look, you remember the Mom from The Incredibles that a lot of Internet people are really weird about? Yeah - basically that. Or Luffy from One Piece, if that’s more your bag.

She can also grow and get big or shrink like Ant-Man, change her appearance, flatten parts of her body.

Basically, if someone could make weird fetish material of it on DeviantArt, she can do it. No, I won’t show you any examples. This is a work safe publication. But if you have a functioning imagination, you can probably extrapolate what I mean from that.

If you get it, you get it. If you don’t - don’t worry about it.

She can do this because… something about the Inhumans. Yeah, you remember the Inhumans, right?

Yeah. No. You don’t, because pretty much no one does, and no one should. There’s something about some magic Peepee-Poopoo Mist that gave the Inhumans their powers, and they live on the moon, and that mist turns some people into X-Men Mutants that aren’t X-Men mutants because at the time Marvel was having copyright issues with the X-Men and the word mutant so the Inhumans were their half-assed work around to introduce a bunch of people who do weird stuff. Except they live on the moon and got their powers because their ancestors or something huffed fart gas.

Sure.

Anyways, Kamala is one of them. I think. She’s connected to them, somehow. I think she gets infected from the Moon Fart Gas during some event on Earth, but I don’t remember and, really, it doesn’t matter. If you want a full breakdown of the whole convoluted bullshit story surrounding her origin, there’s scads of nerds on YouTube who’s entire careers are literally just summarizing “lore” (read: just reading the Wikipedia page for a character) out there you can watch instead. But, rest assured - none of them are a fraction as eloquent or charming or just filled with that certain joie de vivre you get from moi.

And that’s what you’re really here for. Right?²

As I mentioned in my piece on The Marvels, the MCU’s take on Kamala Khan was nerfed and given magic braclets - sorry, quantum bracers - that can basically do what the Green Lantern’s ring does and manipulate hard light. Which, in layman’s terms, do whatever the fuck is most convenient at the moment. I guarantee you this change was made because Marvel Studios was not confident they could pull off the effects necessary to realize Kamala’s bendy, stretchy, big-gifying powers. Not that it they’ve ever shied away from half-assed effects before -

I still can literally not wrap my head around how anyone at any stage of production thought this was okay.

But as more and more special effects houses refuse to work with Marvel just for the dubious honor of being underpaid and overworked to slap Cory Stoll’s face on a floating peanut sitting in a golden chair, I suppose they must be acting strategically since that’s too undignified for even the cheapest of Asian animation house labor to sign up.

But, we’re not really concerned with Kamala Khan in the MCU. She’s only just beginning to stretch her legs (ha ha) there now. We’re talking about Comic Kamala. Com-ala, if you will. After her introduction in 2013, she’s been quite busy in the world of Marvel Comics.

I’m not going to go into the full breakdown here - mostly because to catch up on the most up-to-date lore, I’d need to do a lot of reading and more hours of listening to the aforementioned YouTube nerds summarize the latest Marvel storylines than I would want to just to paint an accurate image of all the crazy bullshit Ms. Khan has been sticking her nose into.

Suffice to say, Miss Marvel is taking her title to heart. She really is Miss Marvel. She’s been their golden girl for well over a decade now, showing up in just about every major storyline, every event, and rubbing elbows with just about any character of any note in the Marvel comics.

And… well, I wouldn’t say people really had a problem with it. A lot of people still don’t. Kamala, as a character, was welcomed with open arms. Pretty funny that a community of shit-stain incels and misogynistic woman haters were pretty open to her. I mean, yes, she had her detractors, but they were well in the minority, and mostly on their way to abandoning mainstream comics like Marvel and DC since the on-going shit-show that is Comicsgate was beginning in earnest.

And, if you thought Gamergate was annoying - at least that battle in the culture war had the decency to end. Comicsgate is another ordeal altogether, and if Gamergate was Vietnam, Comicsgate is effectively the Congolese Civil War; it never fucking ends.

But that’s a story for another time. Kamala Khan plays her part in it, but it’s relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.

The point is, Kamala’s presence was largely accepted by the wider comic-reading public, and it wasn’t until relatively recently that Kamala seemed to start overstepping boundaries and wearing out her welcome. The first major intrusion I can recall that really made waves was her inclusion in Square Enix’s ill-fated Avengers video game.

It may look as if Kamala is just a junior partner, what with her wedged in between Captain America, Iron Man, and Black Widow, but she isn’t - she’s the main character of the game. She’s the first character you get to play as. She’s basically the most important character in the game. The plot is that the Avengers break-up and, years later, Kamala goes from one Avenger to another to say -

Even though she isn't actually Avenger so she isn't even part of the band being put back together. She’s the lynchpin around which the entire stories hinges upon. Oh, she also defeats the big bad at the end. And you play as her in the final boss battle.

I didn’t play this game, but it miffed a lot of people that the actual Avengers were reduced to side-characters in their own game, which came off to a lot of people as Kamala Khan’s Big Day Out. It was also just generally regarded as mediocre, but it didn’t help that you couldn’t play as Black Panther, or Hawkeye³, or Ant-Man, or even fucking Spider-Man… but you could play as Kamala.

Yay?

It didn’t help that any time Marvel Comics wanted to dip their toes into hip Millennial neo-liberal activism, Kamala would be their go-to character to do it with.

The only way this could be more How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? would be if she said:

2016 was the year where everything stopped feeling real and more like a bad, extended SNL comedy sketch.

She’s even been adopted as a symbol of anti-bigotry and racism, with her face being slapped over anti-Islam posters and signs all across the open air latrine beautiful city of San Francisco.

I kind of doubt this was officially sanctioned by the Disney company, but, at the same time, could you imagine the puddle of liquid shit if they tried to say anything? Either way, she’s kind of been shoehorned into this position of Social Justice spokesperson for Marvel, which has solidified her spot as something of a bête noire among some corners of the comic community - namely, those less receptive to that kind of messaging.

Speaking of Spider-Man, Kamala and Peter Parker started hanging out. A lot.

Now, even though Iron Man and Captain America reign as the faces of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Batman is equally iconic, Spider-Man is both the most profitable and popular superhero of all time, and by a wide margin. People can’t get enough of the web-slinging, wise-cracking kid from Queens. I always liked Spider-Man myself, but I never quite understood what made people get so weird about the character. If you ever saw the way people on Twitter talk about the Spider-Verse movies - which aren’t even close to being the most popular or profitable pieces of Spidey media - you know what I mean when I say there’s something about the concept of the character that just makes people get… strange.

When the last Spider-Verse movie came out, you couldn’t throw a metaphorical stone without hitting someone who was meticulously designing their own Spider-Sona to join the legion of Spider-People both canon and otherwise. In the movie, you had Spider-Punk, Indian Spider-Man, White Schlubby Spider-Man, Pig Spider-Man, Mexican Spider-Man (Spider-Hombre?), Cowboy Spider-Man, Samurai Spider-Man, British Spider-Girl (who’s Muslim), but in the world of fandom? There’s, like, ten billion Spider-Goths and Emo-Spiders and at least fifteen Spider-Clowns.

Will Smith actually had everyone beat when, almost twenty years ago, he recorded his own Spider-theme⁴ for what I can only assume was supposed to be Spider-Will: Into the Jiggy-verse that, unfortunately, never materialized.

Forget Spider-Punk or whatever lame, jerk-off, half-assed rebel Spider loser, Spider-Canada’s the real GOAT of the Spider-verse line-up.

Unfortunately, my Spider-Goth Gamer Girl E-Thot nicknamed OnlyFangs failed to gain traction with the Spider-sona community, but I have hope she’ll find an audience. Maybe I’ll toss her to those Comicsgate fellas and do a cross-over with that Eric July fella. Who knows.

I digress.

The point is, when I say people love Spider-Man, I mean they fucking love Spider-Man. Many Spider-Man fans are not avid comic book readers. But they’ll read Spider-Man comics. So, if you have a large audience of casual readers that only pick up one particular title featuring one particular character… the smart thing to do is to throw in another character as a deuteroganist in all but name, right?

Needless to say, it didn’t sit well with a lot of people that Kamala wasn’t just Peter’s second-banana, but… well, in-universe, Kamala is an immense Spider-fangirl herself. So, when she starts hanging out with Spider-Man… you can kind of assume what happens.

Now, there’s a dozen different variants of these characters and they do different things in each alternate time-line or universe or whatever and to try and catalogue them all here would be a stupidly time-consuming and foolish task, so, let’s just say, if you want to find romantic tension between the two, you certainly can.

Now, Playah Pete has a whole stable of Spider-Hos and Super-Thots at his gloved fingertips. Faithful as he usually is to Mary-Jane, it isn’t as if he hasn’t had other girlfriends and flings come and go over the years.

The guy even dated Carol Danvers for a bit. No - really. Some of these have cemented themselves as more resilient and closer to Peter’s story than others. Everyone has a favorite⁵. And most readers didn’t appreciate Kamala intruding. And she didn’t intrude so much as just stumble in and start knocking shit over. The entire thing kind of feels like the editors - as so many in charge of established, legacy IP’s do - go, Oh, no, no, no. You don’t want this, you silly billy…

That’s old hat. You’ve had that thing for years. No - what you want is this.

And there’s probably something racist or sexist about preferring Peter stay with the women he’s been involved with for, like, over half a century, now. I’m sure.

But, look - I don’t even think Peter Parker and Kamala Khan have bad chemistry together. At least in a vacuum. Under capable hands - which is a laughable idea in today’s comic industry - they could be every bit a dynamic duo as Batman and Robin. Han Solo and Chewbacca. Frasier and Niles. Keenan and Kel. I’d go so far as to say that, again, if done by the right hands, you could totally even make a romance between them work. You’d have to find some way to work, like, a dozen different girls out of the plot, but, still - I reckon you could do it.

But, here’s the problem - people didn’t want Kamala and Peter to be besties. No one really wanted to see Kamala taking some of his web, either, if you know what I mean. There’s something to be said about innovating and doing something new with a character to keep them fresh, to keep them from stagnating, and, yeah - a lot of times, I feel like some of the people who get the most angry about new content coming from brands like Star Wars and Marvel are people who are mad that new thing isn’t like old thing.

And, I will say, that isn’t particularly a good quality to have. But, when the new thing is so fucking awful, why wouldn’t someone be upset about it?

If you’re gonna take a character as beloved and iconic as Spider-Man and do something new with him - you’d better fuckin’ bring your best and your brightest, and they better come to the field ready to play ball. You’re gonna have to bring a murderer’s row of talent to pull that off and not piss people off.

In short, the reason people were getting pissed off about Kamala’s presence in Spider-Man’s titles was this - they fucked with the formula. They tried to give the audience something new without considering whether the audience wanted something new, and, worst of all, whether it was anything worth serving the audience to begin with.

To briefly touch on another similar character that I’ve already mentioned, it’s the same reason a lot of people don’t really care for Miles Morales.

For those unaware, Miles Morales can be summed up as Spiderman, but black. If it sounds like a pretty ham-fisted attempt to diversify the Marvel universe, that’s because it was. Miles’ first outings in the comic world were not exactly stellar hits because… well, he’s just Spiderman, but black. His first run of comics was canceled after only two years despite a being the focus of a massive marketing push.

Now, this isn’t to say that Miles Morales is just Spider-man, but black. Future comic titles, and especially the Spider-verse films, have done a lot to flesh the character out and make him more unique than just a black guy who guys by the title Spider-Man, and elevate his profile among casual fans and the broader public. His current run is proving to be one of Marvel’s best-selling titles at the moment. Given that comic sales are woefully low these days, that may not be impressive, but hey - it’s something. It took a while, but they finally seemed to have found a way to let Miles stand on his own feet rather than just coast on being Spider-Man, but black.

And then they kind of fucked it up with Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 video game, which received criticism for focusing too much on Miles rather than Spider-Man.

By the way… wasn't there something funny going on with that game? Like, it was a Spider-Man game, but half of it focused on Miles Morales and some random-ass black girl who didn't even have superpowers? And didn't Mary-Jane get a bunch of side-missions were you got to play as her? Sure would be a bit screwy if someone on the senior writing staff was using Mary-Jane as a self-insert and even went so far as to have the model altered to look less like the motion-capture actress and more like herself.

That would be really weird.⁶

Because when people read a Spider-Man comic, or watch a Spider-Man movie, or play a Spider-Man game, they want to see Spider-Man.

It’s kind of the issue that had when they first put Miles Morales in the role of Spider-man. No one wanted to read a book about Miles Morales, because they wanted Spider-Man. Now that Miles has had time to grow into his own character, people want to read comics about him, but the thing is… if they want to pick up a comic about Miles Morales, wouldn’t they be pissed off if they bought a comic and, instead of Miles, the focus was on Peter Parker?

It boils down to this. When people wanna read a Miles Morales comic, they’ll go find stories about Miles Morales, if people wanna read stories about Mary-Jane, they’ll go find stories about Mary-Jane, because, believe it or not - they’re out there. She’s a superhero herself, these days. Seriously.

And if they wanted to see Kamala Khan, well, they’d seek out content about Kamala Khan. They wouldn't read Spider-Man to get their Kamala fix.

The more Kamala Khan seemed to take center-stage in the Marvel comics wider universe and popping up in other media, the less people wanted to see her. To be perfectly clear, she’s always had her fan and defenders, but even people who liked her didn’t always like what they were doing with her, because, like I said - if you’re a Kamala fan, and you want to read a Kamala story… do you really wanna pick up a Spider-Man book?

I don’t think that’s a failing of the character so much as the failing of the writers who’ve handled her, especially in recent years. They can’t seem to find Kamala anything to do on her own. Everything she does has to be coasting on some other bigger hero’s coattails, which isn’t fair to either character and only makes it more difficult for old fans to stay invested in her story when it isn’t her story, or for new fans to like her because she’s never allowed to do her own thing, Then again, these people couldn’t write a half-way decent short story to save their lives, and they certainly don’t know how to introduce a new character to a larger cast of iconic characters. It’s a storytelling method that requires the finesse of threading a needle, so, naturally, the best they could do was take a sledgehammer and whack it.

It’s unfortunate because, if you couldn’t tell, I don’t dislike Kamala Khan. Really, I don’t. She’s got qualities about her character that are endearing. When she’s written well, she isn’t annoying. Well, no more annoying than she’s intended to be, which is kind of her whole bit. She’s a superhero fangirl living in a superhero story. There are great stories that could be told with such a premise. You could do a light, tongue-in-cheek self-parody. You could do a more somber, introspective take on the nature of crime-fighting, double-lives, vigilante justice, and parasocial relationships, as seen through the eyes of a young and idealistic superhero fanatic who comes to realize the world of caped crusaders is a lot more nuanced and complicated than it appears when you’re reblogging gifsets on Tumblr. Hell, there’s a million ways Kamala’s entire concept could have been handled in a way that made her both more interesting, more entertaining, and far more relatable to a wider demographic than just Marvel Stans on Twitter and Sana Amanat.

If done right. Which, at this point, kind of goes without saying.

But, it wasn’t done right, and people got annoyed with her, so -

I should mention she died because she was disguised as Mary-Jane to keep her from being killed by some alien guys. Because sure.

They killed her off near the end of 2023.

Spoilers, I guess.

It’s not like this is an unprecedented turn of events in the world of superhero comics. After all, earlier, I mentioned Carol Danvers was “killed” by a blast of radioactive alien spunk, and she came back more robust than ever. If you took a shot every time a dead superhero came to life, you’d be dead before you even got through the Golden Age of Superhero Comics. It’s so cliche that it’s basically a meme. When a character dies, it’s basically an open secret they’re going to come back at some point, whether it be through time-bending shenanigans, magic, deals with mustachioed devils, super-tech, multi-verse crossovers, evil twins, robotic doubles, clones - you name it, someone has been resurrected that way.

Spider-Man’s own Aunt May has died, like, five times now, and the first time she croaked, it turned out that the woman Peter was sobbing and crying over as she slipped away was a fucking actress paid to impersonate Aunt May by Norman Osbourne just to fuck with him. Seriously. You would think his Spidey-Senses might pick up on something amiss, or that Peter would just be, y’know, able to recognize the woman who fucking raised him, but whatever. Comics are quite often stupid like that.

Kamala Khan died in The Amazing Spider-Man volume 26 on May 31st, 2023.

And in July of 2023, in X-Men Hellfire Gala, Kamala Khan was brought back to life because, ah… er… well, she did, alright? Oh, and, guess what - she actually had a dormant mutant gene. So she’s actually a mutant now and not whatever moon people bullshit she was before.

And now she’s an X-Man. X-Woman?

Whatever.

By August, one of the X-Men uses her powers to literally make everyone forget Kamala had ever died at all.

Which is just… I mean… it’s…

Okay.

I don’t read this shit because I’m expecting high art but Jesus Christ.

Well, after that, she got a four-volume mini-series written by none other than Iman Vellani, who plays Kamala in the MCU, which, hey - that’s kind of cool, actually. Is Iman Vellani a good writer? Hell if I know, but the bar for comics these days is set on the floor - all she had to do was step over it. It gives Kamala something to do on her own. She’d have to try to do worse. Maybe they’ll flesh out her character, like they did with Miles, let her stand on her own legs. Live her own life. Take on stories of her own. Develop some more and get to a point where people will come to value her as her own unique character rather than just a second-banana to Spider-Man.

Maybe - just maybe - Kamala, much like Miles Morales, could finally be allowed off the leash to be on her own and develop a character and mythos that wasn’t entirely dependent on hanging out with bigger and more well-known heroes, and flourish into the beloved character she was always intended to be my fans new and old alike…

You thought, bitch!

She’s still an X-Man.

Or X-Woman. X-Person?

Whatever.

Because if Spider-Man fans didn’t like Kamala butting in on Peter Parker… well, maybe the X-Men fans will be a little more open minded.

Right?

It’s a little early to tell, but, overall, Kamala’s mishandling and her untimely death - and resurrection - have proven to be a controversial and unpopular move.

Joe Grunewald of the Comicsbeat.com had this to say: Having her die in ASM feels like an afterthought, and smacks of fridging the character for the sake of making headliner Peter Parker sad. This, really, gets at the heart of the matter. I could pull other quotes about how others found it insensitive to kill of the Muslim superhero for shock value, or just the obvious bait-and-switch tactic of killing off a notable hero with a big media presence feels cheap, or even how it (correctly) feels like breaking kayfabe to kill off a character that is clearly going to stick around for a while, as contributor Susana Polo of Polygon said, but Grunewald’s comment really says it all.

How is Kamala Khan supposed to ever stand on her own merits if she’s just set dressing for Spider-Man or the X-Men or Carol Danvers?

Miles Morales was allowed to headline a movie, which allowed him to go from just another diversity hire-esque character into a figure within the Marvel mythos unto himself beyond the shadow of Peter Parker. I can’t say that Miles will ever overshadow Peter as the Spider-Man, but he’s carved out a spot for himself as the second Spider-Man, and in a world where there’s now an infinite number of Spider-People bopping around, that counts for something, I think.

Why not let Kamala do the same? Does she need Spider-Man or the X-Men to do that for her?

More importantly, if she can’t - and, as I’ve stated before, I do think she can - then why even give her such a prominent spot in the comics?

Really, it seems like the folks at Marvel want to have their Kamala-cake and eat it, too. They want her to be this big, larger than life character that occupies a prominent place in the Marvel pantheon… but they’re afraid to let her do anything or be anything that isn’t just another glorified side character. It feels like they’re afraid that, if they let her graduate like Miles did, then, somehow, she loses her diverse qualities. It’s like her skin color and religion are the only qualities some of the writers handling her character care about. There’s a word for that, isn’t there?

Here’s my Captain Morgan’s Spiced Take™ - Kamala could be a good character. I don’t even think she’s necessarily bad as it stands at the moment. She’s got potential.

She’s got a unique background that sets her apart from the wider roster of heroes, she’s got a strong supporting cast with her family, and, yes, as a practicing Muslim teenage girl from a middle class city from a cesspit second-string environment like Jersey City, she could be used to explore stories from a different perspective than any other character in the Marvel stable could offer. Like Peter Parker, she’s an everyday lay-person who finds herself bearing an incredible burden, unique powers, and the responsibility to do something with them. Y’know, like Uncle Ben always rambled about right before he inevitably ate a bullet. As someone who was a superhero fan-girl that got to actually level-up and live the dream, there’s a lot that could be done with her to show that, for as cool as it looks to be a caped crusader, it’s radically different to be one. They pay lip service to this - especially when they kind of force her into the position of an honorable sacrifice that ultimately led to her death and subsequent resurrection - but, from everything I’ve ever read and seen about Kamala, that just… never really comes through in her stories.

The thing that the biggest acolytes of diversity never seem to realize is that diversity for the sake of diversity is a fool’s errand that ends up making caricatures of the very people that are meant to be represented. If diversity of is the spice of life, they don’t use it to tastefully season the dish, but are like one of those amateur chefs on TikTok - and I use that term liberally - who throw so much cayenne pepper, tumeric, curry, and cumin powder in a dish that it’s practically glowing by the time it comes out of the oven and even a based cumin-enjoyer like me is retching through the screen at the smell. Kamala is kind of like that. Instead of using her background, heritage, religion, whatever, to add some spice to an otherwise broader character, those end up being defining traits They don’t let you forget that she’s Pakistani and Muslim, because there’s really not much else for you to know.

Great dialogue. People actually talk like that.

And, sometimes, she’s awkward. Because adorkable is the order of the now.

And, honestly? I think that’s disappointing, since, as I think I’ve illustrated, there’s a lot more you could do with the character.

It’d be nice to see Kamala Khan break that mold at some point, but given the dearth of ability behind the current crop of Marvel writers, I don’t have much hope it’ll happen anytime soon.

That would take talent. Talent that I just don’t think the bullpen at Marvel has to top, right now. It’s been said many, many times before, but Marvel and DC publishers will probably have to collapse entirely before any meaningful change is made to their output. They occupy a very bizarre state at present where they’re stuck in a holding pattern of both pandering to the legacy fanboys while also doing everything they can to drive them away, and the resulting product is one that appeals to almost no one save for political ideologues and long-time fans that subscribe to a sunk cost fallacy that abandoning the ship just isn’t worth it.

But that’s a discussion for another day, I think.

Ultimately, we all know the truth; nothing all that good is coming out of Marvel comics. Nothing has for a long time. Even the good stuff always comes with the dreaded caveat of, but…

At this point, the comics are actually a net loss for Disney, but are subsidized by Marvel studios and used as a testing grounds of sorts for characters like Kamala to perform some dry-runs before Kevin Feige finds a spot for them in the rapidly crumbling Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thankfully, I’m not sure it’ll last long enough before real winners like Snowflake and Safespace have time to be wormed in.

And, yes, these are real, actual, legitimate Marvel characters. I apologize if this is the first time you were made aware this was a thing.

As I’ve said before - we, as a culture, deserve better than that. And I’d say Kamala Khan does, too.

Maybe.

You’re on thin ice, girl. Thin ice.

1. Honestly, this word has been so beaten into the ground and become such a generic insult that, if people of Samuel L. Jackson’s fame and standing are beginning to say it, I think it’s well-past it’s sell-by date and probably needs to be retired.

2. Right.

3. Both Black Panther and Hawkeye were added as DLC, but after a botched roll-out and multiple delays, by the time they released, they were a year late and the game was effectively dead. Spider-Man was also exclusively available to play on Playstation and no other platform.

4. You're welcome for showing you this, by the way. Because I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only people that's aware Will Smith made a song like this. And now you are, too. Again - you're welcome.

5. Felicia Hardy best girl.

6. If it wasn't obvious - that's exactly what happened.