Why Fans Love Ms. Marvel

Ms. Marvel #1 has recently entered its seventh printing. Seventh! That’s practically unheard of in comics, especially for a total newcomer like Kamala Khan. As Marvel.com puts it: “Marvel Comics presents the all-new MS. MARVEL, the ground breaking heroine that has become an international sensation! Kamala Khan is just an ordinary girl from Jersey City–until she is suddenly empowered with extraordinary gifts. But who truly is the all-new Ms. Marvel? Teenager? Muslim? Inhuman? Find out as she takes the Marvel Universe by storm, and prepare for an epic tale that will be remembered by generations to come. History in the making is NOW!”

Hyperbolic, perhaps… but seventh printing. Meanwhile, the series is still going strong at nine issues and a collected first volume. The critics, including me in my monthly reviews, are about as excited as Marvel seems to be. Why do we love Kamala? Well, it would be a mistake to discount her minority status as a Pakistani-American Muslim. She provides a brand-new, yet long-awaited perspective on superhero comics. It would also be a mistake to reduce her to token status, though — there’s so much more to this comic and this character. The story, provided by G. Willow Wilson, turns a typical superhero origin story into something affecting and delightful. The art, usually provided by Adrian Alphona, is fabulous and full of sight gags. Kamala herself is funny, endearing, and brave.

All this is true, but there’s one more element that tends to get glanced over in reviews — Kamala is a geek like us, and I’ve got pictures to prove it!

Pics are screencapped from the comics, links go to my blog for more detail about particular issues and events. Spoilers!

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Marvel Phase 3 – They’ve Given Us Too Much to Talk About

Okay, when Marvel leaked their Age of Ultron trailer last week, I was excited. And we were starting to get some rumors on the next movie in the works, Captain America 3. It’s going to have Iron Man! It might be Civil War! With those little tidbits, I figured that would be it for a while. After all, we’re seven months out from the next Marvel movie, and we just got the first trailer for it…

Then last week, DC announced all of their movies between now and 2020. I haven’t even had a chance to talk about these – so check out the post about them on We Minored in Film to cover that! The announcements are both exciting and expected, as they are movies for the members of the Justice League. The Marvel equivalent would be announcing Hawkeye, Hulk, and Black Widow movies to go with the existing titles.

And I feel that there’s an element of DC forcing this play, but maybe it was always planned. Marvel announced all of Phase 3, all in one go! With release dates, subtitles, and everything! I should add, though, that it seems their plan was to announce all of these movies – and then show the trailer for Age of Ultron that evening. By which point, there would have been way too much for one day.

Alright, so to try to keep this halfway manageable, there’s a great article on The Mary Sue about the movie announcements already. So I’m going to add a bit of my own speculation and excitement about the movies!

Found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Comics

Update: Also, check out some thoughts from We Minored in Film: the good and the bad.

In other news, Thor is a woman now.

This week, Marvel let everyone know that they were going to announce some new, big news on The View. We were expecting big news. We were expecting something thematic with The View, as well. I was ready to write a post about Katee Sackhoff as Carol Danvers.

The last news that Marvel shared on The View, though, was a comics related story, about the marriage of Northstar and his partner (now husband) Kyle. So maybe we should have expected comics news. So we got this story.

From http://marvel.com/news/comics/2014/7/15/22875/marvel_proudly_presents_thor

This is not the story we expected, and it is both exciting, and not. A female super hero movie should have been the news, but I feel like that’s what everyone is talking about now. So let me look at a different angle for why this isn’t such big news – the fact that Marvel has done this before.

Waiting for our Female Super Heroes

It’s a common enough topic lately. And really it kind of should be. All these super hero movies – all these great super hero movies – and where are the female super heroes?

I’ve talked about this before here. Holly’s talked about this before here. But I thought I would go with a poll to see what you think, and not just what I think. However, some thoughts that got me thinking about this all over again and blog posts from others below!

Marvel Movie Casting – Thoughts from IMDb

Recently I gave you my thoughts about a Doctor Strange movie – a movie which just doesn’t fit in with the current Marvel cosmology. Then again, there are things that I wouldn’t expect that seem to be working their way into the movies now, so who knows!

I’ve been looking at the Marvel movies on IMDb, which might be a bad idea, and might be a whole lot of spoilers. However, this also paints an interesting picture of the upcoming films, specifically of the characters that are going to be in them.

Found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agents_of_S.H.I.E.L.D.

Also, it leaves a number of characters on the table to – like Doctor Strange – maybe end up in Agents of SHIELD one day? A number of characters, like the Guardians of the Galaxy, need a large budget for the CG to make them. Some characters, however, are more human or exist on Earth, and could make it easily onto the show. After all, Coulson’s mission is to find heroes, so Whedon shouldn’t have to invent all of the heroes new, right?

So, spoilers to follow, some of which I probably don’t even understand for what they are myself!