Kamala Khan: The hero we deserve
Kamala Khan is the best part of the Marvel universe right now, and I’m not just saying that because she’s from New Jersey.
The newest incarnation of Ms. Marvel— Muslim teenager Kamala Khan—has flipped hero-dom on its head by embodying the ideals that have been at the core of the superhero craze since its invention and bringing them into the 21st century.
Brief background: Kamala is a first generation Pakistani-American 16-year-old girl living in Jersey City, struggling with normal teenage things. In a cool meta way, she is a superhero fangirl—like many of the people reading her book—and her hero, so to speak, is Carol Danvers, who has graduated from Ms. Marvel to Captain Marvel. Kamala is exposed to a Terrigen cloud and undergoes Terrigenesis due to her Inhuman lineage, unbeknownst to her. She develops polymorph powers that allow her to stretch/shrink at will and heal injuries quickly. She adopts the mantel of Ms. Marvel and protects her city and her peers from general villainy. She is aided by Lockjaw, her giant teleporting dog that is supposed to keep tabs on her progress as an Inhuman, and her friend Bruno, who is the only person who knows her secret identity.
The significance of Kamala’s age, gender, and ethnicity aside—though the importance of those things really cannot be undervalued—Kamala is a breath of fresh air in the world of superheroes. While the trend of dark, gritty, pessimistic explorations of human (read: male) nature dominates the most visible superhero franchises, Ms. Marvel brings back the optimistic, aspirational, and realistic (or at least real world-applicable) qualities that defined superheroes for decades. She doesn’t need childhood trauma or some deeply rooted sense of guilt to want to help people. She might make mistakes and doubt herself at times, but she is unquestionably doing good because she is a good person. She is uncontroversial, at least in that respect.
This is made clear from the get-go: Kamala transforms while walking home from a party that she had gone to against her parents orders. Her classmates make fun of her for being Muslim and not drinking and all that jazz. She leaves, angry and defeated, and eventually comes out of her Terrigenesis cocoon looking like Ms. Marvel (the old one, the one that she looks up to). Still confused about what the hell just happened and looking like Carol Danvers, she sees one of the girls from the party fall into the Hudson River, which is inhospitable to living things to say the least. She uses her crazy “embiggening” powers to scoop the girl out of the water, citing her dad’s quoting of the Quran as inspiration to save her. She also realizes just how impractical it is to have flowing blonde hair, thigh-high wedge boots, and a leotard when trying to rescue people. She says that those things did not make her happy. Seeing that girl, the one who was awful to her, survive was what made her happy.
Kamala does things out of the goodness of her heart. Period. Her intentions are not nuanced or even open to interpretation, really, which is rather rare for a genre built on basic human morality. And in doing so, Kamala has become the voice and role model of a generation so often berated for its narcissism, entitlement, and apathy. Ms. Marvel—the person and the comic book—shuts that idea down real fast. The “Generation Why” arc of the series focused on a villain called the Inventor who was using teenagers as a clean energy source. Whether it was from brainwashing or not, his victims were convinced that they were otherwise useless and they might as well be productive in some way, even if that way was dying. Kamala was not down with that.
Ms. Marvel #10
As unfortunate as it is, it takes a real hero to stand up against the vitriol that surrounds today’s young people, especially when it’s the young people themselves who are buying into it. Kamala goes on to tell her peers that the qualities they see as useless (breaking parental controls, doing jobs no one else wants to because they’re dangerous and stupid) are just the beginnings of future greatness (cyber security expert, future president). They rally around her and work together to—spoiler—defeat the Inventor. They step up when everyone expects them not to, effectively telling the millennial-bashers to proverbially sit down.
On top of all that, Kamala is the poster child for diversity done right and the importance of representation. When Kamala goes through Terregenesis, she comes out looking like the old Ms. Marvel because that’s what she thinks a hero looks like. There wasn’t a hero who looked like her to look up to. But she feels uncomfortable in someone else’s skin, looking so much unlike her true self. Nothing against Carol Danvers, but she isn’t the only heroic woman out there. Kamala realizes that she can be a hero just as she is and rejects the blonde, white, scantily clad standard for female superheroes. She sets a new standard, one that only requires that you want to help people, which opens the door to a vast range of people to see themselves as heroes.
Case in point: a few months ago, buses in San Francisco started running ads promoting Islamophobia and comparing Muslims to Nazis and all kinds of horrible things. The group that ran the ads is actually classified as a hate group in Europe but, y’know, America. Apparently this group is none too smart, though, since they chose San Francisco as the site of their bigotry and the citizens of San Fran were not having any of that. The formerly offensive ads were plastered with Kamala’s face and the message of Ms. Marvel. Kamala’s heroism and what she represents as a hero inspired real-world activism in a way that may not have been possible before.
What’s special about Kamala’s heritage is that it’s not just there in name, it’s there in practice. She isn’t just a Pakistani-American from a strict Muslim household who is prepared to ignore all that to be a normal teenager and/or save the world. Her background is an active part of her storyline (rather than so Marvel can say it has Muslim heroes and sell more comics) and puts all the things that are normally seen as restrictive into a positive light. There’s conflict with her parents and her responsibilities as a young Muslim woman, but it never serves to devalue her way of life, or overvalue it for that matter. It’s treated just like anything else. Kamala dreads going to youth group because of the bogus lectures her sheikh usually gives, but when she talks to him about her odd predicament, even in vague terms, he doesn’t tell her to stop because he knows that she would ignore him. He tells her to find a teacher, do what she’s doing with skill, honor, and “the qualities befitting of an upright young woman: courage, strength, honesty, compassion, and self-respect.” It’s good advice for any religion and Kamala lets it guide her in her growth as a hero. The high expectations set by her parents and the values of her religion—the real ones, not the bad ones that are usually focused on—are what drive her to help people and to be the best hero she can be.
On a less political but no less important note, I would also like to point out that Kamala is a teenage girl who is openly enthusiastic about things, aka the most derided demographic in pop culture. But she is never the butt of the joke for being so. Even when she teams up with Wolverine, about whom she admits she has written fanfiction, he doesn’t think she’s some weirdo. He actually takes a liking to her and her dedication to protecting her city. The things teen girls are passionate about are so often at the bottom of the cultural totem pole, even though the expression of that passion is no more fanatic than, say, sports fans, so it’s nice to see her portrayed positively.
I am now 1400 words in to this post, which is about 900 more than I intended and I am certain that there is more I want to say. But I think I’ll leave it here, with the words of Kamala herself to sum up why she is exactly what we need, nay, deserve right now.
