I'm just a little bit in love with Ms Marvel. That's not true, I'm really in love with Ms Marvel. It's one of those things that has just been able to immediately grab my attention and keep me wanting more and more, devouring every part of it that exists until I'm left at the point of counting down the days until I can get my next fix.
For me that date is July 5th, as that is when Ms Marvel Vol 5 is released in the UK. I know if I really wanted that fix I could go out and buy the individual issues, but that just doesn't cut it for me. It'd be like going out for a cigarette and having 2 puffs before stubbing it out, you get a little bit of satisfaction but then you're just left proper counting down until you're next smoking break. And I'm cool with that, I know that's what a lot of people will like to do, but I'm just willing to wait longer so that when I do get to grab a hold of that thing I've been craving for so long, the satisfaction I'm able to garner from it is that much more... satisfying.
I came to read this comic because I have a girlfriend who likes female superheroes. That's not fair, because it's just not true, she likes comics that are a bit different. She likes your comics that are out of the ordinary and are bringing something new to the table. One of her absolutely favourites is Sex Criminals, a comic I've started reading after finishing all of her Ms Marvel collection, which I'm now finding absolutely brilliant. She also got me on to reading Y: The Last Man which is also just fantastic.
I picked this up from her comic shelf because I was just a bit bored of everything on mine. I'd read quite a lot of Deadpool in anticipation of the movie coming, and then a bit more because I loved the movie so much. I'd picked up the first volume of Garth Ennis's The Punisher from Marvel's Max Imprint, in anticipation of Daredevil Season 2 starting, and I absolutely loved that. The only reason I didn't carry on reading The Punisher was because the second volume wasn't available yet, and typically now that it is available I don't have enough expendable income to be able to afford it. But when I do I'll be coming down on it like Frank Castle on the Irish Mafia, I'm going to fucking destroy that thing. And then I'd been reading Batman: Detective Comics in anticipation of Batman Vs Superman, and I don't know if it was that movie that became the final nail in the coffin for me, or if it was just realising that I don't really give a shit about the story unless he's up against one of the big villains, but I have to admit that I'm just bored of Batman at this point.
It's quite a bold statement to make; "I'm bored of BATMAN!" But I am, and once you've started reading some comics that aren't about a super ripped white dude punching his problems away it really makes something like Batman seem super dull. At the end of the day he's not much more than a super rich, super buff, intelligent, middle aged, white dude who dresses up as a bat to scare the shit out of criminals to avenge the murder of his parents. Absolutely none of that is relatable to the average reader, even if his motivations are abundantly clear and understandable and given the same circumstances (I mean also getting the huge inheritance from my dead parents) I probably would have done the same thing.
What I loved so much about the Ms Marvel comic was that I'd already fallen in love with her before she got anywhere that Terrigen mist that gave her her powers. It's not just that, for once, a writer has actually managed to craft a well rounded teenage character, it's that they've crafted a super hero fan FOR super hero fans.
It's my understanding that one of the reasons Spider-Man became so popular with comic readers, back in the day, is they were able to see themselves in him. He was a teenager who saw bad things happening in the world but was powerless to stop them, until a freak accident caused him to gain the power. 60 years on from Spider-Man's introduction and the same thing is happening again with Ms Marvel, except this time it's a powerless teenager who is a fan of those heroes with powers. She loves the same characters we readers love, and for the same reasons, and that just makes her super relatable to me. The only difference is that she exists in the same freaking universe as those heroes and is given the opportunity to become one of them and isn't that the dream? Not just to be like your heroes but to have your heroes recognise what's so special and unique about you and to stand along side them as an equal.
I also love that they keep the story on a small scale, she doesn't get her powers and then immediately start running alongside The Avengers ready to stop the end of the world, she takes on a fight that is close to home and affecting her personal life. Like Spider-Man she has a period of figuring her powers out, she's not perfect from day one and she makes plenty of mistakes. And then like us she gets upset about those mistakes, then kicks herself for being upset, then dusts it off and cracks on with it. We see her grow in the same way that we see ourselves grow, and when she makes a mistake she reacts in the same way we all do. It's not the perfect way of dealing with a problem but that's what makes it perfect to read, Ms Marvel is not perfect and neither are you and that's ok.
Then there's her family. It's not all the common for a super hero to actually have an intact family unit, Batman certainly didn't have one but I'm sure you already knew about that because we all know Batman's origin story by now and also he NEVER SHUTS THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT!! Having a family adds so much to the character, she's not able to run around doing whatever she likes because her parents are strict and she has a curfew. Plus there's the fact that they are a Muslim family. It's not necessarily that they're Muslim that makes them interesting, it's just there's a cultural difference that you don't often find in western media and I personally found it really refreshing.
So last week when my girlfriend and I decided that we're going to London Film and Comic Con (LFCC) again this summer I started to think about doing a cosplay for the first time. Last year's LFCC was the first convention I had ever been to, and I didn't really know what to expect so I just went along and enjoyed it, but this year I'd like to get more involved and take part a bit more, and one of the easiest ways to do that is doing a cosplay. I couldn't think of any bearded characters from media I liked that I could dress as, so I ditched the idea of going as someone I looked like pretty quickly. Then I thought about going as Rey from The Force Awakens, because I loved her character and wanted to celebrate it, but then I'm not all that good at sewing and her costume looked a bit too difficult to make for a first timer. Then it hit me, I knew a character I really loved and related to and whose costume would be really easy to adapt; Ms Marvel.
Blue T-shirt that I can iron a lightning bolt on to, red jeans, blue trainers, a red scarf with some yellow trim (the one bit of sewing I might have to do but I have a flat mate who sews, she has the machine and everything, so I could probably ask her to do it for me) and an eye mask. Easy Peasy.
I'm going to wrap this all up with why I think that Ms Marvel could possibly be an amazing way for Marvel to kick off Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. First of all it'll be following The Inhumans movie, and she herself is an Inhuman so it would make sense in the universe without requiring a lot of explanation in the movie as to how she got her powers. Then there's the fact that she's a SHE and Marvel is seriously lacking in female led superhero movies. Then there's the fact that she's a minority character and Marvel is doing just as bad in that area. But more than anything she's an amazing character who herself is a fan of the characters that we are fans of, and to see someone who writes fan fiction about The Avengers actually meet The Freakin' Avengers in the MCU I think would just be an amazing way to honour the fans who've helped the movies become what they are today whilst at the same time pushing it forward into new and unchartered territory.
Ms Marvel writer G. Willow Wilson said in a TEDx talk (which you can view here) that the comic was doomed to fail as it suffered from what she called 'The Trifecta of Death'.
"New characters don't sell, female characters don't sell, minority characters don't sell. In order for a series like this to succeed it would have to shatter decades of conventional wisdom." - G. Willow Wilson on 'The Trifecta of Death'
Marvel have given us new characters with Ant Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. They've given us SOME female characters and soon we'll be getting our first female movie headliner with Captain Marvel (Ms Marvel's idol, I'd just like to add here). And they've given us SOME minority characters and, again, we'll soon be getting our first minority headliner with Black Panther. The fans loved Guardians and Ant-Man and the hype for both Captain Marvel and Black Panther is huge so I think they should worry less about whether a female or a minority character will sell, because they will and we all know it. They should just worry about giving us more of those amazing characters we love, and Ms Marvel is one amazing character.
