Ms. Marvel #16 Review

If you’re into comics at all, you may have heard of Kamala Khan by now. She’s the new Ms. Marvel who’s running around breaking sales records and embiggening her way into our hearts. Up until now I’ve reviewed every issue on Things Matter, but as of today, I’m pleased to bring Ms. Marvel reviews straight to you, Sourcerer readers!

Of course, if you’re new to Ms. Marvel or comics in general, welcome! Kamala Khan is a Pakistani-American Muslim girl living in New Jersey, who receives shape- and size-changing powers in a Terrigen Mist incident. That means she’s an Inhuman, which is sort of like being an X-Man, but you’ll get all those details as you go. Her third collected volume was just released last week and goes all the way up to #15, so with those three volumes it’s super-duper easy to catch up to this point! The series is written by G. Willow Wilson.

Here’s a quick recap, spoilers for stuff up to now: Volume 1: No Normal establishes the character, her world, her conflict with herself but ultimate confidence, and awesome villain The Inventor (a cockatiel-cyborg clone of Thomas Edison). Volume 2: Generation Why is the main Inventor story arc, and introduces the Inhumans. Vol. 3: Crushed goes deeper into the Inhumans using Kamala’s short-lived relationship with a fellow Inhuman named Kamran who turns out to be a terrorist against the Inhuman royalty.

Most of these reviews won’t be this long, but now we’re ready for today’s issue!

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Kamala is, understandably, pretty broken up about how Kamran turned out to be a villain. He was a hot nerd who shared not only her Middle Eastern heritage but also her superpowered secrets… Of course she’s upset. When the story opens she’s drowning her sorrows in hot dogs.

But then there’s a random planet looming over Manhattan! Crowds are fleeing into New Jersey, so Kamala jumps into action to help shelter her friends and family in her school and protect the place from looters. Once that’s done, she turns her attention to the threat at hand. We get a really lovely moment of doubt, though.

An experience like Kamala’s with Kamran can be so demoralizing, and then this strange planet thing is thrown at her, totally unexplained. She’s not sure she can handle it… by herself. I love that! She doesn’t doubt she can be a superhero, I don’t think she ever has, but over the course of this series she’s also learned about the value of team-ups with Wolverine and Lockjaw and her own supporting characters like best-friend Bruno.

Who’s the latest guest? The blurb promises the team-up we’ve all been waiting for, and I had no idea, but I bet you can guess, so I’m not gonna tell you! Find it in the big reveal, and I think I can promise next month will be amaaaaazing!

Finally, Adrian Alphona is back on art this month! He’d been away for a while, but Ms. Marvel achieves peak awesomeness when he’s drawing, because he includes so many hilarious sight gags and background jokes. This one’s my favorite from this issue:

See you next month!