Ares wrote: ↑Sat Jul 14, 2018 3:13 am
So based on that, I'm not very inclined to give her solo series a read. I've seen a few of D&C's reviews of her books, but I find D&C has an obvious slant with certain characters and I basically only agree with him half of the time. So I'm curious if Kamala has any fans here who could point me towards some good issues with her so I can find out for myself what kind of character she is and whether I've been seeing bad portrayals of her or just average portrayals of her.
I've read seven of the eight available trades and enjoyed them a lot. I'm not much interested in current Marvel, but
Ms. Marvel is a fun book. Light-hearted, fun, low stakes (lives and fortunes are imperiled, but not the world) superheroics. Kamala juggles school, friendships, superheroing, and learning about her Inhuman heritage. Its the Inhuman stuff that feels the most tacked on. The Muslim community is presented as any other religious community, and the gentleman who leads the mosque is as worthy as any Catholic priest that ever appeared in a Daredevil story. Kamala's immediate family are great characters, especially her brother and her mother, and she's got a good group of supporting characters at school as well. The actual adventures are not as engaging as one might hope - her archenemy is a clone of Thomas Edison with a chicken head, and she fights the evils of a Hydra-led attempt to gentrify Jersey City, for example - but I for one am fairly sick of momentous story arcs and the frequency of life changing events in the average superhero's career. Ms. Marvel's adventures are breezy and occasionally silly (one arc involves an evil AI taking over an MMORPG), but she always manages to pull off some impressive heroics. It really did remind me of the early Lee/Ditko Spider-Man stuff, in general tone if not details, and I think Kamala Khan is easily the best character to come out of the big two in at least a decade. I've seen the Avengers all turn into assholes, Spider-Man replaced by Doctor Octopus, and supposed heroes put killing at the top of their list of ways to deal with bad guys, but Ms. Marvel remains decidedly old school and genuinely positive.
She's not perfect, she makes mistakes regularly (as any rookie should), but she keeps trying. I'd say at least get the first trade at the library and give it a decent read-through before writing the character off completely. G. Willow Wilson has a pretty good handle on Kamala, and I'm actually excited to see Wilson take over Wonder Woman in December. Kamala does feel "off" to me under other writers, for what its worth.