No Normal and Great Fun

Chances are that if you are reading this review - and thanks for your time at that - you already have an interest, and at the very least an understanding, of the Ms Marvel character, so once you have finished reading this review, I highly recommend you open up another browser window and log on to your favorite online distributor to purchase MS MARVEL Vol 1: No Normal.

Writer Willow Wilson introduces and, over the course of five issues, familiarizes the character of Kamala Khan, a Muslim teen of Pakistani decent, who like any high school girl, heritage aside, just wants to have fun. Wilson makes Kamala a delight of a teen and a pleasure to read, infusing the character with both a strong moral right and heavy dose of angst, the likes of which are a very deep homage to Stan Lee and Steve Dikto's Spider-Man, and probably have not been accurately seen in comics since Marv Wolfman and George Perez's NEW TEEN TITANS.

Adrian Alphona's art is also a treat. His panels are full of fun little asides and silly happenings that provide a hip sense of humor to the proceedings. Two of my faves? Tasty GM-O's cereal and Radoslav's Vietnamese grocery. But there others worth the exploration.

There are perhaps two critical elements of the read, and the first is simply a by-product of producing a monthly title. That being, Kamala's power-giving event is never fully explained. Nothing as easy as a spider bite or a dose of gamma radiation here. This is something that will certainly be drawn out and discovered in the months - and collections - ahead but for the purpose of this graphic novel, comes as lacking. The second is a by-product of the genre at large, and that being the obligatory super-villain fight. For as genre-crushing as this title has been in every way, the necessary fight scene, the trial of our hero versus those shadows of the dark, is, unfortunately, not as organic as the other parts of this story, and comes across as a needed evil, not a threatening one. Luckily such encounter is not detrimental to the overall arc and, if anything, builds anticipation for the next collection.


As always,
theJOE