(Gonna put on my comics-fan hat for a bit, then loop around to wordplay on this one.)
It’s a weird time to be a fan of Ms. Marvel, AKA Kamala Khan, the world’s most prominent Muslim superhero.
I’ve always felt a stake in Kamala—not because I share her religion or heritage; both are foreign to me. But she’s proof the superhero genre I love can reach past cultural barriers. Her early stories show an authenticity mined from the creators’ experiences, as in her first full-page appearance, where she copes with the lure of the forbidden.
Kamala appeared in a popular TV series on Disney+ and will appear on film in The Marvels later this year. The show was faithful to her heritage—she’s a brown-skinned Pakistani-American—though it did edit her powers to be less “Plastic Man,” more “Green Lantern.”
She also died last month in the comics.
As comic-book deaths go, Kamala’s was a mixed bag. She went out a hero, but not a protagonist: she died not in a Ms. Marvel comic but in The Amazing Spider-Man, saving the world and Mary Jane when Spider-Man couldn’t. Kamala’s always risked her life for strangers, but little else about her relationships or personality factored into the plot. It was like killing off Sherlock Holmes in an episode of CSI. Superhero comics are weird.
Part of that weirdness is that death often isn’t the end for heroes, especially in comics. In fact, it can be a great career move—heroes often see a sales spike as they die and retain some of that boost even after being resurrected. Just ask Superman, another character who famously died in comics while alive and well onscreen in Lois and Clark. Marvel movies have featured other characters “currently dead” in the comics, including Hank Pym and Groot, and that’s just this year.
In Kamala’s case, death could be seen as an initiation. Created in 2013, she’s still a recentish addition to the Marvel “family.” Virtually every DC or Marvel hero you’d recognize—most created before 1975—has died and come back at some point in their publishing history. And by “died,” I mean left a corpse with no life signs, not just the kind of MIA cliffhanger that’s par for the course in action stories. “The explosion must’ve vaporized the body! We’ll never see him again!”
The X-Men, in the comics, have even set up “resurrection protocols,” combining several heroes’ powers to ensure no mutant ever dies from violence again. One theory is that it’s the X-Men who’ll bring Kamala back, altering her powers and “claiming” her as a mutant, which would make her sync more with her TV/movie self.
This may be optimistic. There’s also the theory that she’s not coming back and that this might begin Marvel’s retreat from diversity into “safer,” older brands. But Marvel has encouraged readers to accept the character as permanent in many ways…beginning with her name.
“Kamala Khan” is alliterative. Look at Marvel’s other characters, and you’ll see alliteration all over the place—Peter Parker, Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Bruce Banner, Matt Murdock, Stephen Strange, Otto Octavius, and Scott Summers, as well as newer characters like Miles Morales, Jessica Jones, and Robbie Reyes. It’s not universal: there’s also Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Jean Grey, and others. But it crops up often enough to feel like a proud tradition.
Stan Lee confessed this was a cheat to keep characters’ names in his memory: “If I could give somebody a name where the last name and the first name begin with the same letter, like Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, Matt Murdock, then if I could remember one name, it gave me a clue what the other one was, I knew it would begin with the same letter.”
DC Comics characters don’t alliterate as often…except for those in Superman’s orbit like Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, Lana Lang, and Clark Kent.
Writer G. Willow Wilson—who has a real-life alliterative name—gave Kamala an alliterative identity that fit her Pakistani-American roots. This reinforced the message of the character, who was devout in her faith, yet also a devoted fan of other heroes. One could be true to her background and still be part of “the Marvel Universe.” We can bring together everything that makes us us, even what seems like it doesn’t fit.
That’s a great message, and it’s nice to see the character’s name reflect that. Her comics stories have usually reflected it, too. Just not this last one…which is yet more reason to hope she’ll get another.
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