MS. MARVEL / AMERICAN VAMPIRE / ANIMAL MAN [Reviews]: Monsters, U.

Fistful of Comics. Typically, our famed featured lands on Thursdays (the day after you spend all of ya hard-earned lawn money on floppies at your LCS), but the last 2-weeks have been anything but typical. Sticking with that routine, we are joined this week by our very own Marvelous Ms. Priestess, Eva! While, I wrap up the rest of this.. ahem.. fistful, Ms. Ceja will be providing the featured story and more thoughts on the Stash this Sunday — if it doesn’t land on a Tuesday, that is.

Onto the goods.

MS. MARVEL #2

As of late, most of the response I’ve seen from the internet concerning this marvelous reboot is an up in feminism. Personally, being born on the cusp of generation-X and millennial, having the ability to follow superheroes such as Captain Marvel (you know, the one with boobs), She-Hulk (one not merely thrown into the Fantastic Four), Black Widow (her own book!), and Spider-Woman (Forget Mary Jane; you can have her replace Emma when..) just wasn’t happening. I’m also a melting pot of ethnicities, so having such characters such as Kamala Khan is quite epic.

Can’t blame her. Looking like Jenny McCarthy these days is not exactly ideal…

What a freaking awesome time to be a girl and into comic books! Ms. Marvel #2, written by G. Willow Wilson, has taken females to another level of Super-heroism.

Kamala imagines she is a superhero, but when she does, she is a beautiful light-skinned blonde bomb shell. Not such a bad thing, right? But here’s the catch: Kamala is a dark-skinned and beautiful dark-haired muslim girl. She is so disconnected from herself, that she relies on society to make up what she is supposed to look like if she could make a difference in the world.

Why G. Willow??? Because… she has an interesting point to make: Can anybody be a superhero? Duh. It’s not gender specific, it’s not class specific, and it’s certainly not based on where you come from or what you were raised. But it is most certainly tough, as readers will witness in Ms. Khan’s unforeseen conquest.

Two consecutive comics with two beat endings. Sorry, girl.

Yet, despite all of this uncertainty, Kamala finally realizes becoming someone else isn’t anything at all that she imagined. What makes her happy is helping those in trouble. She doesn’t need to put on the tights (well) or change the way she looks. “Maybe,” Kamala thinks, “putting on a costume doesn’t make you brave.”

Ian Herring and Adrian Alphona‘s art is remarkably captivating as well. The clear facial expressions mesh with the cloudy coloring style, which really brings out the natural voice Wilson has with Kamala. With breathless visuals to match a hold-your-breath story, this All-New Ms. Marvel is really a series EVERYONE should be reading.

4.25 (out of 5) Bibles.

Before I go nose-diving into the rest of my weekly stash (and some good deeds of my own), I’d love to share this piece on the subject of diversity and comics. You can check out Abraham Riesman’s “Marvel’s Diversity Issue” at this link. See you Sunday!

(Flip the page for reviews from Moody!)