Five years, 60 issues, and a cultural phenomenon later, G. Willow Wilson bids farewell to Kamala Khan and Jersey City with a heartfelt and touching tribute to the power of friendship.
Written by G. Willow Wilson, Devin Grayson, Eve L. Ewing, Jim Zub, and Saladin AhmedCover by Sara Pichelli and Justin Ponsor
Illustrated by Nico Leon, Takeshi Miyazawa, Joey Vazquez, Kevin Libranda, Minkyu Jung, and Juan Vlasco
Colored by Ian Herring
Lettered by VC’s Joe CaramagnaMS. MARVEL marks five incredible years on the stands! Take a deep dive into Kamala’s Jersey City with Bruno, Nakia, Zoe and more in this jam-packed celebration of Ms. Marvel and her amazing friends!
I thought G. Willow Wilson would be writing “Ms. Marvel” forever.
Like Sam and Dean or Bart and Millhouse, G. Willow Wilson and Kamala Khan were the match made in heaven that you expect to be together to the end of time, to live forever. So when Ms. Wilson announced late last year that she was stepping aside from the title after five years, it was a shock to my system. It was like the couple you knew in high school that you figured would be Together Forever breaking up two weeks before graduation.
But all good things must come to an end (yes, Kate, even your beloved Sam and Dean), and I find comfort in the fact that Ms. Wilson is able to end her tenure on this title on her own time and terms. With the “Ms. Marvel” adventures continuing in a new series next month and the current arcs in this book all but complete, Wilson takes her swan song as the opportunity to reflect and remind us of Kamala’s guiding light: her friends. Even though Kamala has come to grips with the duality of the superhero teenager life, she’s still feeling lost. Lost much like a player in an RPG who went for something that looked epic on paper but turns out a massive fail in execution. And that – – video games – – is something Ms. Marvel knows very well.
And it’s those two ideas – – that feeling of being lost and the video game metaphor used to explain that feeling – – that we get the crux of this final issue. Thanks to a wormhole, Kamala, Nakia, Bruno, and Zoe take a trip through a variety of video game genres, from World of Warcraft to a tribute to Zero Wing (the game that birthed that most famous of gaming memes), leveling up and unlocking achievements until they complete the quest to know thyself. It’s authentic Ms. Marvel, the hallmark of G. Willow Wilson’s writing: deep dives into deep thoughts but in a unique, age-appropriate tone. Young superheroes struggling with the human condition: the hallmark of a Marvel comic, birthed by the late Stan Lee in one teenager (Peter Parker), carried over a generation later into another.
This story format is perfect for the rotating creative teams in these pages, each one using these variety of video game styles to their advantage to craft the overall narrative in their own personal, unique way – – but without feeling dissonant. These disparate writers and artists work together in such perfect sync you almost forget that there are guest writers and artists on this issue. They create video game worlds unique but still recognizable to all from the hardcore to the casual gamer: the pastoral World of Warcraft universe, the mysticism of Final Fantasy, and the 8-bit grandparents of all those games that no doubt these teens have only seen in YouTube clips. All pay tribute to Ms. Wilson’s talents by ending the series in its trademark style: deep philosophical truths explained gently, plainly. Praise is also due colorist Ian Herring and letter Joe Caramagna, who also help to weave these artistic styles together in a way that uses the video game metaphors (jump on keywords, early gaming typeface) to perfect advantage.
In the final pages, we get a preview of some of what we can expect from Saladin Ahmed and Minkyu Jung in March’s “The Magnificent Ms. Marvel.” Before returning back to reality, Kamala and the crew revisit their youthful selves in school, the seeds of the friendships blooming (including Bruno’s sweet schoolboy crush on Kamala). It’s a brilliant way of passing the torch from one writer to the next. Ahmed and Jung know what this series is rooted in: its characters, their lives, the bonds they share. In three short pages they prove that Kamala and her Jersey City are left in the right set of hands.
Continued belowG. Willow Wilson’s intentions for “Ms. Marvel” were for it to be a fun side project, perhaps about ten issues and a year of her time. Ten issues and 365 days became 60 issues and five years. A place on the New York Times bestseller list. Scholarly journal articles and book chapters exploring the impact of Kamala’s feminism and faith on greater social discourse. From academic to fandom, Kamala Khan has left her mark on the world, and on me. This series was the first regular Marvel series I read when I returned to comics in 2015, attracted initially to the fact that it was set in my home state of New Jersey. I came because hey, Jersey homegirls gotta stick together. I stayed for the warmth, the gentle education in the Muslim faith, the everyday teenage struggles that even an old 40 year old fart like myself could empathize with and understand, the touches that made this book so uniquely New Jersey. It’s the one series that has never left my pull list.
It’s heartbreaking for me to say goodbye, even though it’s not a real goodbye: just a change, an evolution, a blossoming. And yes, there will be that change, and it is gonna hurt and suck but like Kamala learned by the end: hold on to what is important and you won’t have to face the worst of life alone. And that is the Kamala Khan legacy.
Final Verdict: 9.0 – What more can I say to this entire creative team except: Thank you.
