Ms. Marvel #3

Marvel's re-creation of Ms. Marvel with the character Kamala Khan, a Jersey City high school kid and Pakistani Muslim, is a strong argument for why it is important to keep an eye on what the corporate behemoth is producing. At once timely -- exploring the Muslim experience in America at a moment in history when Wahhabi jihadists are destroying the Middle East -- and traditional -- the superhero as high-school nerd, e.g., Steve Ditko's The Amazing Spider-Man -- Ms. Marvel is everything a superhero comic should be. The credit goes to editors Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker, writer G. Willow Wilson and artist Adrian Alphona.

I realized on the train into work this past week that no superhero has been as strong and alone as the high school Peter Parker who Stan Lee and Steve Ditko brought to life in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 - #38, 1963 - 1966. More vulnerable than Superman, Batman and Captain America, Spider-Man nonetheless battled alone. All Peter Parker received from his peers was derision. Truly, the guy had a spine of stainless steel.

The new Ms. Marvel is not as edgy as the initial run of The Amazing Spider-Man. It is more whimsical. Kamala Khan is a NuHuman, part of the new crop of Inhumans that sprang up after the Terrigen Bomb was detonated releasing a cloud of Terrigen Mist that activated dormant Inhuman genes dispersed among the general population by the "Lost Tribes" of Inhumans.

In the 12 scans below Kamala goes to the mosque with a girlfriend and then tries to get a handle on her morphing powers while at high school.

The final scan is a flyer for an appearance that G. Willow Wilson made last month at my neighborhood comic shop. Sadly, wiped out from a weekend of training for an upcoming race, I stayed home and missed out on the event.

Infinity #6

Recently another blockbuster Marvel Comics crossover event came to an end. Infinity was a sprawling (spanning a dozen different titles) and ambitious (I think too much so) saga of inter-galactic creation, destruction and warfare between superheroes and supervillains. Penned principally by Jonathan Hickman, it factored in Thanos, the mad Titan butcher, in a way that never seemed organic to the main narrative (which was interesting and had do do with the Builders, the primary originators of the universe).

Hickman introduces new characters, both heroes and villains, along the way; Thane, son of Thanos, for instance, whose special powers are unleashed with the detonation of a Terrigen Bomb by Black Bolt and who will likely figure in the present Marvel blockbuster crossover event, Inhumanity. You see, one crossover event gives way to another.

The point of these crossover events is to make money for the parent corporation. The reader is sent on a spending spree in a largely vain attempt to keep abreast of the narrative, scattered as it is over many different comic books. A feeling of immersion in or presence with the story is almost never achieved. The feeling is rather always one of deferral or difference. But in this I guess you could say, in true Derridean fashion, that Marvel is treating its readers to the essence of writing.

Below are ten scans from Infinity #6 covering the climactic final battle between the Avengers -- Hulk, Ms. Marvel, Thor -- and Thanos. But it is Thanos' son Thane that ends up conquering the evil Titan, freezing him in a cube of "living death" that conjures up images of Thanos' demise in his original appearance in  the Captain Marvel of the Watergate-era 1970s. Jim Cheung is the penciler.