A Marvelous Identity: Ms. Marvel and the importance of comic books

By: Ricardo A. Serrano Denis


    Storytelling, no matter how much it indulges in its fiction, can never truly escape reality. Social tensions, cultural anxieties, historical continuity, all of these things cling to fiction and demand that their presence be felt in comic books, film, and video games. The same goes with different genres. During the Cold War, Westerns dominated pop culture because they resonated most, in discourse and representation, with the ideological battle that the United States waged against Soviet Russia. The good guys (cowboys) were American bred, morally righteous, and white. The bad guys (Native Americans) were foreign to the ways of the good guys, antagonistic to American expansion, and red (labeled as such by the good guys and ironically compatible with the Soviet enemy). Who knew Native Americans could so easily fit into a metaphor for Cold War Communists? After Westerns, different genres took the mantle of Cold War politics and created stories that best reflected the different phases of said conflict (see Cold War science fiction and horror for some of the best examples), taking into account new developments and their wavering meanings. What was interesting was that each genre had its hero. Westerns had cowboys, combat films had soldiers, noirs had broken detectives, and thrillers had their spies. So, in a sense, one can say that genres define heroes the same way heroes define genres. But what of the heroes that stray from the classic formulas of Golden Age comics? What of those heroes of the post-9/11 world that are not a part of the Avengers or the Justice League? What of heroes that are Muslim, Latino, or Asian? What do they make of their genre, the superhero genre? And what does the genre make of them and their identities?

      Like a direct answer to these questions comes Ms. Marvel, written by G. Willow Wilson and illustrated by Adrian Alphona. Ms. Marvel tells the story of Kamala Khan, a 16 year-old Pakistani-American from New Jersey who idolizes Carol Danvers, the first Ms. Marvel from the comic book world. Kamala Khan is the fourth character to take the name of Ms. Marvel, inserting herself into Marvel’s current Marvel NOW! series—a semi-reboot of the Marvel universe intended to pull in new readers. Kamala is young, of color, and a minority, two elements that not only dictate identity in a very fierce manner but also inform the social tensions that define the post-9/11 world. She is also Muslim, a character trait (come 9/11) that automatically communicates persecution and antagonism. This does not even have to be alluded to textually for the reader to comprehend the character’s current state of affairs. Kamala’s religion is inherently added into the mix of components that makes her identity so reactive.

     Now, being a comic that deals in identity so directly, it is important we recognize the elements that make that topic drive the character into being a superhero. Those elements come out of Carol Danvers, the first female character to take up the name of Ms. Marvel. Kamala Khan idolizes Carol Danvers. This idolization comes through her fan fiction writings in the comic. Kamala’s characters are all supreme metaphors for American values. Captain America, Iron Man, and Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel all make their appearances in her fantasy superhero stories. Captain America represents American war, Iron Man represents American freedom through economical gain and freedom, and Danvers represents a very traditional female image built into American conceptions of beauty and its power. She stands for a sort of female normalcy that plays second fiddle to male predominance in heroic deeds. It is of no wonder, then, that Kamala finds refuge in Danvers.

     Danvers is a white, blond bombshell that dresses in a skimpy black outfit with a yellow thunderbolt symbol across her chest. She was usually drawn the traditionally sexist way Marvel and DC drew (and continues to draw) their female characters, breasts bigger than her head and barely covered by a modified swimsuit (see most iterations of Wonder Woman and Elektra). This image extends well into the comic book culture of the 90s and early 2000s and makes up a sort of sexually misguided tradition that kept female superhero characters a step behind their male counterparts. They were objects readers could drool over instead of idols and examples they could follow or wish to become. Kamala falls under the second tier of followers by wanting to be Danvers in image, spectacularly sexualized though it may be. But Kamala’s intentions are far from sexual. They are cultural. They speak to identity, American identity.

      Ms. Marvel #1 opens with Kamala coveting, as she says, “delicious, delicious infidel meat.” She’s in a convenience store with friends when two, American, classmates come in and go through the now customary passive-aggressive culture bashing. We immediately meet a Kamala that desperately wants to fit in, to be “normal”. Of course, being normal means going out to parties and drinking with boys. The comic never directly associates normalcy with being American, but it is heavily implied. Kamala’s obsession with Carol Danvers further hits the nail on the proverbial coffin. Consider Kamala’s claim to normalcy after her very traditional father prohibits her from going out to an outdoor party:

     It’s just one party. It’s not like I’m asking their 
     permission to snort cocaine…Why am I the only one who 
     gets signed out of health class? Why do I have to bring 
     Pakoras to school for lunch?...Everybody else gets to be normal. 
     Why can’t I?

The discourses are simple enough: foreign girl wants to fit in. Her culture and the traditions that define her family’s identity hold her back. That she resists them is not only logical but expected given Kamala’s family is far away from home, and that sense of home cannot be expected to fully migrate into American soil intact. Kamala’s discursive rebellion follows an actual act of rebellion when she escapes to the party her father forbade her from going. At the party Kamala drinks, throws up, and is made fun of by the same classmates that teased her in the convenience store scene. She is ridiculed, making her identity stand out all the more. The stage is set for the transformation.

      As Kamala walks back to her house Terrigen mists descend upon Jersey City, swallowing up Kamala into a cocoon that transforms her into an Inhuman. The Terrigen mists are part of Marvel’s Infinity event, where the Inhumans and Thanos unleash a force that seeks out beings with Inhuman genes to encase them in cocoons that awaken their powers. Inside the cocoon Kamala is visited by three superhero hallucinations: Captain America, Iron Man, and Carol Danvers (now as Captain Marvel). They are the same characters that appear in her fan fiction. They question her intentions, her drive to be normal. They look like gods, speaking to their universal traits rather than their nationalistic ones. This is important considering the three heroes represent Americanism in one of its most intense forms. They are heroes we aspire to be. But they are heroes that never stray from their nationalities. Danvers asks the ultimate question: “What do you want to be?” To which Kamala answers: “I want to be you. Except I would wear the classic, politically incorrect costume and kick butt in giant wedge heels.” Kamala challenges her identity, reasserts her right to make up her identity as she pleases (a very American ideal should it stick to its utopic underpinnings), and makes the decision. Danvers answers, in a very wise manner, “It is not going to turn out the way you think.” Kamala wakes up, breaks out of the cocoon, and stands into the light a blond superhero in a skimpy black outfit, the same one she wanted. She became an American superhero.

      According to Thomas Schatz, in his book Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System (1981), genres are privileged story forms in which social tensions are brought to life in narratives and are ritualistically resolved. But popular genres, he explains, are those that can best animate and resolve social tensions through their metaphors. Comic books are popular culture products carrying within their pages iconic characters that proudly represent, and define, the superhero genre. Their power, the thing that makes comics matter, comes from the fact that the superheroes that live in the comic book pages can convincingly resolve social tensions, suppressing, if only marginally, the things that feed off of them. Superheroes are metaphors for a better way of life, for a way to do things the right way. That is why we want to be them, just like Kamala.

     Ms. Marvel is a powerful comic for various reasons, many of which I have explored here. But in the end, we find that Kamala is not so different from the average comic book reader. She wanted to be something different and she succeeded in doing so. Her reasons are complex, not too alien from things we have felt more than once in our lives. She becomes a superhero to fit in, to be a part of something that does not understand her. In looking for normalcy she further distanced herself from it. Her metaphor is one of change, of acceptance, and of diversity. She contemplates the possibility that equality is too naïve an aspiration. Instead she represents an alternative. In a world where identity can label heroes and villains too freely, Kamala speaks for diversity as a superpower rather than a weakness. For Kamala the word Muslim does not mean terrorist or not-normal, it means superhero.

Language and Myth in Comic Books

By: Gabriel Alejandro

"And in spite of current evidence to the contrary, actions do not rule the world... words do."

-Jonathan Hickman, East of West issue 11

     Whenever we hear the word “myth” being used, it often conveys one of two things: a negative charge against another’s basis for an argument or belief; or as a reference to the Greek gods that once inhabited Mount Olympus. We often forget that at the core of every myth lies a reality which, after the process of “mythification,” acquires new dimensions for its target audience. What distinguishes myth from fiction is that its elements (characters, setting, events, etc.) often resonate with the audience’s life experience and thus can become a valid explanation for that which cannot be easily understood or explained. Myths began as oral traditions, with each narrator adding something from their own personal undergoing to the general mythos. This was and still is possible due to language (either oral or written) and its conventions, which allows for different versions to deviate from the standard and still be accepted as part of a whole. Today, the same language mechanisms that allowed for the dissemination of classical myths are alive and well in the comic book medium, thus granting them a special place in modern culture

Language theory

     In order to proceed, we must begin with the late literary critic Terrence Hawkes’ take on myth: “All myths, that is, have their grounding in the actual generalized experience of [ancient] peoples, and represent their attempts to impose a satisfactory, graspable, humanizing shape on it” (Structuralism and Semiotics 13). This refers to a tendency in human history to bricolage or, in other words, use a familiar word for something alien. Just try to remember those bad movies where a native from some jungle is taken to a city for the first time and refers to a car as a “metal horse.” The native, taken from his setting (and language), employs a defense mechanism of sorts, in which he tries to understand the new world by means of his own language. This mechanism, also used in myth-making, is a way of coping with unknown events through metaphorical language, or “... to deal with the world, that is, not directly but at a remove” (Hawkes 15). For a while it was also referred to as “the primitive mind” by language scholars and thus underestimated its historical value. It was not until the French anthropologist Claude Lévi‑Strauss’ study, which took myths beyond “child-like play” and into a more “sophisticated relationship with the world,” that scholars began to view myths as portals into the past.

Comic book mythos

     Lévi-Strauss study focused on how myths, and the language they are built upon, echo a particular point in time’s surroundings. His concern was “… ultimately with the extent to which the structures of myths prove actually formative as well as reflective of men’s minds...” (Hawkes 41). In this aspect, we can witness how the language –dialogue, names, and imagery– of myths reflect a particular social and/or historic context, depending on their moment of conception. Furthermore, we can also make the jump into comic books, where some of our most beloved characters were created out of historic events. In With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story documentary, Stan Lee explains the birth of many of Marvel’s superheroes. In all of these instances, the character’s raison d'être mirrored a particular language from the times: In the early sixties (1962), the Hulk was born amid nuclear fears and proliferation of words such as “atomic,” and “radiation,” elements with which Bruce Banner worked with and suffered from respectively. A year later (1963), Iron Man was first published among the hatred for the U.S. military industrial complex. The name itself, Iron, being a clear signifier of the struggle. A few more years down the road, The Silver Surfer (1966) was the answer to the flower power movement. A pacifist alien who mediates between a destroyer of worlds and its victims. The list goes on and on.

     It must be said that language is not limited to the written word. Images and symbols also figure into what is known as semiology, or the study of meaning-making. In one of the clearest examples, Captain America’s name stands for an infinite set of ideals of the North American nation. Moreover, his appearance in 1940, during the lead-up years to the U.S.’s involvement in World War II, made him a symbol for the inevitable. The first issue, which showed the Captain punching Adolf Hitler in the face, sold out immediately and was met with patriotic fervor. Beyond Hitler, the Captain battled enemies such as the “Red” Skull, shown with a swastika in the above picture. The Red Skull’s name is not only a literary reminder of the red scare that spanned almost four decades (from 1919 to 1954), but it is also a visual reminder of it.

Modern Times

      This language recourse is still very much present in comic books today. Recently, Rick Remender’s run of Captain America introduced a new villain called Dr. Mindbubbles, another post-Captain America super-soldier failed experiment with the particularity that the serum used on him was laced with the drug known as LSD. On this occasion, the semiology transports us to a time when drugs were not perceived as entirely evil and the U.S. government studied its benefits for personal gain. One may ask then: Is Remender fifty years too late with the character? The answer is no. Remender’s character comes at a time when the legality of some drugs is being contested in the U.S., and the language used in the arguments both for and against echoes the language of the past. The character is then validated by the previous and current historical contexts, or as Roland Barthes notes in his book Mythologies, “…the materials of mythical speech (the language itself, photography, painting, posters, rituals, objects, etc.), however different at the start, are reduced to a pure signifying function as soon as they are caught by myth” (113). This tool of language then allows for the myth to be accepted by contemporaries for its factual background and passed on to future generations for its historical value.

Popular acceptance

      The acceptance of these comic book myths also lies within the realm of language. Two basic concepts, the langue and parole, establish the glass through which these myths must be seen. In language, langue stands for language as-is, its rules and “correctness.” On the other hand, the parole stands for its everyday use, filled with mistakes, variations, and alterations. As with language, these myths stem out of a reality that can be seen as a langue. Thus, the variations, reinterpretations, and reimagining of past or current events lie within the parole. The public’s acceptance then comes of how close the myth can come to the reality without it actually being the reality. The more elements of reality the myth has, the better. If it has less, then it is just fantasy.

      Nowadays it is not even necessary to even purchase a comic book in order to know who Superman is, or how Captain America came to be. These characters have withstood the test of time, but they have not done it on their own. Every couple of years a new voice comes to carry the superhero myth in the form of writers. The “magicians” as Alan Moore would say, are tasked with the duty of breathing life into the characters and often take from personal experiences to shape their contributions. As with myths and their oral counterparts, comic book writers take from an established tradition to which they must answer to, but can also add to the story with some restrictions. The parameters are established by the language of each character at its moment of creation, which define its nature and myth. Writers then provide readers with a more updated language, one that reflects his or her contextual setting, and the public decides whether to accept it or not into the mythos. This, again, is possible due to language conventions and concepts such as langue and parole, which allow for an immovable canon to exist under unlimited variations of it. As time passes, the origins of our characters are questioned less and the focus shifts to where they are situated in the now. As long as there is a language to fill the pages with stories, comic book characters will continue to exist as an alternative to our reality.