CSBG writer gushes over the Muslim Ms. Marvel
The biggest surprise of the group, for me, is Ms. Marvel, which is a book that has lit people on absolute fire, and with good reason. Obviously as the story of a young woman of color—and with the especially underrepresented Muslim faith (not to mention Pakistani American background) – this books helps fill a huge gap in our current superhero comics. But filling a gap doesn’t matter if you’re not actually good. Fortunately for all of us, Ms. Marvel is all caps GOOD. It’s smart and appropriately sweet, gloriously superheroic and inspiring. It’s also a wonderfully organic origin story (and I DO get sick of origin stories especially when they’re rehashes or retcons of characters we already know) but Kamala’s tale is both perfectly universal and relatable and also unique to her.Oh yes, we all know how "organic" it is by now, don't we? As the news involving the Original Sin crossover's noted, they're tying the character's would-be origin in with the Inhumans. And while Pakistani background itself is fine and welcome, the Muslim background is not, and I say this for the same reasons I would frown if they decided to conceive a protagonist who's a Scientologist or sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan mentality.
One of the commentors to this article said the series would eventually be cancelled because it stars a character nobody's ever heard of. No, that's not why it'll be cancelled in time. It's because it forces the Religion of Peace onto the main star as her belief system, and down the readers' throats. If they'd avoided ideology, it'd be much easier to accept the book on its own terms.
Most galling, as mentioned before, is that a woman is the one here to gush over the book, all without doing any research about Islam and the Koran, and does a serious disservice to women as a result. This kind of propaganda only embarrasses the CSBG section, where the better items are usually history based for mainstream products.
Labels: crossoverloading, islam and jihad, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, politics
"the especially underrepresented Muslim faith"
Because, you know, positive depictions of Southern Baptist or Mormon superheroes are all over comics.
Posted by The Drizzt | 3:11 PM