Kamala Khan Language Analysis

I didn’t see her. In the process of my annotations from my selected pages in Ms. Marvel, I was immediately struck by just how little I saw Kamala Khan. She became invisible to me. Considering the pages I chose and the fact that both take place relatively early in the development of the first volume of the series (one page pulled from the first issue and another from the third), this is to be expected. Not only must we be introduced to our main character, but we also must gain a clear understanding of their life, the people that surround them, to be able to envision more clearly where they are coming from and how that might impact the decisions that they make. A propensity for distance, something that is decidedly common when one is a superhero

As the three characters are minding their own business at the store, Zoe bursts in with her boyfriend commanding every persons’ attention, even the boy to the top left who is browsing the magazine section pauses to say “hi.” He does this as though someone like Zoe would ever condescend to speak to such a lowly person, he is compelled to, her energy will not accept anything else. In fact, she so requires of everyones’ attention that they all seem to be frozen in place throughout the interaction, she is the only one flitting around the store actively going about her life. Bruno, detached behind the counter and Kamala hiding behind Nakia who spends the entire interaction with her arms crossed over her chest, on the defensive, waiting for something offensive to spew out of Zoe’s mouth. She, who eventually makes some off-hand comment towards Nakia based on her religious misconceptions in regards to the Islamic faith, placing herself in a position of power over the two Pakistani-Americans she is essentially ridiculing. While Nakia recognizes this for the underhanded jab at who they are, Kamala goes on to remark just how “nice” Zoe is, and Bruno is silent on the matter, as he continues to be. In the reactions of these two girls, we see visible representations of who they are as people at their core and throughout each issue and ensuing

In the second selection, we have: partition (separation from the outside/American world), modesty (religious adherence in a largely atheistic world), blessed (having superpowers as well as the responsibility that comes with), warpath (the villains, both “foreign”- evil-doers with superpowers now threatening her city - and “domestic” - the people who discriminate against her, her family, and her community for being “outsiders”), radioactive (all those affected by the tirigen gas and their reactions to acquiring superpowers, some positive like Kamala and some negative), gone (having to disappear, in many ways, from Kamala’s regular life in order to lead her “super” life), answer (finding how one - either Kamala, Bruno, Nakia, or any other character for that matter - can fit themselves into the society within which they exist). Here, in much the same way, we have an understanding of the plot on this particular page without even looking at the images accompanying the words, words that are within this context almost entirely gone. Each word can be seen to link directly to the themes found within the pages of this and all