Muslim teen girl superhero comic is awesome

I've been seeing a lot of enthusiasm out there for the new Ms. Marvel comic-book series, starring a 16-year-old Muslim girl named Kamala Khan, a Pakistani American from New Jersey, who acquires superpowers. I recently bought the electronic version of the two issues that have been published so far, and I share that enthusiasm. An excellent comic: Funny, smart, sophisticated, very Internet- and fan-culture-savvy (Kamala, the protagonist, writes Avengers fanfic); compelling characters; well worth reading.

The writer is a Muslim, and part of the inspiration for the series came from stories of the editor's childhood as a Muslim in New Jersey. For more about the background, see the Wikipedia article about the series. (I feel like I should explicitly say: don't read too much into the word “Inhuman” in that article. It's an unfortunate word in this context (and not one that's appeared in the series itself so far), but it has a very specific decades-old meaning in the Marvel universe.)

If you're interested in buying the comic but you don't want to go to the trouble of going to a physical comic-book store in person, and if you have an iOS or Android tablet, you can download the free Marvel Comics app and then purchase the electronic version of the comic from within the app. I think the app also works on iOS and Android phones, but the reading experience is better on a tablet. You can also buy and read issues in a web browser.

On a side note, I'm also pleased that Kamala is specifically a fan of Captain Marvel, formerly known as Ms. Marvel. And speaking of Captain Marvel: volume 1 of that series has ended, but a new volume with the same writer (the awesome Kelly Sue DeConnick) has now started, and it too is excellent so far.

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