Ms. Marvel #6 – Review

By: G. Willow Wilson (writer), Jacob Wyatt (art), Ian Herring (color art)

The Story: She’s the best at what she does and what she does is squee.

The Review: Our little Ms. Marvel’s growing up so fast. It seems like just last month she was still in origins stories and all of a sudden she’s already having her first superhero team up!

With the Inventor still looking for her, Kamala is slowly coming into her own as a hero. It seems like our bird/brain villain’s shadow is everywhere in Jersey City and it immediately sets up a tense and interesting status quo for the series.

This issue confirms the identity of the Inventor hinted at last month and establishes him as a perfect foil to Kamala. One part Kingpin, one part Ultra-Humanite, the Inventor walks the same line between the comical and the competent as Kamala, though he leans towards the later. If this were any other comic, his appearance could easily have been a scene-stealer, but this is Ms. Marvel.

G. Willow Wilson continues to build upon the groundwork she’s laid with Kamala’s character. She’s much more confident as a hero and has more opportunities to demonstrate her intelligence and bravery. I particularly love one moment when Kamala shows off her knowledge of physics as she tries to figure out how best to use her powers and it’s all the better for the frantic, dorky way she implements the idea. Indeed, despite a significant upswing in her competence, Ms. Marvel is still the lovable, everyman character we met half a year ago and Wilson knows how to draw the humor from that as well as how to endear the character to her audience.

There’s a rule of writing that says that, if possible, you should put your character in the most extreme situations possible, the ones that most stridently reveal their character. For a fangirl like Kamala, pairing her with Wolverine is just such a situation. The very sight of him reduces comics’ most beloved new heroine to doge speak!

You might think that the entertainment in Wolverine and Kamala’s interactions would stem from their drastically different worldviews and life experiences – one just starting a hero career while the other is about to embark on the final steps of a centuries long journey – but they’re actually a perfect team. Wilson has an impressive grasp on Wolverine’s character, presenting him in a manner that’s truer to his years of publication than the simplified badass that he’s evolved into within our collective consciousness. From his fighting style to his sense of humor to his speech pattern, Wilson nails it.

The book is truly clever throughout, playing with expectations in ways that earn a chuckle for even the simplest gags and integrating the best lines seamlessly into the dialogue. There aren’t many books that can be as wonderfully weird as this one, especially without venturing into pure absurdism, but Ms. Marvel #6 activates that childhood part of your brain that accepts ridiculous premises with absolute sincerity.

It’s a shame we don’t get more of Bruno or Kamala’s family this issue, both have been outstanding elements of the series so far, but those worried that the focus on action and heroics will kill the unflinching heart that made this book a hit can rest easy; we get a healthy serving of both this issue.

It seems that Kamala’s Abu is holding her to that meeting with Sheikh Abdullah he threatened at the end of their last conversation. Abdullah was an amusing obstacle for Kamala during the first arc, representing her feelings of disconnection from her community and the differences between her worldview and Muslim orthodoxy, but it seems that there may be more to him than meets the eye. This scene is a great example of what’s so great and refreshing about the series. Though Wilson still has to have one character get a little dumber for another to sound smarter, the sense of naturalism is greatly increased. Ms. Marvel’s Jersey City is just full of lovely people.

Adrian Alphona is absent this issue, with Jacob Wyatt providing the art. It is an unenviable task to follow Alphona, but Wyatt does so with aplomb. In many places he actually surpasses the already glowing pedigree of the series. Wyatt’s style fits Kamala perfectly. There’s an energy in is panels that captures so much of the character and the teenage experience.

The characters all look great and they move naturally and with purpose. It’s particularly impressive how different Sheikh Abdullah looks from the rest of the cast and yet how well he fits in. And, speaking of different, the Inventor looks amazing! Though Edison looks a little more like a cockatoo than the similarly named cockatiel, Wyatt does an admirable job of giving the Inventor a palpable personality despite his immobile features. He also does great things with his beak, which captures the creepiness of the fat-tongued, slobbery bird.

It is worth mentioning, however, that Wyatt’s work is not always the most consistent. Kamala can look pretty drastically different from one scene to the next. While I actually kind of like it and enjoy thinking about it as a representation of her own self-image, Wyatt certainly doesn’t imbue it with any quality that distinguishes it from a simple series of errors.

He also seems to have a problem depicting Kamala’s eyes in uniform. This appears most at the very beginning and very end of the book and, in the former case, is accompanied by a scratchiness of linework and dullness of color that doesn’t live up to his extremely impressive work on the rest of the issue.

The Conclusion: While there’s something very special about G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel, I admit that by the end of her five-part origin story some of the energy of the first few issues had started to fade. In the interim between this issue and the last Kamala has markedly improved as a hero and her title has followed suit.

Somehow this title has found another artist who’s perfectly in sync with the story. And though it might seem early to be invoking the sales-boosting Wolverine team-up that every Marvel hero seems entitled to, G. Willow Wilson knows exactly what she’s doing, simultaneously moving Kamala’s story forward, drawing in new readers, and providing one of the most satisfying team-ups in recent memory.

A lot of hyperbolic things were said about Ms. Marvel’s opening arc but, for any blemishes, it seems undeniably poised to become a classic, a love letter to fans that will be remembered and imitated for years. A fusion of classic comics nostalgia and the approaching future of the medium, it was only natural to wonder if the series could hold on to that level of quality. Somehow, Ms. Marvel #6 proves itself the best issue yet.

Grade: A- (Very writing. So amaze.)

A Thought: