Dear Meteor readers,

Happy second Saturday of Pride! This week, I had the pleasure of attending a screening of the first two episodes of Ms. Marvel, the new series out on Disney+. Based on the comic book of the same name, the TV show stars the very charming Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-American superhero who gets her power from an ancient family heirloom bangle. I was hooked.

I’m not exactly a comic book nerd, but lucky for you my newsletter co-sherpa Shannon is, and she’s written a beautiful reflection on how it feels to watch the series as a Muslim and superhero obsessive. She talks to Meteor founding member Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who also happens to be one of the directors.

First, some news.

xoxo,

Samhita Mukhopadhyay

WHAT’S GOING ON

About those insurrectionists: It only took seven years, but Ivanka Trump has finally said something truthful. In recorded testimony played Thursday night for the Select Committee overseeing the January 6th hearings, Ivanka stated that, after the 2020 election, she had “accepted” Attorney General Bill Barr’s statement that there was “no sufficient evidence” to overturn her father’s loss. (Trump responded today by ranting that his favorite child simply did not know what she was talking about.) There was a time when people had hoped Ivanka would temper her father’s wrongdoings. This testimony makes clear: She knew full well his claims the election had been stolen were delusional; she just did nothing about it. People died, and we still don’t know what this means for the state of our democracy. But thanks for being honest, I guess.

AND:

• Britney Spears got married! But apparently, we still can’t leave her alone. Spears’s ex-husband Jason Alexander crashed her wedding and managed to film the entire thing. Why are men!?

• Travelers flying into the U.S. will no longer need to provide a negative Covid test before entering the country because along with Covid funding and free tests, America has run out of shits to give.

• A 24th, TWENTY-FOURTH, woman has filed a civil lawsuit against NFL star Deshaun Watson for sexual assault. And yet: Watson is still employed and will remain so, in line with the NFL’s policy not to punish players unless there is a criminal charge.

• Mercury is finally direct but is capitalism in retrograde? Liz Plank is on the hunt for the answer in this illuminating interview about whether all capitalism is as evil as we think.

• Politics reporter Felicia Sonmez was fired by the Washington Post, and the details are complicated. But it’s a big loss, as Sonmez—an assault survivor who sued the paper last year—was an important voice on everything from reproductive rights to local politics.

COSMIC

Kamala Khan on TV Is a Revelation  

…especially for all us Muslim nerds.

BY SHANNON MELERO

IMAN VELLANI, MY QUEEN, MY LEADER (PHOTO BY JON KOPALOFF VIA GETTY IMAGES)

In the first opening minutes of Ms. Marvel, the new series on Disney+, Kamala Khan (played by Iman Vellani) says, “Finally the moment everyone has been waiting for,” and although nothing had actually happened yet, I teared up. I’ve been waiting for an on-screen version of Kamala—a scrappy young Muslim Jersey girl who discovers she has superpowers—since May 2014 when I walked into Midtown Comics and purchased the first issue.

That first “Ms. Marvel”—written by G. Willow Wilson, with art by Adrian Alphona and Ian Herring—followed the early hero days of 16-year-old Pakistani-American Kamala Khan as she works her way up to be the new Ms. Marvel, a title formerly held by Carol Danvers (before her promotion to Captain Marvel).

Finally, I thought, a Muslim hero who wasn’t going to get stuck in an outdated trope where her religion or ethnic background would be the only defining quality of her character (like Dust, a little-known member of the X-Men universe who hails from Afghanistan and wears niqab and whose superpower is turning into sand). From the beginning, Kamala was something more, a three-dimensional teenager who also happened to be Muslim.

My initial excitement paid off immediately—the very first panel of “Ms. Marvel #1” is an absolutely delightful scene where Kamala and her friends are at a corner store and she’s bent over a sandwich display lusting after a BLT. As a young Muslim woman, I too stare longingly at pieces of pork. (What I wouldn’t do for a guilt-free bite of crispy fried pork salami). It was that moment of connection, that playful wink and nod to a widely shared Muslim experience, that made me a fan.

WHEN I SAY I’VE BEEN WITH THIS GAL SINCE DAY ONE I REALLY MEAN IT (PHOTO BY SHANNON MELERO)

And the series premiere is everything I could have hoped for. It is visually stunning, a testament to the artwork that made the comics stand out on the shelf. It’s lighthearted and funny and is about so much more than a journey to superherodom: there’s intergenerational family dynamics, a burgeoning crush situation, dad jokes, teen shenanigans and homage to the unique weirdness that is living in Jersey City.

Kamala lives in a world of fantasy—she is a visual artist, makes costumes, and edits videos of Captain Marvel’s adventures for Youtube. She daydreams about winning a cosplay contest with her creations. She is a diehard Captain Marvel fan—which, same!—and she’s marked not just by her nerdiness but by the fact that she’s Pakistani in a school brimming with white kids. At one point, after Kamala is caught sneaking out of her house, the episode culminates in a confrontation with her mother, Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff) asking her daughter, “Do you want to be who we raised you to be…or do you want to to be this cosmic head-in-the-clouds person?”

With a huge grin, Kamala answers, “Cosmic.”

I screamed. That brief exchange was, for me, the essence of what Kamala represents. When you’re a Muslim person, your religion is often the only identifier people remember. But Kamala is so beautifully multi-faceted and unfettered by a single part of her life.

Choosing to live in fantasy or pursuing creativity isn’t something that children of color or children of immigrants often get to do. When your parents uprooted everything to give you a better life—it’s generally frowned upon to follow your “cosmic” urges. I’ve always wanted to become a writer, but the first thing my mom asked when I told her was, “How will you make money?”

ALL HAIL, ALL HAIL (PHOTO COURTESY OF MARVEL STUDIOS) ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved

But how can we not pursue our fantasies when we are the very product of our parents’ dreams for bigger and better? That is the question Kamala is answering, and she does so with incredible flair. Finally seeing her on-screen was so meaningful: So few women of color, fictional or otherwise, get to bask in a fantasy of their own making and take joy from it.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, the Oscar-winning documentarian who directs the fourth and fifth episodes of Ms. Marvel, says it best, “I have told stories of ordinary women who do extraordinary things for the better part of two decades…they are superheroes without capes. Ms. Marvel is an extension of that work. Her story will resonate with millions around the world who will see a reflection of their families and themselves in her. The birth of Kamala Khan onscreen is historic—it shows that anyone can be a superhero.”

Critics often turn their noses up at the superhero genre. But what creators like Jack Kirby and Stan Lee is no different than what Homer did. It’s all myth. It’s all an examination of the human ethos, of humankind’s struggle with itself, and of the fight between good and evil. But this time around the Pakistani-American girl from New Jersey gets to be the hero.

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