So I'm going to talk now about Kamala Khan, the new Ms. Marvel.
Way back in 1967, Marvel Comics created Ms. Marvel as a spin-off distaff counterpart of the Kree superhero Captain Marvel. She was a long-time supporting character in Marv's book named Carol Danvers who got powers through being experimented on by aliens, and she was an attempt at tapping into the women's lib zeitgeist by a bunch of old men who didn't really get what women's lib was all about. As a result, Ms. Marvel ended up kind of floating around the periphery of the Marvel Universe for a good long while, ended up kind of dead and kind of a split personality with the X-Man Rogue, and then became an Avenger. She was a cool character, but didn't have many big storylines or events surrounding her and was never a huge name. Then Marvel made the big decision.
The company had tried to make the identity of Captain Marvel into something important for a long time, not only because it's got the name of the company right in the title but also as a way to spite rival DC Comics (who publish the adventures of a Golden Age character called Captain Marvel but have to title his books some variation of SHAZAM! due to a rights snafu). As a result, after the original Captain Marvel died, the identity was picked up here and there by various other characters, none of whom quite managed to stick. So, with Marvel needing to get a new Captain Marvel book onto the stands lest DC be able to use the name, they bestowed the title onto Carol Danvers.
The internet loved this idea. The biggest comic book company in the world, and the character named after them is a woman? Yes please! About time! Etc. So now there was nobody using the name Ms. Marvel, and a big company can’t exactly leave an IP lying around like that. So they created a new Ms. Marvel.
The new character was named Kamala Khan, a female Muslim Arab-American teenager with shapeshifting powers and an appealingly nerdy personality. She has a large and interesting supporting cast, from her conservative Muslim family to her nerdy techhead friends at school. Her home is in New Jersey, so she's close enough to the superhero-clogged Marvel New York to take part in crossovers and yet far enough away that villainous threats can't be easily handled by more experienced superheroes. Her stories are a delight to read, her fanbase is growing, and you almost never hear anyone complain about her the way they do about female Thor or black Captain America. Why is that?
First of all, there's the craft put into the character and her stories. Kamala has a strong and interesting personality that is on display from page one of issue one. She comes across as a person first and a superhero second. She is positioned to explore familiar and well-loved themes (the teenage superhero coming-of-age story that first rocketed Spider-Man to superstardom and has been remixed countless times in characters both successful and forgotten) yet brings a genuinely new perspective to them. Her relationships with her family, her religion, her status as a child of immigrants are all unique to her, yet speak to issues that we've all seen or dealt with in our lives. She is given opportunity to struggle against real challenges and enemies, and while she gets help on occasion from friends and family, her victories and defeats are ultimately the result of her own abilities and decisions. Simply put, it's a really good comic with a really good character in it.
So if the new Thor, Captain America, and Spider-Man are well-written and well-crafted, they should be just as good, right? Unfortunately no. The second part of what makes Ms. Marvel work involves the meta of the character, her positioning in the context of the greater Marvel Universe and the company's history and characters. It is here that we see the real difference between what Marvel SHOULD be doing and what they're ACTUALLY doing.
Simply put, unlike the other characters, Kamala Khan didn't steal anything from anybody to get where she is.
Carol Danvers wasn't Ms. Marvel anymore. She'd been "promoted" to Captain Marvel. And that's how everyone, the character, the fans, the company, saw the change for Carol - she had been brought up out of relative obscurity to the take the spotlight as an "important" character. Carol had had other identities before - Binary, Warbird - as a result of public opinion on the "Ms." in "Ms. Marvel" shifting (it was originally chosen as a symbol of female empowerment, but as times changed the connotation of Ms. became one instead of dismissal of women, and thus many readers wanted it changed). But as Captain Marvel, Carol was clearly and visibly placed as the equal and rival of any hero around. And this happy event naturally and organically left room for someone to take up the mantle that she had outgrown.
Compare this with the events of Thor, where the hero is stripped of his power for no comprehensible reason and relegated to a sobbing sad sack drunk in the corner. Compare with Captain America, where Steve Rogers is prematurely aged into a decrepit old man through a nonsense plot development. And compare with Spider-Man, where Peter Parker is still running around punching supervillains in the face exactly as he ever was. Two of the "legacies" are created by sabotaging the existing bearers of the identities, and the third is still using it!
Furthermore, not only did Kamala not steal Carol’s identity, she didn’t steal her thunder either. Kamala’s comic was and is published concurrently with Carol’s adventures as Captain Marvel. If fans of Carol Danvers want to see her adventures, they can just do that. If new readers don’t care about Carol but like Kamala, they can read Ms. Marvel. And if someone like both characters, then they can read both!
Again, this is not the case for Thor and Captain America, whose solo titles are now exclusively starring the exploits of other people. If you want to enjoy a monthly comic starring Thor Odinson, you’re shit outta luck. If you want to keep up on the adventures of Steve Rogers, too bad, he’s old and feeble now and can’t have adventures. If you like the Falcon, too bad, there’s no Falcon now, wouldn’t you rather see him pretend to be someone else? If you like Jane Foster, well, I hope you stuck it out through the nonsense in the first arc of the new comic long to enough to eventually discover that’s who’s in the book! As for Spider-Man, Peter hasn’t exactly been replaced, but he has been kicked out of New York in order to give Miles some room. Meaning that it’s the established character whose status quo and storytelling style must change in order to prop up the new character.
Finally, the new Ms. Marvel didn’t steal Carol’s place in the world. Carol has been a solo hero and an Avenger for a long time, with her own relationships and her own life. Though the new identity as Captain Marvel has put more spotlight on the character, it hasn’t changed the way she does things or the way other characters treat or relate to her. Likewise, Kamala is treated by other heroes and civilians as a talented newcomer, still making a name for herself and finding her place in the world. She’s not being hunted down by Carol’s old enemies, or contacted by her old friends for help. She’s having her own adventures and making her own friends and foes. She gets no special treatment from being the new Ms. Marvel, but she also faces no negative public stain from the legacy. In short, it is clear that everyone knows that this is not the old Ms. Marvel.
In contrast, there is a very strong feeling in the other books of a deliberate attempt to warp the world around these characters, forcing them into prominence in a way that feels completely inorganic. This is seen most clearly in Captain America, where numerous elements of Steve Rogers’s history and standing in the heroic community seem to have just sort of come with the suit and shield. For instance, Sam Wilson is leading multiple Avengers teams, despite the Falcon never having shown much aptitude for leadership and there being several team members on the current roster that have been excellent leaders of Avengers squads previously. Or Sam starting to give random off-the-cuff speeches about patriotism and heroism, when he wasn’t much of a soliloquizer in the past. That’s not to say that the Falcon couldn’t be a leader or a public speaker – just that there’s no reason for these attributes, clearly borne by the previous Captain America, to spontaneously appear in the character just because he’s dressed in red white and blue. This isn’t the story of a man trying to live up to the example set by an old friend. This is the story of Steve Rogers who’s black now. This disrespects the reader (do you really think you can trick me into thinking this is the same guy?), the old Cap (see how easy you are to replace?), the new Cap (sorry Falcon, you’re not a good enough superhero so we’re going to ignore your personality and replace it with one that’s more like a more popular character), and the other characters in the world (seriously, everyone’s just fine taking orders from an unproven guy wearing someone else’s clothes when the Wasp, Iron Man, and the Scarlet Witch are standing RIGHT THERE?).
Kamala Khan is her own woman and her own character. She's using a name that was once used to champion not just the standard superheroic ideals of truth and justice, but also the real cause of progressive societal change, and maintaining both elements of that identity. The identity was vacant when she took it up, and the previous bearer has moved on to bigger and better things, theoretically putting the character in a stronger position as a hero than ever (if you read Captain Marvel's book, you'll find that's not actually true, but that's a subject for another post). The story of the old Ms. Marvel ended, and the story of a new Ms. Marvel can begin.
