YMMV / Ms. Marvel (2014)

• Adorkable: Kamala's excitable earnestness makes her well-liked at school and appealing to the fandom.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Her team-up with Spider-Man early in her career suggests, at least at that point, that she sees other superheroes more as fictional, fandom characters rather than as people with their own lives.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: At the time when the book first came out Marvel and DC really struggled with launching titles about brand new or B and C-List characters and making them survive and even G. Willow Wilson and Sana Amanat admitted they thought the book would be canceled at the sixth issue, twelfth at best. Instead, Ms. Marvel had a successful run, sold half a million trade paperbacks in four years, and became one of the most successful characters of the decade.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The giant alligator in her team-up with Wolverine is ultimately killed when Logan pokes it on the chin with his claws. The resulting wound doesn't look like nearly enough to kill it.
• Anvilicious:
  • Issue 10 really tries to emphasize how harmful negative criticism of younger generations can be. The writer tries hard to get a message across when the main villain is voicing the same opinions as the protagonist, with the mocking note that against any other group, they would be "understandably considered hate speech."
  • In issue 13 of Vol. 1, Kamala fights another Inhuman and tells her that any time members of a group decide they can terrorize anyone they disagree with, it just hurts anyone who looks like them. As she's a Muslim Pakistani-American who dealt with racism in the comic, the parallel to real-life racism during The War on Terror couldn't be more obvious
  • Issue 13 of Vol. 2 reads more like a PSA on how voting works than a superhero comic, with Kamala debunking various common excuses not to vote, and sounding like an expert on the subject out of nowhere. To make matters worse, this comic was released the day after the November 2016 elections, rendering the comic moot.
• Ascended Meme: Fans really like to refer to Captain Marvel as Kamala's Superhero Mom and to Iron Man as Kamala's Superhero Dad, and to Civil War II as a "custody battle". In her tie-in to that story, Kamala actually compares it to watching "my superhero mom and dad getting divorced".
• Audience-Alienating Era: The Civil War II story arc, which effectively upended Kamala's entire status quo for the sake of drama, to the point where sales of the title plummeted terribly.
• Base-Breaking Character: Discord. Once we find out he's Josh, part of the fandom saw him as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, as was clearly the intention. However, others consider him an Attention Whore, who was mad things didn't line up his way fast enough and blamed others for his own failures. A third group would argue that, while he has understandable reasons, his actions outweigh them to the point he deserves no sympathy.
• Broken Base:
  • The above-mentioned anvil in issue 10. Some fans thought the subject matter justified how overt the teaching was, others thought it was overbearing and pandering.
  • Kamala's reaction to Bruno in the last issue of the first run. She claims her life as Ms. Marvel fills her heart more right now at this point than any relationship could and would not want to be anything else to anyone else — nevermind that just before she was more than happy to consider a relationship with Kamran before it was revealed he was evil, and that many other heroes do have loved ones and are happily in a relationship, including Peter Parker in the heyday with Gwen Stacy, of whom she's an expy for. Of course, others think this is a healthy approach given that they're both in High School, and she comes from a conservative background and given that, as noted above, her previous attempt at a relationship ended rather badly, it would make sense she'd be unwilling to try romance again. Interestingly, the first issue of the All-New, All-Different Marvel reboot actually explores this as Bruno ends up falling in love with another girl, which completely blindsides the easily overworked Kamala, to which Bruno points out that Kamala herself told him to be happy, even if it meant to be happy with someone else during her "It's Not You, It's Me".
  • The Civil War II tie-in has really divided the fandom. Some are interested to see where this goes, seeing as her entire dynamic has been uprooted viciously while others are quite dismayed that one of the few Fun Personified comics Marvel puts out was trampled on by a crossover they really didn't want in the first place.
    • Many believe that the schism between the ladies Marvel during this storyline, with Kamala being less trusting towards Carol should've instead become fully entrenched with a Heel Realization and earlier, full-side defection from Carol's side.
  • There's a divide on whether or not Kamala falls into the Unintentionally Unsympathetic category in the "Anti-Supers" storyline. Some see her as ignoring the cries of the public in order to justify superheroing and are just writing off a number of legitimate concerns as "The Evil of the Many". Others see her as just trying her best and she should ignore the citizens who, like their New York City counterparts, are stupid and ungrateful towards the superheroes who save their lives on a regular basis.
• Can't Un-Hear It: Given how she's voiced her for all her animated appearances since Avengers Assemble, it's safe to say that people will only hear Kathreen Khavari's voice coming out of Ms. Marvel.
• Complete Monster: The Inventor is a clone of Thomas Edison mixed up with the DNA of a cockatiel and the soul of a consummate Child Hater. The Inventor goes about convincing dozens of disaffected teenagers that they're worth absolutely nothing to society except in terms of raw material and convinces them to surrender themselves to become "voluntary" human batteries for his invention. The Inventor intends to implement this scheme as a global industry, and attacks not only Ms. Marvel but those close to her, including her closest friend and a school full of innocent kids.
• Crack Pairing:
  • Before their books even launched, some people were already shipping Kamala with Robbie Reyes, the 2014 Ghost Rider, even though they live on opposite sides of the continent. However, this has not gone unnoticed by Marvel. When they actually meet in "Secret Love", they end up declaring themselves team-up BFFs, to their friends' relief.
  • Ironically enough, she ships Spider-Man/Carol Danvers on the basis of one date between the two.
  • To say nothing of Kamala and Loki in their Loki: Agent of Asgard incarnation, on the basis of them both having written and published fanfic on the Internet. And liking (in the case of Kamala the smell of) bacon, both having Guile Hero tendencies, and a ship of two shapeshifters being very flexible (pun intended). Also, they actually met in Ms. Marvel #12◊, which sunk a ship, but not this one.
  • You would think shipping Kamala with Sam Alexander or Miles Morales would be this, and you would be right... until Marvel announced all three of them were to join the post-Secret Wars incarnation of the Avengers. Like the Robbie Reyes example, the number of people who ship Kamala with Miles has not gone unnoticed by Marvel.
• Creepy Awesome: The Inventor, which is rather impressive given that he's literally a humanoid cockatiel.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The winged sloth and hulk-porcupine from Kamala's vision are already being touted by the fandom as mascots for the comic.
• Epileptic Trees: Kamala’s new costume in her 2019 ongoing has shapeshifting abilities, is slightly implied to be sentient (because it does stuff without Kamala ordering it to do so) and it was found by Kamala on another world. Sounds familiar? Of course, if you think so, you’re not the only one, because of those similarities, plus the fact that it was established in Venom’s 2016 series that the Kree have used symbiote-bonded agents in the past (like Tel-Kar), have convinced many people that the new costume isn’t kree nanotech, but actually a symbiote. This later got Jossed in the story, when Tony Stark confirms by analyzing the suit that it’s purely Kree nanotech, not a symbiote.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Lockdown's bubble/full body condom armor. There's also Knox dressing like a big cockatiel after assuming the mantle of the Inventor, though the ridiculousness of that outfit appears to have been intentional, unlike Lockdown's.
• Friendly Fandoms: With the Robbie Reyes Ghost Rider and other teen hero comics like Avengers Academy and Runaways.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A 2016 issue of Ms. Marvel had Kamala encourage people to go vote in a Mayoral election. A story set in the future in All-New Wolverine cast Kamala as the President of the United States. In 2020, the newly-elected Vice President was... Senator Kamala Harris.
  • Much of her series hits this in a couple of ways: It debuted shortly after Disney released a movie with a big song about someone named Bruno, Then given the Character Shilling of the Inhumans over the X-Men around her debut, the series ends with the probability that Kamala, one of the major successes of said era, is actually a Mutant in the MCU.
• Misblamed: The series suffered a second sales slump during the Secret Empire "tie-in"; fans were mad that the creators didn't learn from Civil War II fiasco and made a tie-in to Secret Empire. Except that it was just a coincidence the series got into an arc featuring the return of Hydra as the villains at the same time Marvel launched an event involving them.
• Moe: Kamala. She's so perky and happy all the time!
• More Popular Spin-Off: To the other Ms. Marvel. Even post-sales slump, Kamala's books consistently sell more than Carol's, and have won a lot more praise and awards.
  • She is also this to The Inhumans, who in modern comics are Base-Breaking Characters at best and are generally despised by Marvel readership because of their blatant Character Shilling in the 2010s. Kamala avoids this status even among those who cannot stand the Inhumans in general because of her strength as an individual character, as well as her lack of deep connections to the rest of the Inhumans franchise.
• Narm Charm: The Inventor. The character should be completely ridiculous by all means, but there's just something about how he's handled that makes him legitimately threatening rather than silly.
• Never Live It Down: For many readers, Kamala's part in Civil War II destroyed her credibility as a superheroine. This is not helped by how Carol Danvers' side in the conflict was portrayed, and many of those who have read it decry Kamala's act in the event as her Moral Event Horizon and a point of no return for her character. This is reflected in the sales of her books after the event, which suffered a bigger drop than other books affected by it, and never recovered since then, as shown in this sales analysis video.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Inventor. You'd think a half cockatiel clone of Thomas Edison would be ridiculous, and to an extent, it is, but the artwork likes to emphasize his gigantic, empty black eyes and slimy tongue. And then of course his plan involves taking teenagers and using them as human batteries... by successfully convincing them that they do not deserve to even exist as human beings.
  • Issue #5 of Volume 2 sees Kamala trying to use various artificial, borderline brainless copies of herself to handle different parts of her life.
    • One is made to run an obstacle course and ends up mangled in a barbed wire fence.
    • Another is given a drink and melts into goo in front of her family.
    • The cliffhanger shows the silhouette of one that has grown gigantic and gotten itself twisted in various bits of junk, storming towards her brothers' wedding party.
  • The cover to issue #6 of Volume 2, which sees Kamala hanging on for dear life as her own, gigantic face (composed of thousands of her clones merged and woven into one) sucks her and some poor hotdog vendor into her gaping mouth,
  • Doc-X, a sentient computer virus that can easily discover and reveal the personal secrets of anyone, can control any machine, and can somehow possess ordinary humans and make them super strong. There's no way to fully destroy him either, only to temporarily incapacitate him.
  • The Stormranger suit after she turns against Kamala and goes rogue. She has all of Kamala’s powers and then some, so we get to see what an evil Ms. Marvel would be like. She has none of Kamala’s kindness, compassion, or heroism, and the way she fights is also brutally efficent. It’s like what would happen if the T-1000 and the Slender Man had a baby.
    • She gets even worse when she returns later on during the 75th issue celebration. Not only is Stormranger stronger than before (to the point that Kamala can’t defeat her by herself anymore and needs Amulet’s help to take her on), but her personality has evolved. Not only is she now capable of expressing sadism, but she also smiles at the prospect of hurting Kamala.
• Offending the Creator's Own: In the "Crushed" arc, G Willow Wilson being herself a Muslim did not prevent a minority of readers from arguing that Kamala's boyfriend-until-he-showed-his-true-colours Kamran being a member of Lineage's villainous Inhuman gang and trying to force Kamala into it encouraged views of Muslim men as evil and abusive towards women. Despite the fact that the comic includes many male Muslim characters who are neither and that "first boyfriend turns out to be evil" as a metaphor for sexually-exploitative teenage boys has been a trope in stories about teenage girl heroes ever since Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel is not the first Muslim superhero, or the first female Muslim superhero for that matter (Notable examples from Marvel alone include Dust from the New X-Men, M from Generation X, Faiza Hussain from Captain Britain and MI13, and Isaiah Bradley from Truth: Red White And Black (and, by connection, his grandson Eli/Patriot of the Young Avengers)). She's however the first one to have her own solo title, and a really successful comic at that.
    • Dust eventually joins Kamala's team, the Champions.
  • A superhero operating out of Jersey City also isn't new. Steel of DC operated there for a time.
• One-Scene Wonder: The henchman in her crossover with Spider-Man who betrays the other mooks because they threatened a baby. He turns out to be a former Spider-Man villain who was deliberately avoiding confronting Spider-Man. Spidey decides to give him a second chance at a legitimate job since work has been scarce for a supervillain ex-con.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Let's see, a (at the time) innocent A.I. is set up in a public online environment to collect data and develop new information and personality, only to be corrupted by toxic internet trolls into a chaotic evil A.I.? Are we talking about Doc.X or Microsoft's Tay AI?
• Salvaged Story: Probably one of the more base-breaking moments of the Civil War II tie-in was Kamala's spat with Carol at the end. Issue #28 confirms that Kamala was actually truly scared Carol hated her (and even worse, she was afraid she hated Carol), but Carol had none of those issues, but saw the spat as Kamala growing up. The two end up making up after that.
• Seasonal Rot: The second volume onward is considered this, due to a clear lack of direction on Wilson's part, several plots and characters being wasted, and the removal of several story elements (Kamala's conflicting nature as a Muslim and American teen, her interest in science, her exploring her powers.)
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The series in many ways feels like a modern-day take on Spider-Man, being about a nerdy teenager who suddenly gains superpowers, and the problems that come with juggling superheroics and regular civilian life; in-universe, Spider-Man himself acknowledges that Ms. Marvel reminds him of himself when he was younger. Rather than being a science whiz, however, Kamala spends her time writing fanfiction and browsing social media.
  • Kamala's role during Civil War II is comparable with Anya Corazón's during Civil War (2006). Both are mentored by Carol Danvers, both fight for her side (or at least do so initially, in Kamala's case), and both eventually feel bad when they start questioning themselves on whether they fight for justice or not.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • Tying in with the problems of Civil War II, the story tries to portray the first villain Kamala's Cadets arrest, Hijinx, as a victim of profiling (with Tyesha even showing up to call it that). While the Cadets do quickly start abusing their power (beating suspects, arresting everyone with only flimsy evidence), Hijinx had factually committed a crime, as he had stolen a tank and driven it around Jersey City, and if it wasn't for the Cadets the tank would have exploded. If anything it makes the Civil War brand of profiling look like a good idea.
    • Carol proved that the racial profiling angle breaks down further when you consider that the people being profiled weren't being judged based on their looks or race. They were being judged based on strong, mostly infallible (albeit precognitive) evidence. Kamala tries to prove this wrong by faking a bomb threat, but the situation backfires when the villain she's working with activates the bomb anyway, thus proving the visions were right about him.
  • Chuck Worthy is right about things going crazy in Jersey City since Supers showed up. Kamala alone is responsible for a Clone Army showing up and wrecking the place, (even if the giant T. rex that came with them was Bruno's idea) and then there's more horrifying stuff like the Inventor taking advantage of guilt-ridden teenagers and using them as Living Batteries, even if he was already around but he only became noticeable when Kamala punched him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: At Kamala's defeat of the Inventor, a cop warns Kamala to be careful because there are things lurking on Jersey City's street worse than a half-bird man. However, we never see any of these homegrown threats, and instead, Kamala is always fighting external villains, who are often times connected to some greater event happening in the Marvel universe.
  • In Vol. II, Knox finally returns as a major villain.. in a storyline where Kamala is deliberately absent until the climax.
  • The Something New arc creates a love triangle between Kamala, Red Dagger and Bruno, with Mike's problems with Bruno abandoning her being brought up. This arc lasts only two issues, Red Dagger willingly (and conveniently) takes himself out of the equation and gets Put on a Bus without Kamala doing anything, and Bruno and Mike talk things out in a couple of panels.
  • The book has teased a romance between Kamala and Bruno several times. This would be interesting, given Kamala's complete lack of romantic experience and the possible conflicts between Bruno and her family. They even established Romantic False Leads for the both of them, and they still chose each other in the end. But even when there's nothing standing in the way of their romance, and after learning multiple lessons about how they can't just expect the other to wait for them, they don't get together or even tease the idea.
  • Originally, Kamala was often caught between her conservative upbringing and faith, and the fast life of an American teenager. She loves and respects her religion, but it also causes problems and conflicts that she must reconcile. We only get this in the first volume; after that, anything potentially problematic or difficult about her religion is unaddressed or outright defied. Her being a Muslim is no longer an issue, she receives no real bullying or hatred for it anymore, and the different cultures don't clash.
• Ugly Cute: Adrian Alphona's artwork depicts Lockjaw as having a very square face with an enormous slobbery tongue, protruding fangs and dopey grin, just like a regular bulldog. The effect is wonderfully expressive and adorable. It helps that his first appearance in the comic has him appear before Kamala, in all his gigantic, fanged, slobbery glory, wearing a big fancy ribbon and a sign that says "HELLO. MY NAME IS LOCKJAW. I LIKE HUGS".
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Bruno hits this during the Civil War 2 storyline. In that story, Bruno gets injured setting off a bomb he made to break into a prison to free his friend Josh. While what happened to him is tragic, many fans do not see his reaction to it as fair and it makes him come off as a rather big ass since he blames Kamala for what happened to him, even though he went off on his own to try and rescue Josh, despite the fact Josh was safely detained and was going to be released the next day which means even if Bruno was successful he would've caused unnecessary trouble. The fact he caused all of the other inmates (including the actual criminals like Hijinx) to escape and left Mike behind too, which Issue 13 shows greatly hurt her, doesn't help.
• Watched It for the Representation: Kamala being a teenage, Pakistani-American Muslim female superheroine certainly drew a lot of minorities towards her book. In fact, Iman Vellani, who would later play Kamala in the MCU, said she decided to pick up Ms. Marvel "because I had never seen a brown person on the cover of a comic before".

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