Kamala Khan or Ms. Marvel? Identity in “Ms. Marvel: No Normal”

Ever since I first read G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona’s Ms. Marvel, I knew that I wanted to teach it in one of my courses. This semester, I finally had the chance to teach volume 1, “No Normal,” in my Multicultural American Literature class. Today, I want to write some about Ms. Marvel, specifically looking at the ways that Kamala Khan grapples with her identity over the first five issues of the series.

The first five issues of Ms. Marvel collected in “No Normal” chronicle Pakistani-American Kamala Khan’s coming to terms with her new identity as a superhero. However, this is not the only conflict with identity that Kamala encounters. From the very beginning of the series, questions and discussions of identity take center stage.

Issue #1 begins with Kamala and her Turkish-American friend Nakia looking at the food in the Circle Q. The opening panel shows two Easy Greasy B.L.T. sandwiches and the word bubble, “I just want to smell it.” The next panel pans out to show Kamala, Nakia, and Bruno as Kamala drools over the sandwiches. We learn, in this panel, about her Muslim heritage and faith when she says, “Delicious, delicious infidel meat.”