I see why this was such a big deal. ( )

With all of the excitement behind Marvel's Avenger's Infinity War coming out in May, I have been diving in to the Marvel universe to learn as much as I can. That led me to finally getting around to reading Ms. Marvel! I'm so glad that I did, too, because she is definitely my new favorite superhero! Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel's secret identity) is a wonderful display of not only a teenage girl on a path to discovering who SHE truly is, but a great story on how to accept who you are and love yourself exactly the way that you are.

Kamala struggles with being a Muslim american girl with crazy strict parents who want her to be "perfect" and get straight A's, go to med school, etc. But Kamala is just trying to get by and figure out who she is and her place in the world. When she is given super powers that she uses to help people a super villain harvesting teenager's energies are added to her list of problems. She does a great job of showing the struggles that every teenager goes through when trying to figure out their place in the world as well as a young superhero trying to learn their powers. Kamala has to learn to depend on her friends and know when to ask for help as well.

​I LOVED IT! I'll definitely be recommending her (and probably cosplaying her ;) ) in the future. ( )

Ms. Marvel is the story of Kamala, a Pakistani teenager living in Jersey City. One day, after sneaking out of her room to go to a party, she finds herself fainting and coming to with brand new superpowers, including growing and shrinking and being able to completely change her appearance. She soon finds herself in trouble, though, when she goes to help a kidnapped friend and finds herself uncovering an even bigger plot to destroy the world.

As a concept, this book is great. The idea of this geeky, super fan of the Avengers becoming a superhero herself is great. The sprinkling of memes and current culture in-jokes feel like they were written by someone who actually knows what they are as opposed to the "Hello, Fellow Kids!" feeling you get when an older adult tries to sound young. I even enjoyed the addition of some Pakistani traditions and culture that was sprinkled in. However, the book didn't seem to appeal to me overall.

First of all, the artwork. Now, I may be a little biased having really only read Manga and Manga-Inspired Comics (Such as Spiderman loves Mary Jane) but the artwork was just not appealing. The artist seems to love using weird angles and constantly have the character's mouths hanging open. The shots where the characters are are further away tends to have awkward body proportions as well as confusing and messy. To be honest, the entire thing looks messy. The sketchy, thin artwork just never seems to be clean, leading to it looking unfinished or rushed. Sketchy Art can work but in this case, it just doesn't. The artwork does seem to get cleaner towards the end of the book but for the majority of it, it stays pretty consistently messy. I was expecting something on the level of the cover but, you know what they say about books and covers.

Second of all, the story overall. I really liked Kamala as a character. But the comic doesn't really seem to do anything with her. She's constantly moving from predictable plot to predictable plot. And boy does this comic run on unoriginal plots. Everything from the beginning to the end is something i've seen before. There is absolutely no originality, no plot twists or shocks. No characters are given any sort of time to develop or grow. No backstory is expanded on. Nothing. I wasn't expecting Shakespeare but I certainly wasn't expecting a copy-paste from Every Generic Kid Movie from the 90's. Not to mention, there's characters and worlds in here that, if you're someone who isn't a extreme comic book fan, absolutely will not understand. They also flash by with no explanation or even relevance on the plot.

There were moments from this comic I enjoyed, as I stated before. The little funny background signs and characters felt like easter eggs and gave it a little bit of a cute and quirky vibe. The lack of oversexualization was refreshing coming from an American Comic book. The dialogue was fast paced and well written. And as stated before, Kamala is great character. However, I feel like bad far outweighs the good in this case. Especially the artwork.

The comic book overall isn't bad but... I probably wouldn't recommend this to anyone who isn't already a comic book fan. There's too many references to characters, plots and places from other comics for it to be really enjoyable without that knowledge. I do want this comic series to do well, and by the reviews, I can tell it is. We need more of these kind of comics. However, this just doesn't appeal to me. Between the artwork and the unoriginal plot, I just feel like it doesn't have enough to offer to keep me interested. I hope this comic series goes on for a long time, I just won't be following it. ( )

I took Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normaland was just glancing through it not intending to read it. but i read the beginning and Kamala Khan was so enjoyable i had to keep reading.

i liked how she reminded me of my own insecurities as a teen- wanting to be like other teens yet not wanting to dishonor her family values. and this teen angst was done without getting on my nerves like a lot of teen angst does in YA novels.

i also related to the "this generation of teens are a waste of space" attitude. after all they called us Generation X cuz they couldn't think of a better way to describe us. we were also called the lost generation.

also enjoyed the lil jokes on the labels of food, books, newspapers,etc. that were just background art. i am glad Richard Scarry books got me in the habit of reading EVERY word on a page.

pleasantly surprised that although other Superheroes appeared and other MARVEL story lines were mentioned i didn't need to know it in order to enjoy and understand the Ms. Marvel. ( )

I took Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normaland was just glancing through it not intending to read it. but i read the beginning and Kamala Khan was so enjoyable i had to keep reading.

i liked how she reminded me of my own insecurities as a teen- wanting to be like other teens yet not wanting to dishonor her family values. and this teen angst was done without getting on my nerves like a lot of teen angst does in YA novels.

i also related to the "this generation of teens are a waste of space" attitude. after all they called us Generation X cuz they couldn't think of a better way to describe us. we were also called the lost generation.

also enjoyed the lil jokes on the labels of food, books, newspapers,etc. that were just background art. i am glad Richard Scarry books got me in the habit of reading EVERY word on a page.

pleasantly surprised that although other Superheroes appeared and other MARVEL story lines were mentioned i didn't need to know it in order to enjoy and understand the Ms. Marvel. ( )