One of Marvel's other recent, bold choices was to revamp the Ms Marvel title with a brand new character. Previously the name held by Carol Danvers, once she finally got upgraded to full Captain Marvel status (more on that in a little while) it left an opening for somebody else to put on that lightning-bolt emblazoned swimsuit. In the interests of diversifying - and thus reaching a new audience who might never have picked up a comic book before - the company elected to make the new Ms Marvel a Muslim teenager from New Jersey called Kamala Khan. And she wouldn't be wearing the swimsuit. As that would be a mite creepy. The new Ms Marvel series has been a delight so far, with Kamala not so much trying to fill the spot left by Carol as carving out her own identity whilst adopting the name of one of her heroes, as a sort of homage. The young girl's powers don't have much in common with the previous Ms Marvel, mainly being of the shapeshifting variety that manifested themselves due to some latent Inhumanity, as opposed to cosmic light stuff derived from Kree alien DNA. Still weird, just a different kind of weird. The distance from the previous character - along with the fact that Kamala is a total fangirl, who originally chose to transform herself into swimsuit-clad Carol, her idol - has allowed the new Ms Marvel to flourish without any negative comparisons to her predecessor.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
