Marvel Comics will release a new comic book series, called Ms. Marvel, featuring a Muslim heroine.
The series, which will debut in February, will star Kamala Khan, a teenage girl who discovers she has shape-shifting powers.
“Captain Marvel represents an ideal that Kamala pines for,” series writer and Islamic convert G. Willow Wilson told the New York Times. “She’s strong, beautiful and doesn’t have any of the baggage of being Pakistani and ‘different.’”
Sana Amanat, a Muslim-American and one of the two Marvel editors who came up with the loose idea of Kamala — along with Steve Wacker of Spider-Man fame — added, “It’s also sort of like when I was a little girl and wanted to be Tiffani-Amber Thiessen” from Saved by the Bell.
“It was really important for me to portray Kamala as someone who is struggling with her faith,” Wilson said. She added that the series will deal directly with how “familial and religious edicts mesh with super-heroics.”
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Image: Marvel Comics
This article originally published at The Mary Sue here
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