Marvel’s Iman Vellani Reveals Idea for Her Ms. Marvel Comic Came to Her in a Dream

The story of Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel has changed in some major ways this year, after her death and rebirth in the pages of Marvel Comics. This week, Kamala got a solo comic for the first time in several years, with the publication of Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant #1. The comic is not only noteworthy for navigating Kamala’s new status quo as a mutant, but for being co-written by Iman Vellani, who currently portrays the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Spoilers for Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant #1 below! Only look if you want to know! In a recent interview with Marvel.com, Vellani revealed how the issue’s opening scene, a nightmare sequence of Kamala literally being pulled in different directions by various Marvel super-teams, came to be.

“The whole comic book thing came to me in a dream,” Vellani explained. “I was listening to Billy Joel’s ‘River of Dreams’, and I was like ‘There’s too many dreams, we have to do dreams now.”

“The opening is a somewhat surreal dream sequence where Kamala wakes up in the egg that she is resurrected in on Krakoa, and appears to be reliving this moment over and over again in which she is also being pulled in, quite literally, in a hundred different directions by all the different super teams that she has been a part of,” co-writer Sabir Pirzada, echoed. “And I think that opening is a great example of how Iman thinks visually, because a lot of those specific visuals, I think she came up with by herself and she just knew inherently that using dreams as a structure is opening up so many wonderful artistic possibilities.”

What Is Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant About?

In Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant #1, KAMALA KHAN IS BACK…AND SHE’S AN X-MAN! That’s right – the good news is that fresh off her world-saving death, Kamala has been brought back via Krakoan Resurrection Technology! What a way to learn she’s a mutant! The bad news is her debut at the Hellfire Gala didn’t go exactly as planned, and now all of mutantkind are being hunted worldwide! Into this world of hate and fear, Kamala has a secret mission to pull off for the X-Men, all the while struggling to acclimate to this new part of her identity!

“I think it was just so fun to explore this different side of her, because for Kamala, she’s already dealt with so many different labels. She’s been an Avenger, she’s been an Inhuman, a Champion, Pakistani, Muslim,” Vellani recently told Marvel.com. “She starts off thinking that being a mutant is just another label to add to the list, and it doesn’t really change anything because she’s always had the X-gene, so it doesn’t really matter. Little does she realize that this new suit, the new colors, they bear so much more weight than she was expecting… The world’s entire perspective on Ms. Marvel shifts very drastically, and for the first time, she gets a taste of what it’s like to be seen as a villain and an enemy, because after Hellfire Gala especially, the world just hates mutants—it’s horrible! We’ve put Kamala at Empire State University and created a program that’s funded by Orchis… and it is hard for her, as it would be!”

Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant #1 is now available wherever comics are sold.