Ms. Marvel Writer Iman Vellani Teases Kamala Khan's Mutant Side in New Comic

The Marvels star Iman Vellani co-writes Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Kamala Khan has been an Avenger, an Inhuman, a Champion — and now an X-Man. The teen superhero sacrificed herself to save the world in Amazing Spider-Man #26, only for her death to be shortlived: Kamala was resurrected by Krakoan technology after Charles Xavier's Cerebro detected she was both Inhuman and mutant in July's X-Men Hellfire Gala #1. Before making her feature film debut in Marvel Studios' The Marvels (in theaters this November), Kamala will return in Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant, a new comic book co-written by actress Iman Vellani and Sabir Pirzada. The book spinning out of the pages of X-Men and Amazing Spider-Man is on sale August 30th.

"She is thrown headfirst into what it means to be an X-Man at the Gala, and so she has no time to process any of this. So our series will pick up ten weeks after her death and, at this point, her friends and family — who all attended her funeral — their memories are wiped by Miss Emma Frost, because that's a lot to deal with," Vellani told Marvel.com. "Kamala is just very alone at the start of the series. She doesn't want to bring her problems to the X-Men, because who wants to deal with a 16-year-old kid having a recurring nightmare? Which is where we start the issue off. So she's dealing with a lot of the psychological aftermath of being resurrected and having to acclimate to these new colors that she's wearing, the new life that she's been given. It's a lot, and she just needs someone to tell."

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Last year, Kamala's debut Disney+ television series ended with the reveal that Kamala's best friend detected a mutation in her genes. And now, as a full-fledged member of the X-Men, Kamala has synergy with her Marvel Cinematic Universe counterpart.  

"I was so excited, because being a mutant is just—I mean, I never really read a lot of the X-Men comics; I will say that. That was really scary for me, because I was just deep diving on everything X-Men, finding my favorite characters. Grant Morrison and [Jonathan] Hickman's runs were basically my textbooks throughout this entire thing," Vellani said. "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. 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." 

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In the fallout of Fall of X and another mutant massacre, Vellani explained, "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 is on sale August 30th from Marvel Comics.

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