Ms. Marvel is a success story unlike anything Marvel had seen in a long time. New characters, even ones taking up the legacy of an older character, don’t always have much chance of success, but Ms. Marvel was able to plug along, thanks to great writing and Marvel actually pushing her when they needed to. Of course, Ms. Marvel did start to cool off, but that meant it was time for an MCU-related pivot — making Ms. Marvel a mutant towards the end of the X-Men’s wildly inventive Krakoa Era. Since then, Ms. Marvel has been in something of a holding pattern. She joined the cast of NYX, but wasn’t picked for either main X-Men team. However, she’s getting the next best thing, and joining the X-Men of the past.
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At the end of 2024, Marvel gave a glimpse into Ms. Marvel’s future in Timeslide #1, and it showed her in the past with the X-Men helping to battle Dark Phoenix. This was a big surprise for most readers, and it was soon announced that Ms. Marvel would be getting her own story running through a series of Giant-Size books — Giant-Size X-Men #1&2, Giant Size Dark Phoenix Saga, Giant-Size Age of Apocalypse, and Giant-Size House of M. While this may seem like a weird choice to make with one of Marvel’s young MVPs, it’s actually an ingenious idea that could pay dividends in the not so distant future.
This is the Best Way to Give Ms. Marvel a New Identity
Ms. Marvel is a character in search of an identity. She was introduced as the superhero fan, the cosplaying, fanfic-writing person who loved superheroes, and was excited to get a chance to work with them. This buoyed her through the early days of her career, and was partly why the character was so successful. She struck a chord with the fans because she was the fans, and that allowed her to become a rising star in the Marvel Universe. Kamala Khan first appeared in 2013, and by 2015 was a member of the Avengers. Add in her place as an Inhuman when they were on the rise and Kamala Khan was a character that slotted perfectly into the Marvel Universe.
However, a lot has changed since those early days. There’s only so long that Ms. Marvel can be the wide-eyed newbie and Marvel kind of squandered her push by the time Mark Waid left Champions, a book meant to make the new generation of Marvel heroes into a big deal. Add to that the loss of co-creator G. Willow Wilson as her writer, and Ms. Marvel was eventually just sort of there. She was no longer a member of any major team and just had her own adventures in solo series that kept selling fewer and fewer copies. Ms. Marvel went from the next big thing to an also ran because Marvel wasn’t really willing to actually the pull the trigger on making her a major part of the Marvel Universe, which all of the decisions of her early years seemed to point towards. Eventually, she lost even her solo series, leaving fans of her MCU debut with nothing but a few one-shots released around the premiere of the MCU television series centering around the character.
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The MCU then made some shifts by making Ms. Marvel a mutant, and that decision was taken to the comics. One can definitely question the way Marvel did it — killing her as a secondary character in The Amazing Spider-Man and completely disrespecting her legacy — but making her a mutant was basically the only way to fix the character; the Inhumans were dead in the water and there was nowhere else to center her. Kamala joined the mutant fold at the end of the Krakoa Era, taking a co-starring role in X-Men and getting two separate miniseries co-written by Ms. Marvel actress Iman Vellani. On the one hand, Ms. Marvel was joining the X-Men at a rather bad time for the franchise. The best of the Krakoa Era was over, both in sales and critical prestige, so making her a mutant didn’t really do her any favors. However, this did mean there was a chance she’d get a higher profile in whatever came next, a hope that was somewhat dashed when she was put into a secondary X-Men book, one that despite getting a decent amount of praise was destined for the chopping block.
With these challenges and hurdles, Ms. Marvel needs something to recapture the promise of the past. Making her a mutant was a step in the right direction, but shipping her to the minor leagues, as it were, didn’t do her any favors. This new Giant-Size event allows Ms. Marvel to go where she belongs — the main X-Men team during some of their greatest adventures. One can complain about Marvel going back to the wells of the greatest X-Men stories, but getting to see them through new eyes is an exciting prospect, as is getting to see Ms. Marvel working alongside the X-Men at several of the most pivotal moments of their careers. This may finally be the thing that Ms. Marvel needs to reach the next level.
Ms. Marvel Should Be an X-Man and This Is the Best Way to Make that Happen
Ms. Marvel is an undeniably popular character that fans love. This isn’t really something that can be argued. Ms. Marvel, along with Miles Morales, was one of the biggest characters of the 2010s. Fans loved her and if esteem in the character faded, it’s more because Marvel dropped her down a level by not keeping the best talent on her books. Marvel really only has themselves to blame for all of Ms. Marvel’s problems as a character, which is why this next phase in her existence is so important.
At Ms. Marvel’s level, she should have been a member of one of the casts of Uncanny X-Men or X-Men in the “From the Ashes” publishing initiative. Putting her in a secondary title was all part of the plan, but at this point, it mostly seemed a way to give Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly — the writers working on the Giant-Size books — a chance to work with the character before this hugely important story rather than something meant to build the character. Dropping Ms. Marvel into the biggest moments in X-Men history can finally put her back on the road to the A-list where she belongs.
Giant-Size X-Men #1 goes on sale May 28th.
