Page 45 Review by Stephen
"I see. Well, if you're not very good at it... helping people that is... perhaps you need a teacher."
"A teacher? Wait... you're not going to tell me to be a good girl, focus on my studies, and do istaghfar or something?"
"If I told you that, you'd ignore me. I know how headstrong you are. So instead I will tell you to do what you are doing with as much honour and skill as you can."
"I can't believe it. I thought you were going to warn me about Satan and boys."
"I've been giving youth lectures at this mosque for ten years. If I still have to warn you about Satan and boys, I should lose my job. I am asking you for something more difficult. If you insist on pursuing this thing you will not tell me about, do it with the qualities befitting an upright young woman: courage, strength, honesty, compassion and self-respect. Do we have a deal?"
Ha, I am pretty sure that the sort of teacher the Imam had in mind wasn't Wolverine or, indeed, Lockjaw. Yes, the Inhuman dog. But, those are exactly the first two teachers who appear to Karmala in her hour of superheroing need. Also, despite the Imam's words of wisdom, there's no way of avoiding all the hard learning in Superhero 101 that needs to be done on the job, taking it quite literally on the chin. Much like real life, really. Still, having someone who's the 'best at what he does' pro-offering a few tips can't be too unhelpful, I suppose. And after their little team-up Logan obviously felt Karmala needed a watchful eye on an ongoing basis, so he dropped a hint to Captain America, who in turn then had a quiet word with Medusa, resulting in Karmala getting her very own teleporting watchdog!
Great to see this title sustaining the effortless sense of nonsensical fun that should be everyone's teenage years which began in MS MARVEL VOL 1.
Meanwhile, battling the bad guys is only marginally less troublesome to Karmala than staying one secret-identity-in-perpetual-peril step ahead of her well meaning family, her strict, traditional dad in particular. He means well, but he's clearly no idea what it's like to be a teenage Muslim girl growing up in modern day America, much less a superhero. Karmala is in many ways a Peter Parker for her generation, an outsider looked down upon by the so-called cool kids.
It's still very early days for this title obviously, but it's perhaps not understating the quality of the writing to say it feels as wittily relevant to our time as the original puny Peter Parker, high school version, was back in the day. G. Willow Wilson certainly captures the whole "With great power comes inordinate personal danger and perpetual destruction of social standing" schtick perfectly.
