Ms. Marvel, Vol. 2: Generation Why by G. Willow Wilson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The dialogue is still great. That I likes.
The art is still a little loosey-goosey. If Kamala is always changing shape, I need a good sense of scale, and I still don’t get it here. On a single page, I think Lockjaw was like 4 different sizes relative to Kamala, but I was never sure when that was supposed to be happening.
But the story is where things were tough here…it’s a mixture of confusing and lesson-y.
The thing is, I feel like the story is populated by well-intentioned idiots who act out of character and make Kamala look better because she’s the only one with a modicum of sense.
Let’s start with religious dude. He wants to have a chat with Kamala because she’s not listening to her parents. And this dude is convinced that she’s doing a good thing because that’s what she says, and then he’s like, “Good enough for me!”
Because that’s how most religious figures who intervene generally act. “I just wanted to make sure that you, a teenage girl, felt you were doing the right thing, even if it means defying your parents. Thanks for the chat, and remember, I, as a religious figure, really believe in teenagers and women. Those are the groups I support most!”
Then we get Wolverine.
He lost his powers, and that makes sense. But now he’s just bumbling around the sewers, and thank god an amateur super-teen is there to save him.
What’s he even doing there if he can’t be effective in any way? Why would he be there in the first place? Why would WOLVERINE, of all characters, just lower himself into a sewer and then be like, “Help, anyone, please! I’m incapable and inexperienced and have bitten off more than I can chew, which is what I am KNOWN for, but this time it’s for real!”?
Oh, right. Because this story needs a mentor, but it also needs to empower its main character.
Teens, have a seat. Listen to your ol’ pal Logan spin a yarn about hows it is to be’s a superhero. I’m a strange man with a rage problem and a checkered past, and the defining moment of my life was when I killed a woman I loved who never loved me back, and so on and so forth. There was some Japan in there too. Hoo boy, that was weird. And really, my life is tragic, and that’s before you get to the fact that I’m a 5’3′ hairy Canadian. But when I meet a young person with promise, goddamn it, this is Obama’s America, and I’m going to put aside most of my essential characteristics, make sure that my words are empowering without being patronizing, and paternal without being mansplain-y, and I’m going to not raise today’s youth, but let them raise themselves! Rather than stab this sewer gator in the goddamn eye, I’ll hold him from behind while you punch him. And if we come across any upright villains, I’ll get on all fours behind him and you give him a shove!”
Alright, hold the phone. It’s not about “I’m a dork, and as a dork, I deserve a Wolverine that only behaves a certain way.”
Look, I helped someone at work once, and he was trying to log into his Facebook. What he didn’t realize is that he was on the Gmail login page. Once I helped him navigate to the right login page, it all worked, and he proclaimed me a genius.
Did this man’s proclamation of genius mean a lot? No. Not because I think he’s a total moron, but because I didn’t do anything approaching genius. I was helpful, I was kind, but it was not an act of genius.
So what’s the value in Wolverine’s liking of Kamala here? I’d much prefer a story where Wolverine was as good at being Wolverine as he usually is, and then see Kamala earn his respect. I don’t want Wolverine to respect Kamala because he sucks and she’s better, which is how it works here. I want him to be awesome and for her to be, in some way, awesome-er.
You can’t out-Wolverine Wolverine by fighting shit alone in the sewer. Wolverine does his BEST work alone and in the sewers!
What makes a Wolverine team-up fun is that the other character has to crack a tough nut. And in this book, he’s more of this doughy uncle who won’t shut the fuck up.
Then we get to the group of teens who have decided, good-heartedly, to turn themselves into batteries for war robots in order to save the environment. Not totally sure how they were convinced that war mechs were the key to saving the planet.
Kamala asks them what they did before they volunteered for this duty. There’s a tech genius. A person who builds stuff out of recycled materials. And they’re so incapable and stupid they need Kamala to tell them “Hey dum-dum, maybe you could use your skills and help the world more that way than you could by being a living battery.”
It’s definitely the epitome of the good-natured stupidity that seems to permeate this book. The teens are desperate to help the planet, and they give up their entire being to do so without thinking about it even just a little bit. It’s not like we had a bunch of fuckfaces here who were bums that weren’t even good at Xbox and wanted to make something of their lives. They have interests and lives and all that, and they’re like, “Whatever, I’ll sleep in goo to make robots happen. That makes sense.”
This whole storyline is summed up when the baddies says, quote: “Idiot kids…you were not supposed to work together!”
Ah, my dastardly plan, all in ruins because of teamwork. Curse you, and curse your big, teleporting dog too!
Then we have Kamala, whose decisions aren’t so much confusing, but mostly function to stretch out the story. I guess stretching is her superpower, so there’s merit there.
Kamala finds out she’s an Inhuman, and she has, like, NO QUESTIONS about that? None? It’s just “Hey dude, you’re an Inhuman. But now I, Medusa, gotta split for no reason, so be seeing you”? The fuck? That’s like what they always did in 24. “I figured out this big thing, but no time to explain! As in, no time to come up with a narrative way to dole out the info without just straight-up saying “Let’s stretch this out a bit.”
If a lady with a giant head of living hair took me out to a water base with a weird lizard man doctor and then told me that my lineage was extra-terrestrial, I would have some questions. Maybe even concerns. I had questions as a READER for god’s sake, and none of them had to get to “Wait, did my dad have sex in space?”
Also, we know where the bad guy’s evil safehouse is. Why wouldn’t we just go there right away instead of morphing into a fake sofa and hiding in alleys?
And that’s the whole other thing. Kamala can shape shift. And what do we do with that? We get big, and when we wanna be crazy, we get small. And that’s most of it. Oh, and turn into a couch once.
She can be anything and she just makes herself kinda tall? It’s like old Green Lantern comics where they have a ring that can make ANYTHING and what do they make? Giant boxing glove. Giant fist. Really big hammer. Good one. I mean, you could make, I don’t know, an enormous lawnmower and mow a dude’s head off, or how about a fucking Warhammer getup or something? You could fly through the air on a giant green hot dog and command an army of sex dolls who had chainsaws for genitals. You could imprison baddies in an actual, giant, douche bag.
I liked the first volume in this series quite a bit, and I think the dialog is still fantastic and G. Willow Wilson does an awesome job of giving us characters through their words. And what I DO like about this is that I think it’s fun, and I think it would be even more fun if it didn’t feel like the story and action was being reeled in by portraying responsibility all the time. Because those parts are the parts that get me.
And holy fuck, it would make me a happy man to never read another thing about how this generation of young people aren’t just worthless social media whores. We get it. We know. Every generation is the same, just with cooler phones. Some great people, some self-absorbed assholes, and a whole lot of middlers. And the previous generation shits on them and says, Sure, we sucked, but look at THESE dickwads!
We get it.