After the more fantastical adventure in Destined, this volume takes us back to Jersey City, but lingering effects from Kamala’s time off-planet factors in here. Stormranger offers up a very personal story, showing the brutal toll that juggling superhero life with regular life can take.
After the events of the last volume, Kamala is armed with a new Kree-designed suit that is suped up in every sense. But as she breaks it in in the field, Kamala starts to realize that the suit’s bells and whistles also come with a level of autonomy for this alien object that doesn’t always agree with how she handles things. This discovery comes at the worst possible time, when the Khan family is dealing with a personal crisis, and Kamala is caught in a dilemma: be the hero or the daughter, in a moment when it’s absolutely crucial to be both.
A hero getting more than they bargained for after being seduced by the allure of a fancy new suit feels very familiar – it takes me back to my ‘90s Spider-Man cartoon-watching days and seeing the symbiote storyline for the first time. The Stormranger suit isn’t alive, but it is aware, and it’s interesting to see it develop beyond Kamala’s control. Beyond just being a temptation of greater power for her, beyond ultimately being another force she has to stop, there’s also the fact that this is an object that bears Ms. Marvel’s symbol and represents her to the city. If the suit overpowers her and takes actions she wouldn’t want, it’s ostensibly doing so in her name.
The whole “badly balancing superhero life and personal life” thing is also very familiar, and Ms. Marvel in particular has had many stories like this. It seems like something that’s part and parcel for teen superheroes (just ask Invincible or, again, Spider-Man.) You’d think it’d be a tall order for any adult hero with a secret identity as well (how does any hero manage to hold down a regular job?), but for teenagers, there are so many people keeping tabs on you and expecting you to be places. Kamala has never mastered the art of this, and here, she’s called on to choose between hero work and her family in a major way. Some of these darker arcs in the titles leave me thinking, “How much more does this poor girl have to go through?”, and that’s definitely true in this volume – poor Kamala.
Not that it’s all heavy. I love Zoe and Nakia taking Kamala on a food-based road trip to get her mind off her troubles for a bit (although of course they almost instantly run into superhero business.) The Stormranger suit provides some great action and cool visuals. We get a few nice Marvel cameos, and there’s an appearance by Mr. Hyde. I’d never encountered the Marvel incarnation of this character before, but I’m glad I’d already read this volume when I got my Wenwu action figure, which is part of a Build a Figure set with the other Shang-Chi figures, where you can build a Mr. Hyde if you collect all six. If I hadn’t seen Mr. Hyde in Ms. Marvel, I might’ve been like, “What’s this enormous arm doing in here with my Wenwu?!” Finally, there’s a really nice moment between Ms. Marvel and a few neighborhood folks – I’m always a sucker for civilians pitching in to help out a hero when they need it.
Also, reading this reminds me how excited I am for both the Disney+ Ms. Marvel series and for Kamala to make her big-screen debut (with the adult Monica Rambeau!) in The Marvels. It’s true that Shang-Chi is currently occupying most of my MCU-anticipation brain, but there’s really so much coming down the pipeline to look forward to.
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