25 March 2015

Book Review: Ms. Marvel

The hype over the Ms. Marvel comic has been poking me in the shoulder, nagging me to read it and all the other comics I have on the to-read shelves. To start my journey back into graphic novel/comic territory, I inhaled the first 5 installments of Ms. Marvel, nicely collected into one book titled "No Normal".

Fun art, good humor, unique protagonist. I was very, very happy with my choice to read this one.

The protagonist is probably the lynchpin for this series: she is female, Muslim, 15 years old, and Pakistani American. She's also wonderfully geeky. Her difficulty syncing up her Muslim and American identit(ies) really speaks to readers; everyone has sides to resolve, contradictions within that are difficult to deal with.

My only complaint is the story seems a bit preachy at times with Ms. Marvel directly stating the lessons we are to learn. This sort of directness with themes annoys me, only slightly, but still.

I will definitely continue reading this series, and Madison has given it her stamp of approval. I'm not reading it to her, but she loves looking at the pages.

For much more intelligent and articulate reviews: S. Krishna's Books' review of Ms. Marvel has a great personal touch; Ana at things mean a lot offers great insight into the novel; and Aarti over at Book Lust makes great points about diversity. Go check them out!

5 comments:

  1. I NEEEEEED to get my hands on this one. My library has a copy, but it's just a matter of actually getting to the library. Funny about the heavy handed themes. "The moral of the story is..." :)

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  2. Yay! It really is such a good comic. I love to see the comics world (slooooowly) starting to embrace a broader range of protagonists. It'll be even better when we aren't surprised by having a Muslim-American teenager for a superhero!

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  3. I'm glad you (and Madison) liked this one. It's cool to think about a kid Madison's age growing up and having all of these options to see different people being superheroes.

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  4. Nifty. I can say, that right? Yes. I can. Will tbr and should have already just hadn't gotten around to it.

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Talk to me baby!