Marvel rolls out Muslim girl superheroine

By Selwyn Duke

It must be really exciting being a kid today. Denied the strength that "lies in our diversity," youngsters languishing in the unenlightened 1960s had to content themselves with banal white male superheroes such as Superman, Spiderman and Ironman. But not only has affirmative action created a Hispanic Spiderman (perhaps a white Hispanic?); a homosexual Pink...I mean, Green Lantern; and a Batwoman reintroduced in 2006 as a lesbian (the irony is that she was originally introduced in 1956 as a romantic interest designed to dispel rumors about Batman's homosexuality); now Marvel Comics is giving us a female Muslim superheroine. Writes The Telegraph:

Marvel Comics is bringing Ms. Marvel back as a 16-year-old daughter of Pakistani immigrants living in Jersey City named Kamala Khan.

The character – among the first to be a series protagonist who is both a woman and Muslim – is part of Marvel Entertainment's efforts to reflect a growing diversity among its readers while keeping ahold of the contemporary relevance that have underlined its foundation since the creation of Spider-Man and the X-Men in the early 1960s.

Writer G. Willow Wilson and artist Adrian Alphona, working with editor Sana Amanat, say the series reflects Khan's vibrant but kinetic world, learning to deal with superpowers, family expectations and adolescence.

But the really exciting part involves Kamala Khan's unique superpowers. According to my sources, she can:

• leap tall bacon-processing plants in a single bound;
  
  
• turn a slave-owning warlord into a prophet;
  
  
• crush ancient Buddhist statues with her bare hands;
  
  
• turn back time to the eighth century;
  
  
• don an x-ray impermeable burka;
  
  
• be 72 virgins all by herself;
  
  
• use the I slam Ray to turn Western dummies into dhimmis in double time;
  
  
• straighten out the homosexual superheroes;
  
  
• be sexually attacked and not be charged with adultery; and
  
  
• avoid getting married to a man 35 years her elder until she's at least 12.
  

The one thing she cannot do, however, is obtain a driver's license.

© Selwyn Duke