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Ms. Marvel
364 Plays2 years ago
Professor Sy Islam is back for a discussion of another MCU TV series. In this episode, we focus on Ms. Marvel, discussing the importance of this character for representation, how she's served to bring new, young fans into Marvel, the changes from the comics, expanding people's knowledge of history and culture through stories like these, and so much more.
Pick up a copy of Leaders Assemble! Leadership in the MCU
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Transcript
Kamala Khan's Identity Revelation
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm not sure, where is my pushmino sauce? I have an announcement today! I asked you for getting that new con lock. What? Oh, okay. Actually, first, I'm gonna pulse you for not making this announcement sooner, and also for what happened at the wedding. I am so sorry. And for sneaking out to Avenger Con. Yeah, no, okay. Okay.
Introduction to Superhero Cinephiles Podcast
00:00:37
Speaker
I am the light girl. Your what?
00:00:45
Speaker
Nightlight. Oh my God. I had no idea. Oh, Toba. You told them already. I only told Abu. Really? Well, in classic Khan gossip train, you tell Umni. She tells Abu. And we over here because he always has his phone on speaker. Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine. Welcome back, another returning guest, and that is Dr. Sai Islam. Sai, how you doing today? I'm doing great.
00:01:14
Speaker
So I'm happy to have you
Dr. Sai Islam on Psychology and Leadership in Marvel
00:01:16
Speaker
back. This is a third time you're on here now. And we're going to be talking about another one of the MCU TV shows. But before we get into that, a few other things to talk about. First, why don't you give people just a little bit of a brief refresher about who you are and what you do and all that stuff.
00:01:32
Speaker
Sure. So I am an associate professor of industrial organizational psychology at Farm and Dale State College and also vice president of consulting with talent metrics consulting. All that basically means that I research and study the psychology of work and have a lot of fun thinking about work.
00:01:49
Speaker
And I'm also the co-author of a book about leadership in the Marvel Cinematic Universe called Leaders Assemble, leadership in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. My co-author, Gordon Schmidt, and I appeared on an earlier episode where we talked about Iron Man 3. I was in the minority in loving Iron Man 3. You were kind of in the minority, but Gordon agreed with you, I think more than he disagreed with you. And I was, and you guys, and I had had,
00:02:16
Speaker
I no longer hated that movie, so I don't love it. It's still probably my least favorite of the MCU movies, but I found different things to appreciate it after talking to you guys about it.
Current Interests: Reservation Dogs and Sherman Alexie
00:02:28
Speaker
All right, well, that's good. So hopefully everybody gets to watch the movie again and listen to the episode and maybe they'll appreciate Iron Man 3 a little bit more. Yeah. Another thing I've been doing lately on the show is I've been asking guests kind of what sort of thing are they kind of interested in now? What's kind of grabbing their attention, grabbing their interest? Can be movies, can be comics, TV, movies, video games, books, whatever. What is kind of like the thing you're interested in right now?
00:02:55
Speaker
So there are a couple things that I'm watching. Number one is a show that's on FX called Reservation Dogs. I don't know if anybody's seen that yet. If you have seen it, it's a really cool show. It's about a Native American community in Oklahoma.
00:03:12
Speaker
primarily about a group of kind of lost Native American teens, but it's really cool in terms of seeing reservation life in sort of a different light. It's very funny, but it's also really dramatic. And so that's been a really great show. It's very, very good. It's up there with what we do in the shadows in terms of being like one of my favorite shows on right now. Okay, cool. I haven't even heard of that show, so that's interesting.
00:03:41
Speaker
Yeah, so it's only on its second season. Seasons are pretty short. Probably all together it'll be like 20 episodes and totally worth it to watch. It gives you like a lot of insight into Native American life in the United States and kind of like
00:03:59
Speaker
you know gives you a different perspective on that because I grew up watching a lot of like westerns and having that image of Native Americans and this is this is like a total you know totally different if you like the writing of Sherman Alexi I don't know if you've ever heard of him he's a Native American writer oh right yeah yeah yeah yeah
00:04:20
Speaker
He did, you know, he wrote a book called Holy Smoke. And it's very good. It's very similar in style to that. I think, you know, just kind of slice of life stories with kind of funny or in some cases poignant angle to it. Yeah, I feel like I've I know his name. I feel like I've read one of his books before. I'm just looking up real quick. So he he
00:04:49
Speaker
Sorry I'm just checking out real quick here. I think it was like an anthology of his. No actually I haven't but I think I've.
00:05:04
Speaker
So he did, oh yeah, the Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in heaven. That was the one I read. Oh, okay, cool. I haven't read that. I've read mostly like his short stories. Yeah, that's actually, that's a collection of short stories. Maybe, you know, I'm getting old. So maybe I have read it and I can't remember, but definitely like worth checking out.
00:05:24
Speaker
And then the other show that my wife and I have been watching on Hulu is called
Therapy Themes in The Patient
00:05:32
Speaker
The Patient. It's our Steve Carell and Domino Gleason. Domino Gleason plays a serial killer that's trying to stop being serial killer so he kidnaps his therapist. Oh, obviously the best way to solve your serial killing urges. So that's been pretty interesting.
00:05:50
Speaker
We were just talking about literally just before you got on your head on, recorded the last episode with Mark Buskett talking about Batman forever. And that has a psychiatrist trying to cure a patient by fucking hurting him. So that's... Also not a good therapy technique. Also not a good therapy technique. Yeah, I think the AMA might have some questions about that. Yeah, we gotta make sure that we don't... Doctor patient confidentiality and no touching, right? Yeah.
00:06:19
Speaker
um but uh so i because i just finished getting up i don't really have anything new i'm into but i will say again just because it's worth repeating that i just finished watching um the third episode of um the u.s and the holocaust the new ken burns documentary oh that is really good it's all about the um the u.s reaction to the holocaust and like how the u.s was treating um
Historical Parallels in Ken Burns' US and Holocaust Documentary
00:06:43
Speaker
Jewish refugees at the time, how people in the US were reacting and responding to the Holocaust, how the State Department actually did a lot to deny it was happening at the time. There's a lot of really interesting stuff in there. I've done a bit of research around that period, so I had known a lot more stuff than were taught in school going in. But even still, I found a lot of things in that documentary that I didn't know before. It's definitely worth a watch. It's on the PBS app, so check it out.
00:07:10
Speaker
Well, that's a great recommendation. So I'll probably check that out. And it's, it's, it's also kind of terrifying because you see how many of those, those same types of things are happening now. So there's a lot of terrifying parallels there, especially with, because we're recording this now in mid-September and there's the whole stuff going on with DeSantis and the border, Trump and QAnon and all that kind of stuff. And you see a lot of that stuff was happening back then in America too.
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, you're starting to see some of that also in India now with the current right wing party, the way they're kind of framing, you know what it means to be Indian and what it means to be not
Rising Ethno-nationalism in India
00:07:53
Speaker
Indian.
00:07:53
Speaker
uh there's a lot of accusations around uh you know just mobs of people you know hunting down uh you know indian muslims and bulldozing mosques and it's also things uh that discourse is actually coming to the states there's so i grew up in a in a town called edison where there's a lot of south asians and there are some uh indians living in edison that uh
00:08:18
Speaker
you know wanted it as part of their india day parade they wanted to have a bulldozer to kind of symbolize what's happening in india as like a that they support this that they support bulldozing people's homes if they're they're not uh into so it's very very interesting to kind of see that in in this context now did you ever see um hasan minaj had a netflix show for a brief time patriot act
00:08:40
Speaker
I did see that. Yep. He I remember one of the most one of the most powerful episodes he did was one about this very topic about like Modi in India and all the rising kind of ethno-nationalism and all that kind of stuff happening and it's and that show was on like what like four years ago or something and yes and this stuff is is still happening it's getting worse so it's I hope I
00:09:03
Speaker
That's an episode that I hope I could say like, oh, well, that was an interesting artifact in time. And thank God that's not happening anymore, but it's not quite the case. And that actually, that connects to this one. It also reminded me that another thing that I've been doing lately is, have you heard about the Partition podcast? No, no, I've not heard about the Partition podcast. This is, it's a podcast that's all about like,
00:09:27
Speaker
partition between India in India and separating India into Pakistan. And it's, it's by like, it's being hosted by I think she's second or third generation Pakistani American journalist. And it's really interesting. And she goes, she's had a few episodes out so far. And it definitely ties into what we're going to be talking about today.
00:09:50
Speaker
I will definitely check that out because I know a little bit about partition, partly from family history or reading on my own, but to have a podcast to follow along with would be helpful. And then it's funny, this actually ties very nicely into what we're gonna talk about with Ms. Marvel. Absolutely, yeah.
Cultural Impact of Ms. Marvel TV Show
00:10:11
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, like you said, today we're gonna be talking about Ms. Marvel. And before we jump into the show, what's your experience with this character? Have you ever read of her in the comics before? Have you read any of her appearances in the larger Marvel universe? Because I know you are a comics guy like me, so.
00:10:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So I loved this character. I remember hearing about her, I want to say 2012, 2013, whenever they made the announcement that, you know, Ms. Marvel is going to be, you know, a Pakistani American teenager from New Jersey. And I was like, how did that even happen?
00:10:47
Speaker
And if I remember correctly, the reason they brought the character back was they were worried about losing the license or worried about being able to continue to publish the character. And so I'm a big fan of G. Willow Wilson. I've read a couple of her novels. They're very good. I've liked a lot of her comics writing. I think she's really one of the top tier writers in comics right now.
00:11:15
Speaker
And I was like, Oh, this is this is cool. I really want to, you know, check this out. And I started by picking up like the TPPs once they started coming out. I'm kind of out of the floppy buying game, which is which is not not great, but I just don't have enough space in the house and be just want to read like complete stories or semi complete stories.
00:11:37
Speaker
Same here. And so the character, for me, I loved the comic book. I've really liked a lot of her other appearances, even in Champions. And I liked her, you know, I haven't read all of Saladin Ahmed's run, but I'm a big fan of his writing as well. Both of his comics work, and he wrote a great novel.
00:11:59
Speaker
that I think is really, really phenomenal. And so I really liked the character. The character holds an enormous amount of like personal meaning for me. Cause it's like such a weird, it's honestly a thing that I never thought I'd saw. Now this doesn't, this isn't to say there haven't been other comic book characters that have been, you know, Muslim or Indian, but some of them have had these like kind of problematic elements to them. So a famous example is, is dust.
00:12:27
Speaker
Grant Morrison created her for X-Men, and she has the sand power she wears like a burka or in a veil. And so it's, it's, oh, I mean I was kind of, I was okay with that character but
00:12:42
Speaker
you know, like the representation that you see with, you know, Ms. Marvel is something that's really close to, you know, something that I can really recognize because I'm a guy that grew up in New Jersey and, you know, is Muslim. I'm not Pakistani, my family's from Bangladesh, but we'll talk a little bit about some of the differences later. But there's definitely a strong connection for me with this character. And really, that character kept me reading comics
00:13:11
Speaker
even when I was working as a professor early on, going on the tenure track, you just don't have a ton of time to read comics, but I was keeping up with this character because it was so interesting and powerful. And then my wife, who is not a comic book person at all, absolutely loves the character. She just loves the fact that there's a, you know,
00:13:37
Speaker
you know, kind of a South Asian character that she can relate to and she can see. And my son who's, he's two now, he loves the, we got the Ms. Marvel Golden book for him and he loves reading it. He actually really enjoys the trailer to Ms. Marvel. So he loves watching the trailer, he loves the music and he kind of like, I don't know how much he fully understands, but he recognizes things
00:14:05
Speaker
in the show that he's seen in in in his own life where he's like oh this you know her mom looks like uh you know looks like his grandmother and he's kind of like oh this is this is exciting so yeah there's a really cool kind of deep connection to the character i do like some of the other characters that are that are muslim that are out there that i think jeff johns has created a couple
00:14:27
Speaker
Simon Baz. I like Amulet, who shows up in later Ms. Marvel comics in the Saldan Ahmed run. But I think the other cool thing about Ms. Marvel is that that started a whole set of really interesting, different types of characters. I think Amadeus Cho also debuted around the same time. I think he was a few years earlier, if I'm not mistaken. I think he came about, actually, I think it may have been like 10 years earlier, actually.
00:14:56
Speaker
Really? That much? I think so, yeah, because he was already there, I believe. I think he came in Greg Pack's Hulk run, which was like... Oh, yeah, that would be civil war, pre-civil war around that time. Oh, that is interesting. That's a good question when he debuts. Let's see.
00:15:20
Speaker
Oh yeah, you're right, 2005. So yeah, almost 10 years before, okay. That's true, okay. Yeah, so I do think that there's this push for characters of different backgrounds. And I think there's something really valuable in...
00:15:38
Speaker
in that and it deepens the stories and it makes the stories more interesting and fun, at least for me. I think it makes it a lot cooler to kind of like read those sorts of stories, especially because we know that there's going to be super powered people from all sorts of different places. There's even, I don't know if you read this comic, but there's actually a Spider-Man India.
00:16:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah. I haven't read it, but I've heard of it. And of course, he popped up in in the Spider-Verse stories and in and he was I'm pretty sure he was a regular member of the Web Warriors, which kind of spun out of that. Yeah. Yeah. So that I mean, that's been fun. Like, that's so cool to have those those types of characters kind of pop up and
00:16:22
Speaker
And I think that's what makes the comic really, you know, really interesting, really fun. I actually reread the comics again, like at least the G. Willow Wilson run. And it's very, it's fun to look at it and see how much of it is
00:16:40
Speaker
like inspired a little bit by Buffy, it's very like high school oriented.
Muslim Representation and Backlash in Comics
00:16:46
Speaker
I recently reread the first like, I don't wanna say 75 issues of like Amazing Spider-Man, which is what we think of as the prototypical like high school character, but he's only in high school for a little bit in those early issues. He's only in high school for like the first year or two.
00:17:01
Speaker
But Ms. Marvel, for the majority of her run, she's been in high school dealing with like that high school superhero life. And that also very much plays into the kind of Peter Parker elements of the character that I really enjoy. Yeah. I had a few things I wanted to touch on there. First, I did want to touch on the Muslim characters aspect. And I do remember the
00:17:26
Speaker
Dust. And I just recently wrapped up a podcast with two other guys we had done a reread of the Morrison run. And when we were looking back on the on the Dust issue, you know, there was this kind of sense of like, okay, yeah, this is an attempt, but at the same time, why does the Arabic character have to turn into sand? It seems a little bit on the nose.
00:17:50
Speaker
I appreciate the effort, you know, there was a lot of that with like even with a lot of POC characters there's like we have to make their powers tied to their identity in some way, and sometimes a very blatant way like, you know, Sunfire is a Japanese guy who has the power of nuclear fire which I'm like,
00:18:09
Speaker
It's a little bit odd or Silver Samurai can channel his power through his samurai sword. And there's a lot of that kind of stuff in a lot of these characters. And one of the things I think that is nice about Ms. Marvel is that they find a way to make
00:18:28
Speaker
her identity tied to psychological aspects of her powers, which is why in the comics when she transforms herself into Carol Danvers' Ms. Marvel look, and there is that whole psychological aspect of it, which is really interesting. I didn't realize when I'd read the comics, but other people have pointed out to me.
00:18:46
Speaker
And it becomes a lot more, it adds a whole other layer to that. But other than that, her powers are just, you know, shape shifting. It's nothing that is tied to her being Pakistani or tied to her being Muslim. It's just like with white characters, right? There's nothing inherently white about the fact that Cyclops shoots laser beams out of his eyes.
00:19:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, it's really interesting. The body morphing thing also has another element that I talked about with my wife a little bit, which is, you know,
00:19:19
Speaker
girls going through puberty, they go through enormous changes in their body, and there is that element to it as well. There's all these moments in the early Ms. Marvel comics where she feels like, I can't control my body, right? I don't know what's happening to it. And I feel like that's something that young women can relate to in some cases where they're going through all these experiences, these hormonal changes, similar what boys go through, but I think
00:19:50
Speaker
that sense of, oh, you know, my body's no longer under my control or I'm not sure what I'm capable of, what I'm able to do. I think that's also a big part of it, you know, in terms of her powers. I always...
00:20:03
Speaker
I always found, you know, the, the stretching powers and the big, in beginning powers to be kind of, kind of interesting. And they have a very weird and deep explanation for why she can like expand mass in, in one of the later issues. It turns out that she's like borrowing mass from herself in the future. There's like a, yeah, there's a whole, I
00:20:23
Speaker
I can't remember the exact details of the explanation, but Bruno in the comics does some tests and is able to figure out why she's able to embiggen, because in theory, scientifically, you're not able to just add mass to your body, right? That's like impossible. So he was trying to figure out like, wait a minute, why can she embiggen? Why can she get smaller? What's happening? And there was like a weird time travel explanation for why that was, which was actually borrowing like mass from herself, from future version of herself to make that happen.
00:20:53
Speaker
Makes you wonder how that works with other stretchy characters, type characters, too. Like, you know, what is it? Unstable molecules. Yeah, yeah. It's comic book science. Yeah. But yeah, I I remember when the and when that comic was announced and I remember there being like this kind of backlash to it, just like and I from for the life of me, I still cannot understand that. I mean, me being
00:21:18
Speaker
I mean, I'm a cis straight white guy. I've seen characters like myself. I've got no shortage of characters that look like me. It's not gonna infringe on me at all if there are other characters who don't look like me. It's not a big deal. So I have never understood that kind of backlash that even to this day, we've seen it now, right now we're in the midst of this racist backlash over the fact that there's a black girl playing Little Mermaid.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's really interesting because we're starting to see this with Marvel stuff too. Because you see comments like this about She-Hulk. She-Hulk was a character that's been around almost 40 years, right? At least 40 years. And people are like, well, why did they make Hulk a girl? There's like some woke nonsense. And I'm like, yeah, but this character has been around. There's no shortage of characters that are introduced in a variety of ways that, you know,
00:22:14
Speaker
that allow for some type of, you know, some type of diversity, you know, so you have different types of characters in the same kind of legacy. You see that a little bit in DC where there, I can't remember if Wally West is
00:22:32
Speaker
Um, he he's black and some leader additions. Yeah. The new 52 version of Wally West was, was black and he's still around. I think he goes by Wallace West though. I think now they brought the original Wally back, but so they've got them both running around. I think he's, yeah, the black Wally West, I think is running around with the Titans as kid. Okay. Then the white Wally West, I think he's like, I'm not sure what's going on with him right now. I think he's another flash right now. I'm not up to date on the flash books right now.
00:23:01
Speaker
I just assumed that all the flashes are running somewhere, no matter what the timeline is that they're around. But that was an okay change because there's nothing necessary for flash to necessarily be white.
00:23:18
Speaker
uh i i just kind of you know dig the fact that we can have these sorts of characters popping up i mean if we get to the point where we have wolverine's daughter like x23 show up in the marvel cinematic universe i can't wait to see some of the reactions that people have about that because these are established kind of canon characters that are just you know now being introduced into the into the movie universe and the tv universe
00:23:42
Speaker
Because they're already there. So there's just this catalog. I don't know if there was some complaints. I remember when Hawkeye came out about Kate Bishop and Hailee Steinfeld playing the character. But I don't think people have strong feelings about Hawkeye.
00:23:59
Speaker
the way that they do about Iron Man. We're starting to see some complaints already about Iron Heart coming in and being introduced in Wakanda forever. And it doesn't do anything to harm the legacy of those characters. It just makes these other new characters that are lots of fun. I will plug, I like the Iron Heart comic book quite a bit.
00:24:19
Speaker
I thought that was really, really good. So there are a lot of really cool stories that are popping up and it's nice to see them get translated into this other medium so that other people can really, you know, get a chance to be exposed to them and hopefully go back to the comics and start reading them again because, you know, I'm like a comics first guy, right?
Josiah X and Diversity in Superhero Narratives
00:24:42
Speaker
I'm not as like, if I see a bad adaptation, I'm like, yeah, that's not great. But I don't get that upset about it, as long as the comics are still there, and as long as we still have that original source material. Yeah. Also, on the topic of Muslim characters, too, I'm not sure if you've ever read Christopher Priest did the crew limited series back in the early 2000s. I think it was early 2000s. And
00:25:07
Speaker
As much as I love Sam Wilson as Falcon, I do think it's really cool to see, because in that you had the son of Isaiah Bradley, Josiah, who had gone through the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement and is kept young by the Super Soldier Serum.
00:25:26
Speaker
he ends up converting to converting to Islam and later on in life and so you've got this black Captain America who's also a Muslim and it that and Justin and he was it was an ensemble book so there wasn't a whole lot of time priests could develop but Justin like there's one issue where it's like all about Josiah's story and all about like the idea of what's it like to be a black man in America what's it like to be a Muslim man in America and
00:25:52
Speaker
one of the one of his the people at his mosque even say to him it's like that flag doesn't stand for us you know why are you waving that flag and that's a and he's got that Captain America legacy which in based on the truth miniseries is also this legacy of you know exploitation of his father and his people so there are all these different interesting layers to that character I would really like to see more done with him because I think there's so much to explore there
00:26:17
Speaker
There definitely is. I think Carl Lumley is coming back as Isaiah Bradley in the next Captain America movie. So it would be really cool to see, you know, Josiah X pop up.
00:26:32
Speaker
as a character, but I think that's the interesting thing is that you take these characters that are already rich with meaning, somebody like Captain America, and you put the costume on someone else, and it changes the perception of that character, and it changes our understanding of what the character means and what the legacy means of that character. And I remember Josiah X in the crew
00:26:56
Speaker
being a really fun character to read, a really interesting character, because his perspective was so different from everybody else. Still, an underrated gem from that time period. I think early 2000s, Christopher Priest runs really fun, cool stuff.
00:27:15
Speaker
It absolutely blows me away that he has not appeared anywhere since. It's just unbelievable to me because he is such an interesting character, such a rich history there. And just like nothing's been done with him at all. And I just, I can't fathom why nobody has gone back to that character yet.
Christopher Priest's Influence in Comics
00:27:32
Speaker
I mean, there may be some difficulty in finding somebody that wants to write him. There's also the challenge of figuring out where you're going to put him, where does he fit on a team. And then there's also the added thing of, can somebody capture that voice, right? It's very rare. I find that people have a hard time following up Christopher Priest.
00:27:54
Speaker
uh you know on like I remember Reggie Hudlin's run after after Priest had this like epic run on Black Panther and it was good it was pretty good I don't think it was as good as Christopher Priest's run I think he's done some stuff in DC as well that's like really top tier and then people follow up and they're like they're not they're not able to to pull it off um I think it would take the right right kind of story to kind of bring back Josiah X
00:28:20
Speaker
But it would be cool to see if he has a kid or if there's somebody related to him that becomes another Captain America related character.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I just, it is something that I, it's weird. It's like, you know, 20 years now. So the characters not appeared anywhere since. I just think it, especially with all this new focus on diversity characters, I think, and that's, like you said, he has such an interesting perspective. I think it would be such, and when they've done things like that with like United States of Captain America, where they're bringing in different characters,
00:28:54
Speaker
So I just, I don't know if anyone from Marvel is listening or everyone who has contacts at Marvel, please, like, you know, this is a character that's right for interesting possibilities to mine.
00:29:04
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And I think there's, you know, I think there's also, you know, with the new movie coming out, maybe there's more some more renewed interest in, you know, some of these some of these characters. I think I don't know if you heard this, but I don't think the truth miniseries is available anymore. I think it's out of print. No, I think they recently because they recently had a Captain America sale and I did see it as
00:29:26
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, okay. Because I thought it was out of print for a while. And for a while, yeah, for a while, the trade paperback was out of print because I remember, I think it was like maybe two or three years ago, there was a Black History Month sale that Marvel was doing. And they had the truth and basically all the books that were part of the sale were free. And for the truth, they didn't have a trade paperback of it. They just had the individual issues. So I remember picking up all of those. But yeah, I think they've now put it back into print.
00:29:53
Speaker
Okay, well, that's good because it's a great book, some incredible Kyle Baker art, really, you know, and it will change your view of Captain America, especially because it is based on some real history, specifically the Tuskegee Airmen. Right. So really, really powerful book. And, you know, gives you a whole new view of like, what happened with Captain America and why
00:30:18
Speaker
um you know why that story uh resonates even more as like a metaphor for how things how things work in America. Yeah uh so my I also picked up the Ms. Marvel comics back when they first came out and and I really enjoyed them like I don't say it's going to be like one of my favorite books but I can definitely see why this book speaks to so many people
00:30:40
Speaker
and and it's it's an interesting uh it is a fun read i've gone and i've picked up that when the series came out the the tv show they did release like they have like a big ms marvel sale so i actually picked up the whole thing so i've got all the ms marvel trades i've got all the champion stuff i already had her avenger stuff and um one of the things i really enjoy in seeing her in these other books like when she was part of the avengers was seeing her interact
00:31:06
Speaker
with these characters that she's grown up idolizing. And I think that's, it brings a really interesting perspective. And I think, and that actually ties in nicely to this because right from the start, we get that with Kamala Khan, because we had a little taste of that with Peter Parker and Iron Man when he popped up. But I think it's,
00:31:27
Speaker
it's really, you know, a focus of Kamala's character, like how much of a fan girl she is. And it adds a new spin because when we think about a lot of these movies, I think people like us, people our age, we don't think about how long these movies have actually been around and how long these characters have existed in their world. But when you think about it, you know, Kamala Khan is what, she's 16 years old. So she would have been,
00:31:56
Speaker
very young child by the time Iron Man appeared on the scene and by the time the Avengers appeared on the scene. So it totally like, it always blows me away when I talked to my university students and they tell me that like, oh yeah, I've loved the MCU movie since I was a kid. I'm like, what? How could you have loved them since you were a kid? They only started like five years ago.
00:32:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Time, you know, time goes slower for us. Like this happens to me all the time. I'll be like, Oh, you know, Thor, the dark world that came out like what, three years ago. And then I look at it's like, Oh my God, it's nine or 10. And, you know, you're just like, Oh man, I'm old now. What happened?
00:32:32
Speaker
I teach a class in Japanese film, and I gave the students a list of the films we're doing this semester. And they're all like, pretty much all of them are like, you know, early ox films. And then one of my students who's like 16, he's like, wow, these are a lot of old movies on this list. I'm like, what are you talking about old movies?
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah, this just came out like last year what we talked about. Aging is just like a weird time warp. They just don't have the same frame of reference. And I think that's really important. I also think that part of the reason the show has, I think it's really popular with younger kids, more so than some of the older fans.
00:33:12
Speaker
right and especially it makes total sense you the opening sequence for for the show is Kamala creating a youtube video about you know the Avengers which is exactly what a teenager in this day and age would do for about her favorite characters in addition to like writing fanfic and doing all that other stuff i was gonna say that was a nice little spin a nice little update like not that people don't write fanfic anymore but it is a more
00:33:36
Speaker
kind of modern take on that, more of a Gen Z take on that where it's like, well, yeah, she'd be more likely to be, you know, making eye movies and post them up on YouTube than she would be, you know, typing away on a computer. And it's more visual too, to add to that.
Kamala Khan's Fandom and MCU Casting Success
00:33:49
Speaker
So yeah, I thought that was a really nice, nice touch that they did to incorporate that whole fan aspect into her character.
00:33:57
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And it's also going to be really fun to see her interact with some of the prominent MCU characters in the same way that when she's on the Avengers, she has some really interesting conversations with Iron Man and with Captain Marvel.
00:34:13
Speaker
about what it means to be a hero, it's really different from somebody who grew up watching these characters and idolizing them versus like, well, I'm kind of a peer or I'm a little bit younger and I'm looking up to you versus like, you've been around my whole life and now I get to work with you. There's also that whole aspect of
00:34:34
Speaker
never meet your heroes type of thing too, because, and that whole thing would be interesting, will be interesting to see how that plays out too. And it doesn't hurt as well that the actress who plays her, I wanna get her name right here, Eman Vellani, I think it's pronounced, pronounced that wrong, I'm sorry. But she is such a fan girl in real life too. Like her enthusiasm for the MCU, just like oozes out of every pore of every interview she does.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, she has deep cut knowledge of a lot of the MCU movies and things like that. And I remember I read somewhere on Twitter, people were like, yeah, she should replace Kevin Feige when he wants to retire. And I'm like, that could work, I guess. She definitely could. She has that level of knowledge, but she has that energy that, and this is, you know, one of the things that really makes the MCU work more than visual effects or even storytelling is they've gotten the casting right
00:35:31
Speaker
Yes, quite a bit, you know, from Chris Evans as Captain America to Robert Downey Jr. You know, even, you know, I would say Tatiana Maslany has been working real well. So they've been getting the casting right and so much of the work.
00:35:50
Speaker
is done just by that. So you really believe that Kamala is, you know, love the Avengers and it's really excited to, you know, be a part of it all and is just that pumped up. So it's really exciting to see. And as kind of like long-term fans, I think it's also kind of cool to see somebody that's very much like us that's reaching out over some of this stuff that gets me part of the universe.
00:36:14
Speaker
Well, so I think, and yeah, the casting, it always amazes me that we're now on, what, like, I've lost count of how many movies we've had so far, but it's like, it's in the double digits. We're in like the twenties now. And then we've got like a bunch of TV shows. And if you put a gun to my hat, I don't think I could think of a single casting choice that has gone wrong. It's very hard for me to think of any casting choice, like, well, that was the long pick. Like even,
00:36:43
Speaker
Even character choices that I've disagreed with. I still thought the casting was on point. We talked about Iron Man 3 and the Mandarin stuff. I still thought Ben Kingsley is an amazing choice for the Mandarin. And even for that version of the Mandarin where he's playing, he was still a great choice because he's got all these comedic, this whole comedic side of him. I never knew Ben Kingsley had.
00:37:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that maybe the weakest casting choice is maybe Quicksilver from Age of Ultron. Oh, I actually love that casting choice. Oh, well, I just don't think he gets a lot to do in that movie. That's a problem. Yeah. I think that's the real problem is he just doesn't get a lot to do. But I think if you look at what Quicksilver is in the comics and you look at Aaron Taylor Johnson's performance, he nails it. He completely nails that character. But you're right. The biggest problem is that just he's not given a whole lot to do. And the costume is bad.
00:37:31
Speaker
That's legitimately one of the worst costumes that they ever gave anybody. So they didn't give them anything to do and they gave them an outfit that looks terrible. But I think that's important. Even in the new generation of the characters now, Wyatt Russell, who plays US agent, is great casting. Florence Pugh is incredible. She's amazing.
00:37:56
Speaker
Yeah, so they've got Hailey Stankfield as Hawkeye, like you mentioned before. Yeah, Kate Bishop. Yeah, she's great. So all of these characters, I can already see the young Avengers kind of coming out of that group. And I think the casting has a lot to do with it. And the casting has a lot to do with why this show works for me as well.
00:38:19
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. And also what you mentioned too about the fact that this is a show that's appealing more to young people. I remember seeing a lot of people getting angry about like, this is, this show is too immature. It's too, it's too young. Like not everything has to be for you. I mean, I think it's like, this show is probably not, if I had to choose any Marvel show, like you said, you can only watch one.
00:38:44
Speaker
you know, this would probably not be the one I choose, but that's okay. Like there's other stuff that's made specifically for me. And if this is stuff that appeals more to a younger audience, like, you know, like my daughter wanted, she's a little bit young right now, but you know, if she can relate to this more than she can relate to, you know, Hawkeye or Loki or Moon Knight, I think that's amazing. I think it's great that we're getting more variety of stuff for more people to enjoy because
00:39:09
Speaker
I mean, I don't know about you, but when I was a kid reading comics, it was a very lonely experience because nobody else would even talk about reading comic books. And it was just kind of like, man, that's kind of the reason why comic fandom exploded on the internet so much is because that was the only place a lot of us felt like we could talk about this stuff.
00:39:27
Speaker
Absolutely. It's one of the ironies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for me is when I was growing up, a kid in the 80s and 90s, in high school, if you were reading comic books, nobody was like, oh, that's really cool. And finding t-shirts and merch and things like that, it was hard. I can get really cool. I can get a Beta Ray Bill t-shirt from Kohl's.
00:39:54
Speaker
Like, how is that even a thing? How is that even possible? Kohl's is just like, you know, mom and dad wear, but I can get this this really nerdy t-shirt that would have to go to a comic book store like even 20 years ago to get. So in my university, I teach at universities here in Japan, I see these, you know, these cute university girls walking around wearing Marvel t-shirts. I'm like, what is happening? Like if, you know, if that was happening when I was that age, my mind would have exploded in happiness.
00:40:23
Speaker
Yeah. And you just didn't have that attitude wasn't there. In college, it was, I think, a little bit better because I could meet with people that were also interested in graphic novels and things like that. But the way that it's kind of become a big part of the culture, how we talk about things is really, really important. And it's very funny to me. But the thing is that we always knew those stories were good.
00:40:50
Speaker
that they were appealing to people. And some of the stuff that we're seeing with She-Hulk and some of the other types of characters that are coming out, it's because the comic book companies realize people want to see A, different stories, and then B, they wanna see some part of themselves appear in these stories. And I think it's part of the power of the MCU right now is that you can get some reflection of yourself in the universe.
00:41:16
Speaker
And that's incredibly potent. Because if you think about the 80s and 90s Batman, the likelihood that we were going to get a ton of diversity in those stories just wasn't there. It was a very closed universe that looked a particular way, whereas Marvel is trying to expand not just in terms of diversity, but also in terms of tone. So they're putting out stuff that's closer to comedy rather than just action.
00:41:43
Speaker
or tension, like a thriller or something like that. I think some of the backlash is coming from this shift in storytelling style where everything in the previous phases was all about leading up to the Infinity Gauntlet storyline. And now Marvel's kind of like being a little bit more loosey goosey about what they're showing. They're trying to have a little bit more fun and expand the brand a little bit.
00:42:07
Speaker
which is something I like a lot. I like that not everything has to be leading up to it. And it actually does mirror what was happening in the early stuff. Cause if you go back and you look at the phase one movies, there's not a whole lot of stuff that's connecting together, right? It's just like everything's there's lead up to the Avengers movie, but that's it. There's no like sense of a larger thing happening here. So I think it's kind of cool, especially after we've had this big lead up to end game. And it's just like,
Controversy over Ms. Marvel's Power Change
00:42:35
Speaker
It's cool to just kind of like let everybody breathe for a little bit and enjoy these smaller scale stories, because not everything has to be a buildup to something bigger. Well, it's just the Wong Cinematic Universe now. It is, yeah. We've all decided that Wong is the connective tissue for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I think so. Yeah, he's the new Nick Fury. Yeah, there we go. Wongers forever. Yeah.
00:42:57
Speaker
Oh God, I love that episode. So one of the biggest controversies about this show in the lead up to it was the power change.
00:43:07
Speaker
Now me, and, you know, again, I don't have much of a dog in this fight I'm not, you know, I don't have the kind of cultural connections that other people had to the fact that the whole shape shifting aspect and how that relates to the psychological aspect so I've got no relation to that whatsoever so I can't comment on any of that stuff but I, but just
00:43:27
Speaker
in concept the idea of making her powers this more cosmic almost thing I didn't have a problem with it and I thought they had handled it really well I thought it looked good and I don't know what was your take on that the power change
00:43:42
Speaker
So I am a very weird fan because I'm okay with adaptations like kind of doing their own thing if it works for the film or the TV show. And I also think generally speaking, Stretching Powers look bad in movies and TV, right? Like I don't know if you've seen any of the old scenes from like the Fantastic Four movies. We had actually just done two episodes on both of those. Okay, so the Stretching Powers don't look great in that.
00:44:10
Speaker
I don't think they look that good. Even in Multiverse of Madness, even with a huge Sam Raimi, big budget, it looked okay, but stretching powers look really weird. I just think that there's something off-putting about the human body taking on these different shapes. I don't know if the CGI has gotten to a point where
00:44:31
Speaker
If you make it too realistic, it just looks disgusting. If it's too cartoony, it looks real fake. So it's hard to bridge that gap and find that balance. And so I think the power change makes sense. The other reason that I think the power change makes sense is it brings her closer to Captain Marvel and Photon.
00:44:50
Speaker
And if you're telling a more connected story, then that makes sense. It also kind of reflects the weird place that Ms. Marvel was in when she came out as a character, because when she came out, she was announced as an Inhuman, right? And if Marvel had owned the X-Men rights, the X-Men movie rights at the time, 100%, she would have been a mutant. Oh yeah, I mean, I think G. Willa Wilson actually said that that was their original intention, was to make her a mutant, but then
00:45:19
Speaker
editorial said, no, she's got to be an Indian. Yeah. And that makes total sense to me because, you know, the central metaphor of like mutant kind works really well with being the child of immigrants and being under surveillance. So it totally, it makes a lot of sense.
00:45:41
Speaker
And I think that that is something that works for this character. But I did like the kind of, I know people were saying that she kind of seems like Green Lantern now with the energy powers, but I think it works. And I think it looks a little bit better on screen. They did a couple of things with her powers that I think deepen the character a little bit. So I love the fact that she uses her energy powers to build these pads
00:46:09
Speaker
that she can hop on like Mario. Yeah. You know, because she's supposed to be a gamer and kind of a nerd. That makes total sense. And I think that really works. The thing that I think people were upset about is one of the initial storyline, maybe, you know, the most powerful early storyline is when she shapeshifts into Carol Danvers. Right. And I think there's some logistical reasons why that wasn't going to happen in this show.
00:46:35
Speaker
Right. They're not going to get Brie Larson to come in for this. So I mean, you got to put things in that kind of perspective as well. Yeah. So that storyline is not going to happen, even though I would encourage anybody who's listening to this, you know, to this podcast, if you haven't read just the first TV of Ms. Marvel, pick it up. That storyline is incredible because it speaks
00:46:56
Speaker
to a lot of experiences that I would say immigrant kids, minority kids kind of go through in terms of wanting to be accepted. Because the storyline, when she's trying to figure out her shapeshifting powers, she shapeshifts into what she considers on some level to be her ideal self.
00:47:15
Speaker
which is she goes from being kind of a short, dark-skinned, black-haired Pakistani girl to tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and she has to come to terms with that. And I'll turn back. Yeah, white as well, right?
00:47:31
Speaker
I was going to say that she has to come to terms with that in that story in order to return to her original physical form. So there's a lot of depth there and you get a little hint of that in the show where she's trying on the Captain Marvel costume and it doesn't feel that comfortable to her because she's not used to wearing things that are that form-fitting.
00:47:53
Speaker
I think that that's there, it's hinted at, but you do kind of miss out on that a little bit. I actually think there's probably something on the cutting room floor that's about that more dealing with her rival Zoe, but I think because it was only six episodes, they couldn't cover everything that they wanted.
00:48:12
Speaker
Yeah, that first comic book is, that first graphic novel, that is such a good story. And not only does it speak a lot to that POC, Children of Immigrants thing, but it's just like, it gives you a lot of insight if you don't have those experiences either.
Kamala's Relatability and Family Dynamics
00:48:29
Speaker
Like just me as a white guy reading it, like I, you know,
00:48:33
Speaker
it was it was so relatable to experiences I had as a teenager but at the same time also giving me a so it does both a good job of being very relatable and also opening your eyes to this whole other perspective you may have never considered before.
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, that's what good storytelling does. That's what we hope good storytelling does. And I think it's really, really powerful to kind of be able to see that. I think they touch upon that a couple of times in a couple of different ways in the show. Her struggle to kind of be cool to like have friends and especially because she wants to win this cosplay contest and she thinks that'll make her
00:49:15
Speaker
be more popular you know people will be really happy you know she'll have more followers that you know one of the most 2022 things about this is like oh i need more instagram followers so i can compete with zoe it's absolutely like something kids are thinking about and talking about right now was overall
00:49:30
Speaker
relationship with Zoe too, right? The whole thing. She's like, she wants to be liked by the most popular girl in school type of thing. There's that whole aspect of it too. And I remember that as a teenager, both at the same time kind of resenting the popular kids, but also wanted to be part of their group. But also now being a father too, the scene that kills me is when her parents give her permission to go to a vendor con.
00:49:57
Speaker
and and her dad comes in dressed the Hulk and then yeah she's like this is humiliating and then he looks so sad and despotic and I'm just like god I can relate so hard to that moment because I just know that that's gonna happen with my daughter one day. Well I think that's one of the cool things about the character and also one of the flavors that you get in this show and also you see this in She-Hulk where they they have families you
00:50:22
Speaker
right? They have real families. You know, Spider-Man has a family, but it's like a family of one, right? He has Aunt May, you know, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Tony has a girlfriend slash wife. He has a kid at some point, but it's not as in-depth and as woven into everything. But with a character like Ms. Marvel, you know that you have those moments where your parents are really trying
00:50:47
Speaker
you know, you know, they're trying, but God damn it, it is not, this is not the right thing. It's not going to work. I'm sorry. We're not going to go together to a compa convention. And I remember having some of those conversations with my parents where I was like, Hey, can you take me to this compa convention? And they're like, this is a waste of time. This is a waste of money. Why aren't you just, you know, studying at home? That's probably better for you and your future. Um,
00:51:13
Speaker
And I think that that is extremely relatable, especially I think for a lot of the female fans of the character. And the other interesting thing about Ms. Marvel, the comic, and maybe also the TV show, though I haven't seen a lot of numbers about this, the comic book brought in a lot of new readers to the world of comics.
00:51:34
Speaker
I've met people that said that, oh, I don't read anything except this one book that I really like. So that was one thing that I think Marvel noticed is that there was sales happening in non-traditional locations with the character. And in fact, the character is popular enough that she shows up in a lot of other media. She's in a lot of the cartoons now, which is kind of incredible.
00:51:57
Speaker
Yeah, they've got those, I think it's the shorts on Disney Plus. I've seen like there's a lot of them about Ms. Marvel. And I haven't seen all of Avengers assemble, but I think she appears in that a few times as well in the later seasons.
00:52:10
Speaker
And you said there was like a children's book or something with her? You were talking about- Yeah, there's a golden book with her in it. There's also a young adult novel, like kind of a kid's novel with her in it as well. And it's really interesting how many different places she's popping up in terms of multimedia. She's in the video games too. Right, yeah, she's the central character of the Avengers PlayStation game.
00:52:39
Speaker
And I remember when they announced that and I was being really, and I didn't realize how popular she had gotten, but now that hearing about that, like it makes total sense why she would end up being the focal point of that game.
00:52:52
Speaker
Yeah, but one of the weird things, actually, in the last couple of years of Marvel is they haven't put out a standalone Ms. Marvel comic over the last couple of years. Yeah, like, since The Cell of the Nahemith Run, I think they, I don't know what they're planning on doing with the characters yet, but they haven't had, she hasn't had a solo series.
00:53:10
Speaker
um which is which is which is crazy uh there's a writer uh from the Hollywood Reporter and Variety guy named Richard Newby he was like uh after the show came out he was asking and tagging Marvel like hey you need to put out uh a show uh sorry a comic book series with this character people really like her and you know that's been true for for many years now she's she really has that Peter Parker vibe oh yeah
00:53:37
Speaker
you know, and between the two companies, they haven't really launched many characters that have grown in popularity over the last like, you know, 10 or 15 years. Yeah, there was an attempt, I remember, to have that, the second Nova character, Sam, what's his name, but that character never really caught on, I don't think, like he, like they kept trying, but I don't think anybody, that character really spoke to a lot of people.
00:54:01
Speaker
But Ms. Marvel, you know, she's really spoken to a lot of people. Like, she's a really, she's a character that a lot of people can relate to, a lot of nude readers and viewers can relate to. And yeah, that surprises me that I thought she had, I thought she had still had an ongoing series at the moment. I didn't realize that they had, they didn't have one right now.
00:54:23
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think they have one right now at the moment. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that she's just maybe appearing in team books right now. So I would love to see another series with her, but I'm glad that she's showing up in all of these other media. And I think the show does a good job of translating
00:54:43
Speaker
like what's important about the characters. I know the power set thing, I kind of wish the powers could have stayed the same, but I appreciate what they were able to keep, which is they were able to keep some of the shape-shifting stuff with the energy, you know, while still tying it closer to Captain Marvel.
00:55:01
Speaker
and still giving her a way to kind of learn about those powers because in those first few TPBs, that's a big part of what she's trying to do. She needs to figure out how these powers work, why they work the way that they do. I also think this hasn't been officially announced, but I'm pretty sure that the bangle that unlocks her power, I'm pretty sure it's a negaband.
00:55:23
Speaker
Yeah, same here. So I don't know if they've confirmed that or not, but that's my, that's my understanding. That was what I thought. That was where my mind first went to, which also connects it more to Captain Marvel as well. Also, and the, it's the connectivity. Another thing I was thinking about when I'm watching her interact with her parents, I was thinking about a lot like my parents, like this, her relationship with her parents was very similar to a relationship I had with my parents back then. Like it's, you know, my mom was kind of like the,
00:55:53
Speaker
the more overbearing more strict one my dad was much more laid back much more you know kind of loosey type of thing and just like watching her interact with them it was bringing back so many memories of me interacting with my parents i thought that was also another way that shows you just like how accessible these stories are yeah i mean i think people can relate they they might have a parent that's like
00:56:14
Speaker
little harder on them and another one that they go to for sort of comfort. There's also, somebody mentioned this on Twitter, and I can't remember who it was, but they said that this, I don't watch a lot of Bollywood movies, but apparently in Bollywood there's this trend of dads kind of being goofballs. Oh yeah. She's kind of being silly. And so her dad definitely fits that bill. He's like the, whenever you see him, he's like eating sweets.
00:56:37
Speaker
He seems a little defuddled most of the time. And so I think that also taps into some of those Bollywood tropes that we don't traditionally think of. But we see some of that influence in some of the music choices and some of the set design and production design of the show as well, that there's tons of music from all sorts of different parts of the world, from the UK, from India, from Pakistan. It's really, really interesting.
00:57:06
Speaker
Now, one of the things that I found myself like, so I think that this show almost tries to do a little bit too much in the first season. I feel like if I was show running this, I would have, I think the Pakistan stuff is very interesting. It's very well done, but I think I would have liked to save that for the second season and just have the first season focused in Jersey. What about you? What were your thoughts on that?
00:57:34
Speaker
So I was in the bag for the show. So I'm very pro biased in favor of the show. I really loved a lot of the... I don't mind that it feels a little overstuffed. So I actually think that...
00:57:49
Speaker
you know, they probably might have thought that we don't know if we're gonna get another season out of this. I think so, yeah. And we got to shoot our shot when we get the chance. But I think it works for the most part. It's breakneck. I think it moves very, very quickly. And there's a lot of stuff happening in it. But I think a lot of it, more of it works than doesn't.
00:58:07
Speaker
I think there's some things specifically around clandestine and kind of like mentioning, asking whether or not she's a jinn or she's something else. So that jinn thing actually became a big talking point in the South Asian Muslim nerd community, especially between episodes. Some people didn't really like that it felt maybe a little orientalist.
00:58:33
Speaker
But after watching the series, and so I've kind of watched it fully like twice now, I kind of think that one of the threads in the story is about Kamala's own identity.
00:58:49
Speaker
having that idea that, okay, where does the superpower come from? Are you some mystical creature? Are you something else? Are you something from the folklore of people in Pakistan? Or are you something else? And then finally, the big reveal at the end of the series about what she actually is.
00:59:07
Speaker
And then her response to that kind of thing, it doesn't really matter. Aside from those labels, she is who she is. I think that's important because if you're growing up as a minority in the United States or any other country, part of your growth process is kind of identifying yourself and coming to terms with both your identity, like the stuff that is inherently a part of you and the parts that you keep versus the parts that you don't.
00:59:36
Speaker
I think that, you know, giving the show like a month or two, you know, since the last episode came out and kind of like coming to terms with that and seeing it as a whole, as a season arc, I think it makes a little bit more sense. And I think that's why they have, you know, this journey to Pakistan
00:59:56
Speaker
because that's also something that she, you know, that she kind of comes to terms with for herself. They actually adapted a wide range of the comics as well because she does go to Pakistan in, you know, in the Ms. Marvel comics. She has the storyline there with the red dagger.
01:00:14
Speaker
she has a whole there's a whole series of storylines there and it's a lot they cover an enormous amount in in just these six episodes i i gladly would have watched an additional two episodes uh you know marvel if you want to give give us more episodes we'd be happy haven't they already i think they've already announced the second season haven't they that's the rumor that's the rumor but i haven't seen it confirmed anywhere okay trust okay
01:00:38
Speaker
That's a fair point that I had heard about a second season so I just assumed that it was already greenlit then. Yeah, that was my biggest thing and it's not and again, it's not saying that Pakistan stuff is bad by any means I thought it was really interesting. It was really cool to see them shoot it I think they actually shot in Pakistan didn't they.
01:00:56
Speaker
I believe it was Thailand. Oh, Thailand. Okay. Yeah. Like, I think Pakistan presents some interesting logistical problems. I was wondering about that. Yeah. Yeah. But just like being able to show that other side and like delve into that kind of aspect of her character and then going into the history of it with the partition, because like you, like we'd mentioned earlier, and we were talking about that podcast, partition is not something that
01:01:21
Speaker
even people of Pakistani descent really know a lot about because it's something that one of the things they talk about in the in the podcast is how a lot of
01:01:30
Speaker
people who have gone through partition, they don't really want to talk about what their experiences were like back then because it was so traumatic and which is understandable. But up until that, the only thing I had ever heard of partition up until Ms. Marvel was the scenes in the movie Gandhi about partition. And that was about it. And I had known nothing else about it really.
01:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, there's actually a long history of, and it's funny, we're talking about this like right after Queen Elizabeth passes, but the British did a lot of really negative things in South Asia. So by some extent-
01:02:11
Speaker
To say the least, by some estimates, they had taken $45 trillion worth of wealth out of India. Winston Churchill at least starved out parts of the Bay of Bengal, parts of what we would call modern-day Bangladesh.
01:02:29
Speaker
killing somewhere in the range of, I don't know, six to 10 million people over a period of years. If you ever see the movie Lagone, which is an Indian movie about British colonies kind of demanding higher taxes of the Indian community, that's a very fun movie, but it's about a really tough subject.
01:02:52
Speaker
There's a lot of stuff that happened during that time. And then if you read a little bit about partition, partition was really haphazardly done. Like they send somebody, I believe somebody named Radcliffe to India. He basically decides like kind of on a whim, here's where the borders are, and then people have to just go.
01:03:11
Speaker
And I think it's still considered the largest human migration in human history and to have happened as quickly as it did. And so people lost family members, people lost, you know, property, legacies, you know, there are a lot of people in
01:03:29
Speaker
modern day Pakistan now who still have roots in other parts of India, and there are people that went to India from other parts of, you know, what is now Bangladesh and Pakistan that have roots in those places.
01:03:44
Speaker
And it's all because of the fear of sectarian violence when the country was split. So it was really very poor diplomacy and very bad thinking around this. I think it's really interesting to see it show up in a comic book story.
01:04:05
Speaker
But I think it also kind of, you know, has this sort of thematic echoing to what the villains of the show were trying to do, right? They were outside of their traditional homes and they were trying to get through their own partition to go back.
01:04:23
Speaker
Right. And there's, you know, there's always a sense of, you know, people in the modern era of South Asia are kind of building a new identity and a new new sense of self out of the rubble of partition. Yeah, you should definitely check out that podcast because they did they did a whole episode about that kind of haphazard partitioning. And they'd also done two episodes about the experiences of specifically about women going through going through all that.
01:04:49
Speaker
So it's a really good listen. I think it's still ongoing. So by the time by the time this episode comes out, it should be all completed, though. Oh, I believe so. But yeah, it's and also the fact that they're doing this through a comic book show, it also echoes what Watchmen did with with the Tulsa riots. Right. And just kind of like
01:05:10
Speaker
And it's so interesting to see these things brought to light and brought to more awareness, brought to them through these things. Because actually when I think about, that's how I learned a lot about the Holocaust was because the X-Men talked about it so much. And otherwise, like the civil rights movement too, to a lesser extent, was because it was such a big focus of those comics I read when I was growing up. Whereas in history class, it was just kind of like, we're gonna talk, spend a little bit of a time at this, but not gonna talk too much about it.
01:05:39
Speaker
And with stuff like Tulsa or Partition, this is stuff I've never known about.
Comics and Historical Narratives
01:05:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because the narratives that get told are told by whoever's in power. And people don't want to talk about something like Tulsa, which is like a real expression of white supremacist power.
01:06:03
Speaker
you know and and frankly a really terrible uh story overall people don't necessarily want to remember that but it's important for us to kind of recall these types of things and that's why uh you know i'm glad that if the show started a conversation about partition amongst people who never thought about it if they picked up a book or listened to a podcast about it because of the show i think that's that's the power of including
01:06:27
Speaker
you know, some real life elements in these, you know, kind of goofy comic book type shows and movies. Yeah, absolutely.
01:06:39
Speaker
So you put, you made an interesting point about the clandestine here and their desire to kind of overcome. I had not realized that as I was watching it, but it does make a whole lot more sense. And that's a whole new spin because the clandestine stuff to me was, you know, to be honest, it was kind of like the least interesting thing about it. The show for me was all the stuff involving them. I was so much more invested in Kamala and her experiences becoming a hero and
01:07:06
Speaker
or experiences in Jersey, which is also why as much as I like the Pakistan stuff, I did wish it was in its own separate season so that we could have had, because I thought the, I feel like this story really kind of fired on all cylinders when it was in the Jersey setting. Yeah, I think the thing about, so this is a common thing about Ms. Marvel. I don't know if you noticed this in reading some of the comics, but her villain roster is not particularly strong. Well, in that first graphic novel, she doesn't really have a villain. No. Yeah.
01:07:36
Speaker
No, her villain is like herself figuring out what she wants to do. Right. You know, and then there's the inventor who's like part cockatoo type character that's kidnapping teens. It very much feels a little bit like Scooby Doo a bit, not in a bad way, but in a way where it's like, yeah, this is this is very much teen teenager type stuff.
01:07:55
Speaker
You know later on she has, I will say that Ms Marvel comics are very on the nose with regards to their metaphors, because they had another character that was like working with Dr Faustus and Hydra, those trying to take over Jersey City. There's like a character called detention that's basically like a
01:08:13
Speaker
an authoritarian. I mean, they're not like, they're not being subtle about any of the metaphors that they're that they're talking about in the comics, but the villains are without a doubt the weakest part of, you know, of the, of the comics, especially even like, it was more fun when she teams up with Wolverine, you didn't even need a villain, you just wanted them to hang out. Right. Yeah. And I remember that being one of my favorite issues was her interacting with Wolverine.
01:08:41
Speaker
Absolutely. And it's just like, it's exactly like the kind of fangirl that you would expect to just hang out Wolverine, take a selfie with him, ask him all these questions, and then still get a lesson from from the character. So I think they made that they make that very, very explicit. But I do
01:08:57
Speaker
I love her friends. I like her chemistry with Bruno. I like the fact that they spend some time with her best friend, Nakia. I think it's great to see her relationship with her brother, with her parents. The wedding episode is so much fun.
01:09:17
Speaker
you know, kind of just see her do that. But it's also very much a Peter Parker moment where she's got to pull the fire alarm and ruin her brother's wedding, right? So the clandestine also, and this goes back to a time thing, it's very unclear what their actual powers are.
01:09:33
Speaker
Mm-hmm, right? Like, what is their power set? Like, you know, are they super strong or super fast? You know, what weaponry are they using? It's very, very unclear what they're capable of. And even her, like, semi-love interest, Kamran, we're not really sure what his powers are either, and what the relationship is between him and, like, the rest of the clandestine.
01:09:59
Speaker
I do think it's kind of a funny way to reappropriate the Alan Davis comic book. I don't know if you ever read. I was thinking about it. Yeah, because I know I've never read them other than like I know they had a crossover with X-Men at one point and I read that. But that's like my only experience with with the clandestine. So I thought that that's what I thought. I'm like, this is such a weird choice to pick like such a weird deep cut.
01:10:21
Speaker
And it's clear they're just like, they did the same thing that, which, funny enough, when we talked about Moon Knight, it was the same situation in Moon Knight where the character they picked for the villain is just this obscure name they take out and they pluck on this character. I feel like they did the same thing with the clandestine here.
01:10:37
Speaker
I think they chose the clandestine because the clandestine are supposed to be Jin, actually. The original characters are supposed to be, you know, it's a British, you know, I forget the main character from clandestine, but he falls in love with Jin. They have some children. Those children then have powers. And so that's very explicit. I can see that as an explicit choice.
01:11:01
Speaker
that's been made by the producers of Ms. Marvel to kind of say, well, there are twin characters in the MCU, we're gonna use them for, you know, for Ms. Marvel. But, you know, they're also not the driving engine of the story necessarily, it's mostly, again, about her like self-discovery. Yeah, so I'm just looking up about them. So yeah, yeah, he has this, ends up getting up with,
01:11:32
Speaker
an angel. I'm not sure if it's a gin specifically, I'd have to read more into that. I might mention that somewhere in here. But yeah, and they're like this very long lived group of characters. And it's also interesting that they've taken this idea of how they're gin in the comics, but they're all a bunch of white people from England. And they give it to people of Southeast Asian descent in this one instead. That was a nice little change, I thought.
01:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, there's actually, well, there's much more diversity in the group, because there's an African-American person. Yeah, there's a couple of South Asians. But the reason for that was because, you know, in the clandestine comics, that character, you know, he's British, and he's just with a jinn, and then he stays in Britain, and his descendants continue to have superpowers because of that original relationship. There's actually a,
01:12:28
Speaker
you know, a little genealogy chart that you can find online of the clandestine that shows you like where it started and where they ended up. It's Alan Davis who's usually pretty good, but the comic book's not great. It's only really, it's okay. You know, Marvel, if you want to give me a shot at rewriting, you know, clandestine, just give me a call. I'll do something.
01:12:54
Speaker
I remember because I read their X-Men crossover thing about Alan Davis is I love his artwork but his, the stuff I've read that he's written hasn't been as interesting to me like he did a run on X-Men that didn't really do much for me and the clandestine thing he wrote with clandestine X-Men crossover.
01:13:13
Speaker
breeze through that when I was reading it in one of the epic collections, because it didn't really do a whole lot for me. The characters never really seemed very interesting to me at all. So yeah, when they mentioned clandestine in the show, I'm like, oh, oh yeah, I remember those guys. And then that was the extent of my interest in it.
01:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, and I do think that they're mostly there to kind of get Kamala to confront her past and how she feels about her family and not really understanding where she comes from. And it's also really important in the show, there's a thing in South Asian culture where you don't talk about painful things or shameful things from your past.
01:13:57
Speaker
And so her grandmother, her great-grandmother is treated as like one of those shameful secrets. And one of the funny things is she doesn't really do much. She just disappears for no real reason. Nobody understands why. And that becomes something of a shameful secret for her family. And it becomes an issue for Kamala because it stops her from really knowing and understanding where her family comes from.
01:14:24
Speaker
And that happens sometimes. There are things that during early 20th century that might be considered shameful or too painful to discuss that we would talk about in modern era. For example, my grandmother, she lost my grandfather very early on when my dad was only four. She never talked about my grandfather ever.
01:14:46
Speaker
uh because it was not necessarily because she was shamed but she felt it was too painful and she didn't want to dwell on it so there's there is that that part of the culture uh that kind of reflected in in the show
01:14:57
Speaker
That explains so much about the partition thing. Because when I'm listening to this podcast about partition, and they're talking about how so many people, their families, and they're growing up, they're like, we don't want to talk about that. We don't want to talk about that. And it's such an interesting contrast to when you think about the Holocaust, where it's
01:15:18
Speaker
those people are constantly encouraged to share their stories and to talk about what they went through in the camps and all that. And it's this interesting cultural difference, but also I think part of it is cultural. I think there's also maybe a, there's probably a not so subtle racism aspect of it as well, where it's like, we want to hear about the hard things that white people have gone through, but we don't want to hear about the hard things that Brown people have gone through.
01:15:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think there's also one of the key differences with the Holocaust as well is there's a lot more video documentation of what happened. And so once you can see it, it's hard to turn away. And then there's also a question of like, are there people, especially in the Western world, ready to listen to what happened in India when a Western power ostensibly is the cause of all this suffering
01:16:11
Speaker
the people in power, they may not want those stories to be told or discussed. And there's also a lot of chaos that happens leading up to Indian independence and Pakistani and Bangladeshi independence.
01:16:26
Speaker
a lot of turmoil during this time. So there may not be as much of an opportunity to kind of collect a lot of those stories as well. Whereas, you know, in, you know, I would say the Jewish diaspora, they've done a very good job of kind of collecting those stories and documenting what happened during that time.
01:16:45
Speaker
I think also the fact that the Nazis were so bureaucratic and they kept so many records of stuff also helped that as well. I was not expecting this US and the Holocaust documentary to so connect to what we're talking about here, but it does because there's this whole thing they talk about about how people at the state, there were so many people at the State Department in the US at the time who were
01:17:07
Speaker
so anti-Semitic and so xenophobic that they just kept trying to deny any evidence that the Holocaust was happening until that evidence became too powerful to ignore. And so I think you're right. I think that's a very good point is because of all the documentary evidence that came out about it as well, it made it a lot harder to deny it also.
01:17:29
Speaker
And yeah, you're right. And it's the same thing with Tulsa too. There's not as much documentary evidence as there was with that too. So yeah, that's another aspect of it that definitely plays into it. And you see it a lot in these, and we're finding out more, I shouldn't say we, because a lot of people who are from those communities, they've known about this stuff for all this time. But I mean, like people like me, like white people, when we're finding out this stuff for the first time, like stuff about,
01:17:57
Speaker
One of the most powerful things I've seen in recent years was the HBO documentary series, Exterminate All the Brutes, which is all about the colonial stuff all over the world that was going on. And just shining this uncompromising light on this brutal practice.
01:18:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think I think that's something that, you know, it's interesting we talk about, you know, villains and heroes very often in when we're talking about superhero media, and sometimes like when you get to see real life villainy real life evil kind of come to the forefront, it puts those things into perspective, I think that that's been helpful in terms of like my comic book reading,
01:18:39
Speaker
is, you know, understanding some of that history. And it has led me to, you know, kind of investigate certain things a little bit more. You're right. I wonder how many kids growing up reading X-Men comics then had to think about, well, I guess I'm going to read, you know, read a little bit more about the Holocaust because Magneto went through it. So I need to understand a little bit more about it. So I think those are really powerful and hopefully people can start to understand a little bit more about the experiences of South Asians.
01:19:08
Speaker
from partition. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Something else I wanted to mention along those lines.
01:19:16
Speaker
I'm blanking on it now, but I'm sure it'll come to me later. I do want to talk a little bit about, I thought damage control was a weird, kind of a weird choice to use as like these government antagonists because damage control in the comics, they're just the cleanup guys, right? They just come in after the battle and they just clean stuff up. And I thought it's really weird to use them instead of all these other organizations that exist in the comics that seem would be much better fit for that kind of role.
01:19:45
Speaker
So I think they're changing damage control from... So this is my weird theorizing. So if anybody thinks this is a kooky idea, but I think that they're setting damage control up almost because we know that the X-Men are coming. I think damage control is getting set up as the folks that are gonna build Sentinels.
Damage Control's Role in Ms. Marvel
01:20:06
Speaker
I think so too, yeah.
01:20:07
Speaker
Yeah, so I think they're setting it up because, you know, damage control in the comics is like very comedy oriented. I remember the damage control comic is like kind of silly. All this stuff got destroyed. How are we going to fix it now? But in the show, they're much more authoritarian. They're much more kind of semi-fascist.
01:20:27
Speaker
I mean, they make some really explicit, they show some explicit, you know, kind of connections to, you know, potential fascist views because, I mean, they walk into the mosque and they're wearing shoes. They don't have any respect for anybody in the community. They're just kind of like, no, we're gonna, you know, we need to be able to find out who in your community is super powered.
01:20:50
Speaker
And I think this is part of the reason she they announced her or they made her a mutant in this series is I think damage control is going in that direction. And I think they need a replacement for for shield that isn't sword and that isn't what is the other one in space? Oh, that sword is the one in space. But I think I think I think you're thinking of hammer. That was the maybe. Yeah, maybe.
01:21:18
Speaker
Yeah, so they're coming out with these other groups, but I think they're saving them as being more heroic and they're going to kind of say like damage control are the bad guys that are trying to catch all the mutants.
01:21:32
Speaker
Yeah, Sword makes more sense because they were always more or less pretty heroic in the comics. But I did think the fact that you mentioned that now made me think that's exactly what I was thinking when I watched this show. I'm like, why are they using damage control instead of hammer? That seems like a more logical choice. Because obviously, if you use the MRD from the X-Men evolution or not,
01:21:54
Speaker
I think it was at Wolverine and the X-Men, that car had me to use the MR mutant response division. Well, people are going to know right away that, and then the big twist at the end that she's a mutant is going to be dead right away. So I understand them not using that, but like, I think Hammer would have made a little bit more sense for me. And maybe it's just me just holding out hope to see like, you know, like a damage control sitcom or something like that would be really fun.
01:22:19
Speaker
Well, they had a DC version of that a few years ago with Vanessa Hudgens. She was in a show that was kind of like damage control. Right, and Alan Toduck was in that too, wasn't he, I believe? Yeah, yeah, he was in it as well. I think it was only on for
Cultural Setting and Visual Style of Ms. Marvel
01:22:32
Speaker
one season. It wasn't bad. I never saw it. It never popped up on any of the streaming stuff, so.
01:22:37
Speaker
It might be on Peacock now, but I'm not sure where it would be. I can't even remember the name of it. Do you remember the name of it? I don't. I have to check Vanessa Hudgens. I'll look it up after then. But yeah, that was something I remember a lot of people being very angry about that when it was announced. I'm like, it's fine. We can have a sitcom set in the superhero universe. Yeah.
01:23:00
Speaker
But yeah, hammer was what I thought would have made a much more logical sense, but they did need something here.
01:23:10
Speaker
And I think the whole mutant thing, it does also, it fits so much better, like you were saying, for Kamala's character, for her to be a mutant, because the whole thing about the Inhumans, it's like they're descended from this ancient race of like royals and all that kind of stuff. And it loses some of that everyman aspect that being a mutant has, I think.
01:23:33
Speaker
Yeah, I also think the Inhumans are harder. They're just a harder sell. They also didn't have like a particularly good TV show adaptation. I saw some parts of it. It wasn't great. It was not. Yeah, like, so I think they want to kind of and the only reason they were focusing on the Inhumans so much was because they
01:23:54
Speaker
you know, they didn't have the X-Men. So now they have got the X-Men, I think they want to kind of tie Ms. Marvel closer to that particular part of the universe. Especially because- Mostly that was just Ike Perlmutter's whole bugaboo, because he was in charge of, when he was running Marvel Studios, he was very big on, we can't use the X-Men, so the humans are now our X-Men. So we pushed them really hard in the comics, and then he was gonna push them in the movies.
01:24:20
Speaker
Disney undercut him and they gave Kevin Feige Marvel Studios to run his own. But he still had the TV division, which is why we had the Inhumans so heavily featured in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and why they got their own TV show. And then now that Feige's got control of everything and he's got the mutants now, we start to see them rolled out in a much more organic fashion.
01:24:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think that'll play out with her character. And I think they have, because Iman Valani is such a good fit for this character, and she's such an audience surrogate in addition to just being a fun hero, I think you're gonna see her pop up in a lot of things. I think they're really banking on the Marvels with Captain Marvel and Photon and her. I think they expect it to do well. And I think it'll be a fun movie, you know?
01:25:12
Speaker
I think, you know, watching She-Hulk lately, it made me think that because She-Hulk is very episodic right it's like these little kind of like different stories that connect to her superhero life. That kind of makes me think, I kind of wish that was what we saw more of with Ms. Marvel because it is at its best when it's focused on those
01:25:30
Speaker
those character moments, those character interactions, the difficulty she has balancing the superpowers and her civilian identity, trying to discover who she is. And I kind of wish that instead of getting this six episode arc about the clandestine and the gin and all this stuff that we had just gotten six episodes about her going through life in Pakistan as a superpower teenager.
01:25:57
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that would have been interesting to see. I think the things that I really enjoyed in the show, I really loved kind of the depiction of just like everyday American Muslim life. I thought that was really cool. I thought it was really cool to see, you know, Pakistan in a different light, just seeing people living every day. And it was also really funny to see
01:26:22
Speaker
Her family in Pakistan is very wealthy, and you can tell because they've got a huge house. Sometimes if you go back to the old country, you might see that your family has a ton of money. They've got a big place, which is kind of contrasted to some of the poverty that you might see in places like Pakistan in India and Bangladesh.
01:26:44
Speaker
because there's a huge income disparity in those countries. So I kind of like the fact that we got to see a lot of those things. One thing we didn't get a chance, we haven't talked about in the show, one of my favorite parts of the show is that Ms. Marvel is like the most visually
01:27:01
Speaker
you know, kind of interesting Marvel TV show, I think, because they did so many little things, you know, with the text messaging, with, you know, her doing the little dance number when she first meets Comron. I really felt like they did a lot of fun things with the show and kind of made it a little more, you know, of a flavor than your typical kind of superhero show.
01:27:28
Speaker
So I think that was stuff that really, you know, was exciting and fun. And I think they did a great job like curating really interesting music, you know, taking the character to some really interesting places, and having some conversations and showing things you don't usually see. Like I never thought we would see like a big South Asian wedding in a superhero show of any kind. And to have that happen in
01:27:52
Speaker
in Ms. Marvel was a lot of fun. To have her save her first person at a mosque was really funny. I was like, oh, this is really kind of cool. So you got a chance to kind of split the difference between seeing superhero life and kind of her very unique life in New Jersey and then later in Pakistan as well.
01:28:18
Speaker
Yeah. And those are the things that really got me interested the most. Like as soon as we got into clandestine and to a lesser extent damage control, those are the times when I started checking out a little bit more of the series. But anytime we were in Jersey, we were dealing with her struggles, with her identity, with her life, with her family, contrasting that with her life.
01:28:38
Speaker
with her classmates and all that, all that kind of stuff. I'm just like, man, I love all this stuff. I want to see more of this stuff. Well, hopefully we get a second season so we can see more of that because the storyline with her family in the comics is really interesting. Seeing what happens with her brother and his wife, with Umar and his wife is really interesting because they have a kid and there's a bunch of really fun ways where the story could go.
01:29:06
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, also you mentioned about the color too. I think the power change actually helps work towards that too because I can't imagine those stretchy powers really kind of fitting in as well to the kind of colorful, the way they use colors and imagery in this show with those stretchy
Ms. Marvel's Relatability and Community Impact
01:29:27
Speaker
powers. They're having those bright color effects. I think it really helps enhance that as well.
01:29:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, the color palette for the show is really different, I think, than most of the stuff we see in Marvel. And I think that makes it really cool. You see that in her costuming as well, like the costume design, the way it changes over the course of the series is really cool and kind of reflects her.
01:29:51
Speaker
you know, the identity that she ends up building, right? She gets pieces of the costume from everybody that's important in her life. And, you know, that's so, it's funny. We, you know, people joke about like these prequel stories, like going into details about, you know, where Indiana Jones got his fedora and all of that stuff. And you're like, oh, I don't really want to know that. But, you know, this was cool. This, it was kind of like really building the character up from the, you know, from the ground level to another level.
01:30:17
Speaker
I think more than any other character I can really think of is that that reminded me the most of like Superman getting his costume, right? The whole idea, the whole, you know, I like your costume. Thanks, my mom made it for me type of thing. Or like the fact that his Earth mom made it from the blankets that he was sent to Earth in by his parents. And I think all of that, it feels very similar to the way Kamala gets her costume put together.
01:30:43
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. It's so funny that Ms. Marvel as a character is so different in terms of demographics, but she echoes so much of classic Peter Parker, classic Clark Kent. You can see those, especially if you've read a lot of comics or seen a lot of comic book movies, you can see those echoes in this character. It's very clear.
01:31:04
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And I think, you know, some of that was probably definitely intentional when G. Willow Wilson was crafting the character to intentionally make it so that this character is more relatable to a large audience. It has that kind of familiarity.
01:31:18
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Even Adrian Alfono's art in the comic, in the Chihuahua Wilson run, does a really good job of making the character seem more human than what we see in other characters. And you see that when she pops up in some of the other comics, you can see what a big difference it is in how she's depicted versus in her main title, where she does seem like, oh, she's a little short.
01:31:45
Speaker
And, you know, she doesn't seem like she's that athletic. And that's okay. I think that's also something that we see with, amusingly with Iman Valani, she's not very tall and they don't do anything to hide that she's not very tall. It's just part of her character. It's like, you know. Yeah, that was something that really stood out. You just reminded me, that was something that really stood out when I was reading that first comic is the fact that she looks like a normal teenager. She doesn't look like, like,
01:32:12
Speaker
I remember reading, you know, Witchblade and, you know, seeing like, you know, Michael Turner drawing like these teenager characters who have like, you know, massive breasts and long legs. They're just like, that's not really what teenagers look like. But Yamala looks, is drawn like a real teenager. I thought that was a really nice aspect to that book. And yeah, Iman Valani, she's very much a teenage girl. She, they're not trying to hide any, they're not trying to hide the height thing at all. Like she looks just like a normal kid.
01:32:42
Speaker
Okay, is there anything else you wanted to mention about Ms. Marvel? Just a couple of things that I think are important. I think a lot of the Muslim community embraced the show because it's really fun and it's really cool to see a character like her
01:33:02
Speaker
in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's going to be fun to see her in other movies and other TV shows. And I think the coolest thing about the show is just how much character you get, not just from her, but from all the characters.
01:33:20
Speaker
you know, but we didn't even talk about like, there's a lot that's going on with Bruno, everybody has like, stuff going on. And I think it really does capture a lot of that early kind of Spider-Man, Peter Parker vibe of, oh, this is like a person who just happened to get these powers and is kind of like working through the experiences there. And I really think it's one of my favorites, you know,
01:33:43
Speaker
you know, I recognize so much of my own community in the show. And it's really, really fun to kind of see that and to be able to kind of say, oh, okay, I get this reference, I understand. Like she has this conversation about Bollywood movies. I'm not the biggest Bollywood fan, but I know the movies that she's referencing. My wife recognizes a ton of the songs that are in the background. And I think it opened up the world of Marvel to a number of people
01:34:13
Speaker
that probably wouldn't have thought about Marvel as a place where they could see stories of themselves, and I hope that continues. I know there's been some pushback about She-Hulk and some of the other shows that are going to come out, but I really think there's a lot of value
Marvel's Cultural Influence and Listener Engagement
01:34:28
Speaker
in this story and in this show. And I see myself rewatching this with my son and maybe with some other family members and really sharing it as kind of a fun celebration of our place and kind of the American diaspora. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking that too. When my kids get older, this is definitely something I want them to see. This might be one of their first ways to get into the MCU is through something like this.
01:34:58
Speaker
And as for the negative reaction, I think most of that is just, it's just very loud trolls. I think Marvel smartly knows not to listen to them because they've proven so far that
01:35:10
Speaker
they're not really paying attention. Like that'll really kind of started with Captain Marvel when that came out. And instead of getting cold feet on anything, Marvel almost seems to be doubling down. So I think they're definitely, and they're smart enough to know what kind of response they're getting from real people as opposed to just like, you know, a bunch of loud trolls and sock puppet accounts.
01:35:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's one thing to really to pay close attention to is part of the reason Marvel has become so popular is because it's not just, you know, boys that are watching these shows. It's not just, you know, it's young ladies.
01:35:49
Speaker
uh pretty much and everybody who's interested in kind of having a fun time with superheroes uh they can watch these shows and they can enjoy them so i think it's really you know that speaks to the power of these original stories and what a broad appeal they can actually have well i mean i think and marvel has always kind of been like that they've always been kind of like on the cutting edge of you know the cultural boundaries even back in the 60s i mean we look at some of those stories now and they're they're
01:36:15
Speaker
They're kind of cringy. They don't age well, but at the time they were very progressive. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, we sometimes forget that because those stories have now become kind of like old hat, but they're still for the time period, they are very cutting edge. And this is part of what makes the brand really strong and popular. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Sai, thanks so much for coming on again. Do you want to tell people where they can find you?
01:36:43
Speaker
Sure. You can find me on Twitter at IOSIIslam. You can find our book, Leaders Assemble Leadership in the Marvel Cinematic Universe on Amazon. You can go to tinyurl.com backslash Amazon MCU and it'll take you right there. And you can always reach out to me on Twitter is probably the best place to find me.
01:37:08
Speaker
uh and i love talking about this stuff love talking about leadership and and you know marvel comics and dc too if you if you really want to i'm a zach snider defender so uh you know that that's my dirty secret so uh feel free to reach out to me and you can tweet at me about that if you want uh well we're not we won't hold it against you
01:37:32
Speaker
No, no, they're like, I've, you know, as long as you're not an asshole about it, which you're not, um, Anthony Desiata who's been on a few episodes now, he's not either. So as long as you're not an asshole about it, I've got no problem with you. I disagree completely about it, but I don't understand it, but you know, you do you type of thing. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not invested in getting, getting anything restored. So, you know, I got a kid at home. I got other things I got to do. Yeah.
01:37:58
Speaker
But thanks again for coming on. You're always welcome back and all those links and stuff will be in the show notes if you couldn't quite catch them so you can just go click on them as well. But that does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles. Superherocinephiles.com is the website, SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram.
01:38:14
Speaker
And remember, if you subscribe to the Patreon, you get these episodes a week in advance and you also get access to the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club companion podcast. We talk about comics, graphic novels, all that fun stuff. Thanks so much for listening and we will talk to you next time.
01:38:31
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points.
01:38:52
Speaker
If you're interested in reading some comics but don't know where you should start, plus you'll get access to all episodes of the main show a week before everyone else. On all of this for as little as just a dollar a month, all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash SuperCinemaPod and you can sign up at any subscription amount to get started. Thanks so much for your support and please don't forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get podcasts.
01:39:35
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.