It inevitably happens to every long-running series and Volume 7: Damage Per Second is unfortunately where Ms Marvel’s quality falls down. And it falls HARD - this is the lamest thing I’ve read in a long time!
The first issue is literally Ms Marvel lecturing the reader on how and why they should vote. I couldn’t believe how tedious and preachy it was. You know what I look for when I pick up a superhero comic? To be talked down to like an idiot!
The main story though? Wow. Just: wow. The cringe is strong with this one!
A literal internet troll is the villain. Why is the internet troll bad? Because its behaviour is reflective of the internet – yes, the whole internet! So what does the Big Bad do that’s so big and bad? He blackmails Kamala into uploading him onto SHIELD’s database or – duh duh duuuuuhh! – he’ll tell the whole school that her friend has a crush on her other friend and she’ll be SOOOO embarrassed!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! When the fuck did Ms Marvel get so pathetic?! Ah, da heck with it, I can’t fully mock this turd without spoilers so: SPOILERS!
G. Willow Wilson’s writing gets significantly more awkward and unconvincing the more she tries to work within the confines of tech which I’m gonna go out on a limb and say is a field she knows little-to-nothing about. Like how Kamala takes the train out to a place a few miles out of Jersey City, thinking physical proximity will stop the troll from hacking her phone or something – even though she calls him on her phone to tell him that?! Do ya see the problem there, Kams?? And how exactly is the computer virus able to “download” itself into actual human bodies and control them??
In a faceplant-diculous kumbaya moment, Kamala decides that to defeat the troll, she must make the internet nice so that its personality will change from evil to good – yes, the whole internet! Which she does by going into her World of Warcraft game and handing some randos some virtual treasure, hoping they’ll pay it forward and that THIS WILL CAUSE A CHAIN REACTION AND AFFECT THE WHOLE INTERNET! It’s madness – BUT IT WORKS WHAAAA?>!!!! God it’s so stupid.
And I’m sure someone might be thinking, well, at least it’s a non-cynical way of viewing the world. Except, ironically, the premise itself is completely cynical: the whole internet – without Kamala’s intervention – is a one-sided cesspool of negativity? Fuck you, G. Willow Wilson, you condescending moron. Yeah, obviously there’s a lot of nastiness out there, but there’s a helluva lot of good out there too. How many relationships have sprung out of the internet? How many people literally owe their lives today without the internet bringing those people together? I can’t even begin to list the amount of good the internet has done to balance out the evil, but then I’m looking at it objectively rather than present a one-sided view of things. This being the first post-election Ms Marvel book is quite telling - I think Trump really messed up Wilson and her editor Sana Amanat!
The book closes out with a boring issue starring Kamala’s love interest Bruno who gets up to some utterly pointless hijinks in Wakanda because the Marvel Universe revolves around Wakanda these days.
I’ll give Ms Marvel, Volume 7: Damage Per Second two stars for Mirka Andolfo and Takeshi Miyazawa’s fantastic manga-fusion art but Wilson’s writing and storytelling is both poorly conceived and plain bewildering. An unfortunately laughable addition to an otherwise quality series.
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