I suspected Trump’s election broke G. Willow Wilson’s brain in the last Ms Marvel book – now I’m convinced it has! Ms Marvel has jumped (Trumped?) the shark – Volume 8: Mecca is so pants, I’m abandoning this title.
In the main story, Wilson indulges in the popular far-left fantasy where the normal rules of democracy have been suspended because Trump is a literal Nazi and America is now a fascist state. The New Jersey mayor has been replaced by a right-wing Nazi white supremacist demagogue (read: Hydra, because this is Marvel) whose self-appointed white Stormtroopers are rounding up Muslims, Inhumans and anyone else deemed not part of the “real” Jersey.
It’s an embarrassingly contrived setup for Wilson’s extremist liberal worldview - she doesn’t even attempt to explain why a democratically-elected mayor can be randomly ousted from office because that would reveal the absurdity of the situation! Predictably for someone with such a one-sided perspective, she’s completely unable to write the villains as anything but bland one-dimensional bad guys who aren’t in the least bit interesting. Her SS officer character, Discord, mumbles some crap about acceptance but it’s not at all convincing or remotely indicative of how a real person thinks – it’s shocking how lazy Wilson’s writing has gotten. You can imagine how the tediousness eventually plays out – such a bore.
The other story, where Ms Marvel teams up with Red Dagger to stop a runaway train, shows that Wilson knows as little about railways as she does about anyone right of the far left! Apparently in America if a train’s brakes fails, they keep other trains running on connecting tracks and hope for the best. And of course have no other safety measures! And Kamala suddenly has the strength to literally lift a speeding train off the tracks and reattach it seamlessly onto a parallel track. And fuse two tracks into one. And lift up one carriage to slow down the others. If you’re gonna be that silly about it, why not just give her a magic wand to wave?
Red Dagger is a mostly pointless addition. He cuts a rope with a knife and then stands back gawping the rest of the time. How does Kamala not put two and two together – she’s amazed he’s here in America after first encountering him in Pakistan, when just a couple pages earlier she met Kareem, who she also met in Pakistan who just happens to have started at her school??? How does she not know it’s him anyway – his scarf barely covers his face! Ditto her mask – why doesn’t everyone, especially her brother, clock that Kamala is Ms Marvel?! There’s suspension of disbelief and there’s this book.
Ms Marvel was a great series once upon a time but the stories and writing have devolved significantly of late and the focus and tone has become far too politically driven for my taste. I’m sure like-minded readers will love her confirming their biases in their collective echo chamber but I’m done with this childish, propagandist, far left dogma. Nice knowing you Kamala, it was fun while it lasted!
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