Matt Meyer
Comics twitter broke itself nearly in half on Tuesday, when a leaked cover of the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man #26, as well with an interior page, seemed to indicate that the death of Ms. Marvel, one of Marvel’s few high-visibility POC characters (and certainly its only high-profile Muslim), was nigh. Alarm bells screamed near and far: seriously, Marvel?
The leaked cover in question.
Panic set in as, in a weak attempt to get out ahead of the calamity, tone-deaf Spider-editor Nick Lowe intrepidly tweeted: “ASM SPOILERS ARE OUT IN THE WORLD! If you don’t want to be spoiled on May 31st’s ending, AVOID THE INTERNET SOMEHOW!” Many were quick to point out that, in the lead up to this “someone’s gonna die” issue, Marvel has been pushing Mary Jane front and center as a misdirect – only to kill a POC character who barely has anything to do with the book itself. Sure, she’s been a supporting character – with maybe ten lines of dialogue this volume and a Dark Web two-parter tie-in that nobody cared about, because nobody cared about Dark Web except to cheer when it ended – was an incredibly brain-damaged idea.
Behold! A man covering his ass!
Naturally, a more official, full-court PR offensive quickly took place, and Marvel released the exclusive to Entertainment Weekly, confirming everyone’s worst fears: that Kamala Khan would soon join the innumerable ranks of comic book characters who have died.
Well, “died,” because death is never permanent in comics – and at Marvel, it’s a gimmick more than anything else. As Marvel’s publishing side has become increasingly, inextricably informed by its film side as the MCU’s bonafide Disney-stamped billions roll in, there’s been more and more corporate synergy between the two divisions – and with The Marvels due this November, Marvel’s playbook is painfully transparent: reap the short-term hype benefits of “shockingly” killing Kamala, only to resurrect her just before the movie comes out with a hot new first issue. Is that cynical? Maybe. And in total fairness: it’s just conjecture at this point. But Marvel hasn’t exactly been shy about these sorts of short-term gains over the recent years, either.
Guess who’s almost certainly getting a shiny new #1 this fall? Oh, and the current volume of Captain Marvel ends next month, too.
What’s sad is, though, it comes at the expense of Ms. Marvel, a bright, funny, nuanced REAL woman of color who gets to die in the cishet white guy’s comic for whom she is a glorified occasional guest-star. Yes, there are plenty of highly predictable trolls celebrating her demise (“Maybe Riri [Williams] will be next!” one bellowed from behind the safety of his keyboard), but the move feels particularly gross, misogynistic, and racist because of the sheer, tone-deaf crassness of it. Writer Zeb Wells, whose current run of Amazing Spider-Man has been met with extremely mixed reviews, has (wisely) remained mum since the leak blew the big surprise; Marvel’s PR department had in fact been firing on all cylinders to convince the world that, on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane would be next. Too bad for readers it was something far more devious, short-sighted, and driven by capitalistic greed.