By Selwyn Duke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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