- “Embiggen!”
- ―Ms. Marvel's catchphrase[src]
Ms. Marvel (real name Kamala Khan) is a fictional superhero from Marvel Comics. Ms. Marvel made her debut outside of the comic books on Avengers Assemble. She appears in the animated film Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors
Kamala Khan is a high school student with latent Inhuman DNA. Upon coming into contact with the Terrigen Mist, she became imbued with Inhuman abilities, which she used to become a superhero. She took her codename after her favorite superhero, Captain Marvel.
Background
Personality
Kamala Khan is a shy and unassuming high school student in most circumstances. When among friends, she displays a more energetic and playful side to her personality. Kamala is also a major fangirl, and some of her favorite hobbies include video games, comics, and fan fiction, especially about her favorite superheroes. As she morphs into her role as a superhero, Ms. Marvel becomes more vocal and self-confident, slowly accepting herself for everything she is. At the end of the day, all Kamala wants is a chance to be a hero, and while Captain America points out she has a way to go, her passion, energy, and strong moral compass make Ms. Marvel great hero material.
Physical appearance
Like most comic book characters, Kamala Khan's exact physical form will vary from artist to artist, but more often than not, she is a slender and petite teenage girl of Pakistani descent with medium brown skin, dark brown eyes and shoulder-length darker brown hair. However, her shapeshifting powers allow her to take on a number of variations to this, mostly enlarging or shrinking her body or certain parts of it. In Avengers Assemble, her civilian outfit consists of a blue and white sweatshirt with a yellow lightning bolt, blue jeans and brown sneakers.
Ms. Marvel's superhero costume is a modified blue and red burkini with a yellow lightning bolt across it not dissimilar to the one on her sweatshirt, a long red scarf, blue boots, a blue domino mask, and a set of golden bangles on her left arm.
Powers and abilities
Since Kamala is a human with latent Inhuman heritage whose powers were activated by the Terrigen Bomb, causing her to become a polymorph,which grants her the following abilities:
- Shapeshifting: Kamala's most prominent power is her ability to stretch, expand, contract, shrink, enlarge, or compress any part of her body into any shape or size the situation demands of her, such as enlarging her hands to spank a villain or effectively changing herself into a living grappling hook to rescue Captain America and Iron Man. She also gains the proportionate strength, speed, durability, and agility of what whatever shape or size she is in.
- Size Alteration: Kamala can through unknown means, adjust her height and stature adding upon her already impressive physical abilities. Either shrinking to the size of an action figure to growing as tall as a building structure, such as Skyscrapers and Mansions.
- Accelerated Healing Factor: Kamala can heal very quickly when injured. She simply brushed off Inferno's fire, which under normal circumstances would have left a lasting burn mark. However, the more she heals, the less access she has to her polymorph abilities, so she has to return to her true form to recover completely.
Weaknesses
- Electricity: Electric shocks weaken her body's elasticity.
- Healing Factor: Kamala can only heal her injuries when in her true form, leaving her vulnerable as she heals. In addition, the more she heals, the less malleable her cells become, and as a result she must be careful with this power.
Appearances
Marvel Animation
Avengers Assemble
Ms. Marvel debuts in the second season Avengers Ultron Revolution. In order to foil Ultron's plan to kill every human on Earth with a doomsday device powered by Black Bolt's voice, Black Widow inserted a Terrigen Crystal into the energy source, changed the death ray into a a Terrigen Mist dispersal unit. When Black Bolt screamed, he activated the process, and released the Terrigen Mist worldwide. Every human with latent Inhuman DNA were affected by the Mist, undergoing Terrigenesis. That same night, Kamala Khan was out for an evening walk. The Terrigen Mist descended upon Jersey City and she became among the affected.
When she emerged from her Terrigenesis, she discovered that she had gained shape-shifting abilities. She soon met Inferno, who told her about her Inhuman DNA. Shocked but excited by their new powers, the two teenagers decided to use them to become heroes. Kamala adopted the code name "Ms. Marvel". Inferno soon contacted her again when he discovered a stray robot created by Ultron that was not destroyed during the fight in Attilan. Ms. Marvel was astounded to also find Captain America and Iron Man also fighting the robot. Despite his discomfort with how young the new heroes were, Captain America admired their "moxie" and invited them on a tour of Avengers Tower. Ms. Marvel was exuberant to meet some of her greatest heroes. However, the tower was soon after invaded by Ghost, an enemy of Iron Man's who had also gained powers from the Terrigen wave. Ghost quickly incapacitated and abducted the other Avengers, stole Captain America's shield and Iron Man's armor, jammed every signal in the tower, and sent the roof caving in. The teenagers saved the older heroes but Ghost soon found them again, abducted Inferno and stole Friday, Iron Man's advanced AI system. Now that he had what he came for, Ghost released his hostages and used his powers to phase the ground underneath the tower to bury the heroes alive. Fortunately, Inferno was able to turn himself into a human rocket engine, overcoming gravity and bringing to tower back up. Meanwhile, Ms. Marvel was able to rush Iron Man back to his lab to engineer a way to block Ghost's powers. With the tower back online, Ms. Marvel defeated Ghost for good by repeatedly slapping him with her enlarged hands. Friday was returned to the Avengers, and just as the teens were about to go home, Iron Man admitted that the pair had earned his respect. Captain America told them that they had the potential to be Avengers someday, and gladly took a selfie with them.
After disaster in the Inhuman city of Attilan spilled into the human world, Truman Marsh, a bureaucrat for the United States government, proposed that for the common safety, all Inhumans should be registered. The Avengers disagreed with setting up such a system, and disassembled, severing their ties to the government. In their place, Marsh recruited new heroes to form the Mighty Avengers. The new team included Kamala, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, the Vision, Ant-Man, Red Hulk, and Songbird, though they were uneasy about the ethics of such a thing. Before it could be debated any further, Marsh sent them to stop Baron von Strucker. They did so, but not without help from Black Widow and Iron Man. The Mighty Avengers criticized the original team, calling them "vigilantes" and "renegades". Later, Marsh sent them to intercept three runaway Inhumans: Haechi, Flint, and Iso. They were met by the Avengers, who had come to warn the teenagers of the raid. As a result, a brawl broke out between the two teams. Ms. Marvel was able to hold her own against the Hulk. Ultimately, the battle ended in the favor of the Mighty Avengers when Captain America was wounded and his allies, now including Songbird, were taken into custody, with the exception of Black Widow, who managed to escape.
Soon after, it became apparent that the Inhuman registry had never been intended to protect people; in fact, any registered Inhuman became a target of mind control. Marsh attempted to force Ms. Marvel to register, despite the fact she had already vowed her loyalty to him and the United States government. Horrified, the older heroes on the Mighty Avengers decided this was the last straw. While the girl went into hiding, her teammates quit working for Marsh and sought out the other Avengers team, now also joined by Medusa and Black Bolt. Unfortunately, Ms. Marvel was caught and and was placed under Marsh's control. Forced to fight her heroes, Ms. Marvel came close to beating them, but they defeated her and restored her to normal. She and all the other Avengers returned to Avengers Tower, only to find Marsh there waiting. She nearly retched when she sees Marsh morph into Ultron. The real Truman Marsh was long dead and Ultron had been manipulating everyone all along, and declared he was finally ready to take over the world.
The Mighty Avengers and the Avengers worked together against Ultron and his army of sentries and mind-controlled Inhumans. Ms. Marvel traveled across the globe to help the other Avengers fight the sentries in China before being summoned to stop Ultron at the source. Kamala put up a good fight against Ultron, but her efforts were in vain. With help from Doctor Strange, Iron Man sacrificed himself to stop Ultron. While mourning their friend's "death", Kamala was formally invited to join the new Avengers and helped Red Hulk with cleanup from the fight.
Avengers: Secret Wars
Some time later, Ms. Marvel was summoned to the Avengers Compound, along with Ant-Man, Wasp, and Captain Marvel. There, they met with Black Panther and Vision, who requested their help in fighting off Skurge. Black Panther explained that Captain America, Black Widow, Falcon, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Thor had been abducted by the Leader and his new Cabal, which consisted of Skurge, Enchantress, Arnim Zola, and Kang the Conqueror. Fortunately, Panther escaped with a container of Vibranium, which the Leader required to complete a ray he planned to test on the Avengers. Soon after, the Enchantress arrived, retrieving Skurge, stealing the Vibranium, destroying the compound, and leaving the heroes to die inside. The heroes escaped, but Kamala was horrified to see the Compound in ruins and fretted over the hopelessness of the situation. The older heroes reassured the girl, and caught up to the Leader's ship to rescue the Avengers. However, the heroes were as shocked as the Leader was to learn that "his" Cabal had been manipulating him all along and abandoned him along with the heroes. Before vanishing with the rest of the Cabal, Arnim Zola activated the cannon, and despite their best efforts, the heroes were powerless to stop the ray. Ms. Marvel was in tears as she watched her heroes disappear, but she soon had more pressing problems when Vision calculated that the ship was about to crash into the city below. While Captain Marvel took control of the carrier, Ms. Marvel and the others evacuated to Black Panther's jet. The group reassembled at the Wakandan Embassy, where they met with Dr. Jane Foster, a Stark Industries scientist. Convinced that the Avengers were alive, she informed the new team that she would do everything in her power to find them.
Marvel Cinematic Universe
As reported by Kevin Feige, Kamala Khan is set to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, sometime following the release of Captain Marvel.[1]
Gallery
Trivia
- Kamala is the first openly religious character to appear on a Marvel animated show, not including Thor, and the first Muslim character to appear in Disney TV Animated production since Radika Zamin on The Proud Family in 2004.
- In her debut episode, Ms. Marvel has a habit of yelling "EMBIGGEN!!" when using her size-shifting powers. This comes directly from the comics, where Kamala used vocal commands with her powers when she first got them and was trying to understand how they worked. While saying it has no effect on her powers, she continues to do so out of habit.
- "Kamala" is derived from the Arabic word kamal, meaning "perfection". She was given this name because it was thought her mother could not have any more children before conceiving Kamala.
- The golden bangles that Kamala wears in her Ms. Marvel costume are a family heirloom in the comic books. They were originally part of her great-grandmother's wedding dowry. They were given to Kamala's mother Muneeba as a farewell gift before she and her family immigrated to the United States, and eventually she passed them down to her daughter, Kamala.
- In the comic, Kamala is a student enrolled at Coles Academic High School in Jersey City.
References
Template:Marvel Animated Universe
