Kamala Khan is just an ordinary, adorkable American teenager from Jersey City, who loves comics and writing fan fiction…until she discovers that she herself has inhuman genes which give her superhuman powers! She’s a shapeshifter in scale, who can stretch her arms and legs and change her size. With this discovery Ms Marvel is born, and Kamala’s ordinary life becomes an adventure.
Kamala came on the scene around the same time my daughter Zoeya took an interest in comics – and she is the perfect role model. Created by Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker, incredibly well-written by G. Willow Wilson and brought to life by artist Adrian Alphona, she’s the first Muslim to headline a Marvel comic, and a first generation Pakistani American. In addition, Kamala is nerdy and spastic and smart and goodhearted and powerful, a complex heroine that little girls like Zoeya can aspire to.
I had a lot of fun collaborating with Jamie from The Comic Vault to come up with this menu for his Comic Kitchen series in which he imagines three course meals inspired by characters. I had a lot of ideas around typical Pakistani dishes, and his thought was to combine that with food your typical American teenager would be into. So here we have a samosa starter with cute little lightning bolts, a main course of shami kebab burgers with cheese and shiitake bacon (no pork! That “delicious, delicious infidel meat”) with pakora fries, and a dessert of jalebi, a Pakistani street food as polymorphous as Ms Marvel’s stretchy arms and fists.
Bismillah ir rahman ir rahim, enjoy!
MS MARVEL MENU
See more of the The Comic Vault’s Comic Kitchen
Photo credit: Jonathan Hartzell