Comic Vine Review

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Ms. Marvel #16 - Last Days Part One

4

Sometimes it feels like the world’s ending after your first bout of heartbreak. Sometimes that’s actually true.

The Good

Kamala Khan’s experienced her first real heartbreak at the hands of the villainous Kamran. Not only is he a super-villain, he’s a manipulative jerk on top of that! There’s little time to ruminate on the whys and wherefores of the heart as a massive planet appears in the sky and order quickly breaks down in New Jersey...moreso. G. Willow Wilson’s always effortlessly written Kamala and her cast of characters with an organic ease that makes them all sound like real people. That’s right: she’s even got the dialect of them kids and their parents. This issue is a fantastic example of that as Wilson shows us how the rest of the city is reacting, and it’s not all doom, gloom and the worst of humanity! There are also some heartbreaking moments when the catastrophe is mistaken for something else that hit a very specific time and moment, particularly for a family like Kamala’s.

Adrian Alphona returns on linework and does his usual amazing, ultra-stylized job that just drips with the heart and soul of what makes this book great: humanity. It’s amazing how Alphona manages to make every character look truly unique, even if they don’t all look strictly human (a stylistic, proportion choice much moreso than any kind of flaw) and that a great deal of subtle emotion is still communicated through everyone’s face and body features. Stylized books often lack that emotional core, but Alphona manages to thread the needle on making everything simultaneously far-out and grounded. Ian Herring’s colors do a lot in this department as well, being both bold, bright and yet with an air of sophistication that ensures that they don’t overwhelm the panel or the action. The smaller details of the characters are brought to the fore, and it’s another reason why this book has as emotional a core as it does.

The Bad

This is a story that feels at odds with itself at times. The Secret Wars tie-in nature of it means, of course the Incursion must happen, and it does, but the rest of the story proceeds much in the same way that it feels like it would have were it NOT happening. Right up until the end, that is. This felt like a MS. MARVEL issue that was rewritten to include a tie-in, and that may not be the case in reality, but the narrative feels like it was, making it fractured.

The Verdict

The end of this issue is enormously satisfying and the next issue’s preview cover is a great follow-up on it. There’s also a wonderful feeling of hope permeating the whole issue that’s very in keeping with the general tone of this book, and while the tie-in nature of it does overpower at times, it can’t keep the incredible skill that the creative team has put into it from coming to the fore. There are a lot of unanswered questions and dangling threads that likely won’t be resolved next issue, but it gives Ms. Marvel something to do after this whole Battleworld thing dies down and things return to some semblance of normalcy. And that gives fans something to look forward to!