Ms. Marvel #23 Review

Writer: G. Willow Wilson / Artist: Diego Olortegui, Ian Herring / Marvel Comics Top of the arc! Hello Kamala Korps members, we’re back again with a new arc, Northeast Corridor. Wilson welcomes a new artist, Diego Olortegui, best known around Marvel for his work on Slapstick!, along with the return of the ever-reliable Ian Herring on colors. So the pages look familiar at first glance, but the details are shifted. For longtime readers, I may take a little getting used to. However, Olortegui’s grasp of Ms. Marvel’s powerset, her growing/shrinking/bendyness, is so strong it won’t bother you once you’re used to it. He does a great job of manipulating the back and foreground so she moves seamlessly from normal sized to large to gigantic and back. Nice work, Olortegui! Plotwise, Ms. Marvel has vanquished another adversary and is ready to settle back down into being the local superhero in Jersey City. Well, except for a creeping self-doubt that she has failed her friends and the fear that they will fail her. You know, typical high school stuff. But her teen angst is doubled by this:

Yeah, Bruno ain’t coming back to Jersey City. He’s settling down in Wakanda to do science. Let’s be honest, I haven’t been to Jersey City, but I’d pick Wakanda every time. What’s our girl going to do now? Run into her non-cousin Kareem, who’s in town as an exchange student. You’ll remember Kareem from issue #12, the issue after Civil War II where Kamala spends a month with her family in Karachi, Pakista…