Bookish Thoughts

Alif the Unseen  is about a younger hacker in an unnamed Arab state. He begins the book with no real ideals. He helps people get around and hide from the censors in his country, and he's willing to sell this service to anyone who can pay. But when the censors start to come after him, he develops a conscience and ends up leveraging his online social network to help spark a revolution. It was published shortly before the Arab Spring. What started as science-fiction very quickly came true. It happens to all science-fiction, more or less, eventually. The great authors have an uncanny knack for predicting the trajectory of our culture. And that Wilson's predictions so quickly came to fruition speaks to her close involvement with this community. Of course, in her version of events the djinn are real and there's an element of magic to the code Alif writes. But the point stands that not everything in this book ended up being as far-fetched as it may have seemed while it was b...

Ms. Marvel continues to be a perfectly executed coming-of-age story. In this volume, Kamala finally has to confront the people in her life. She comes clean to her mom about her dual identity and she confronts the feelings between her and her friend Bruno. She also teams up with Captain Marvel to save her brother from her ex-crush. And it's all set against a backdrop of the end of the world, which gives Kamala the motivation to get a lot of this off of her chest while also providing a neat metaphor for the end of childhood. This was a pretty satisfying end, at least to Ms. Marvel's first main arch. And I think it is an end. Marvel recently revamped their entire universe. There is a Ms. Marvel Volume 5 available for pre-order on Amazon, but it starts back over at issue 1, which has me wondering how much of a reset we're looking at. Which is to say, that I'm not sure yet whether or not I'll continue with Ms. Marvel. I'll have to wait and see where the story pi...

In the third volume, Kamala deals with first love, first betrayal, and a sudden expansion to her world view. The first issue takes place at the Valentine's Day dance, which Bruno invites her to and Loki crashes. There's some really cute stuff about the disappointment of finding out that your best friend doesn't want to be romantically involved and how friendship isn't a zone to try and get out of, but a great thing in its own right. Then the book moves on to the bulk of the story, which introduces an old friend of Kamala's family. A good, smart, successful Pakistani boy they're trying to set her up with. And when he turns out to be just as geeky as Kamala and an Inhuman to boot, she starts to think this could be the future for her. Unfortunately he's part of a faction of Inhumans who would rather rule over the humans, who think their mutations make them better. This isn't a terribly novel story line, especially for anyone with even a passing familiarit...

The thing I love most about Ms. Marvel is that it takes a very common story and does it really well. There's nothing that unique about the bones of this arc. It's a fairly classic hero's journey mixed up with with a coming of age story. We've seen it time and time again. But this story hits each beat perfectly, and all the little details get a chance to really shine. The second volume is comprised of a 2-issue arc and a 4-issue arc, which are connected by the main bad guy. The Inventor is revealed at the end of the first volume, and now it's time for Kamala Khan to take him down. Along the way she meets up with Wolverine. When she's not fangirling all over him, she's busy saving both his ass and hers. Then the Inhumans send her a teleporting dog to help her out and she gets busy inspiring everyone to team up and take out the Inventor. She goes from wanting to do it herself, to realizing she can't and building a team to help her. The arc is starting t...

One of my favorite things about warmer weather is being able to spend a few lazy hours outside reading comic books. I'm not sure how or when I got it into my head that comic books are better enjoyed out in the sun, but it definitely stuck. Which puts me in a weird place where I hear about all these great comics and then wait forever until the weather is actually warm enough (for me) to read them. All this to say that I've been looking forward to  Ms. Marvel  for over a year, and I finally got around to it. I'd seen a few scenes online and read more than a few gushing essays about this or that aspect of the story. When you wait that long to read something, absorbing all the hype in the meantime, there's a very, very good chance that it will let you down. But  Ms. Marvel  didn't. It was exactly what I expected and wanted it to be. And there's something special and perfect about that. This is the story of a teenager who is already struggling with her identity w...