The size of the fight in the girl: Violent girlhood in Ms. Marvel

Abstract

The rise of girl protagonists in superhero comics creates a dilemma, since violent girlhood is surrounded by cultural anxieties, yet super-girls are expected to engage in violence. One of the most popular super-girls of this century, Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, embodies this ambivalence in the fraught intersection of girlhood, racialization, and physical violence. This article investigates the affective economies and haptic line work of the Ms. Marvel series with the aim of discussing the visual strategies used to explore violent girlhood: pauses, lines of orientation, color work, and cuteness as a visual mood.