Last year, Marvel Comics came under fire for killing Ms. Marvel in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #26. The issue was hyped up to be as impactful as the death of Gwen Stacy in 1972's Amazing Spider-Man #121; instead, Kamala Khan was almost immediately resurrected.
Upon her return, the Inhuman had been reborn as a mutant. This brought her in line with the version played by Iman Vellani in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and allowed Marvel Comics to move further away from Ike Perlmutter's failed initiative to replace mutants with Inhumans.
Appearing on the Amazing Spider Talk podcast, Miles Morales: Spider-Man writer Cody Ziglar said, "[Zeb Wells] had told me months before the plan, which was, [Kevin] Feige was like, 'Hey, I don’t do this very often but, can you please do this to make things in line with Marvel because we have some stuff we want to do with Kamala.'"
"So [Wells] was like, 'F*ck, I’m the guy that drew the short straw? People are going to be very mad that I have to kill Ms. Marvel.'"
People were indeed mad, but this makes sense seeing as Wells has strong ties to Marvel Studios. He wrote an episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, was an uncredited co-writer on The Marvels, contributed to Deadpool & Wolverine's screenplay, and is Marvel Zombies' Head Writer.
However, since the news broke, a Marvel Comics spokesperson has "flatly denied that this was the case" to io9. They also "[described] the decision to make Kamala a mutant character - a focus she’ll continue as part of the X-Men line's 2024 relaunch, From the Ashes - as an explicitly editorial decision, one in the making well before the events of Amazing Spider-Man #26."
"Marvel Studios also denied that Feige was involved in the decision in a comment provided to io9 over email."
Comic books have long made moves to bring the comics more in line with the movies. When Spider-Man was released in 2002, for example, Peter Parler suddenly found himself with organic webbing on the page as well as in theaters.
Then again it's no secret that Feige now has input across Marvel as a whole, so there's chance he did indeed push for this divisive change.
Ultimately, the biggest misstep made here was having Ms. Marvel die in another character's comic book at the hands of a D-List villain we'd bet most of you can't even remember the name of (it was the Emissary, FYI).
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