As soon as we started reading Ms. Marvel, I thought about about how I can analyze the comic, or its specific part. To be honest, I had no idea what I was going to. It all changed when we had the option to draw. I always draw, and it is not artistic. It’s usually some random figures, creatures, and other things like that. It started when we did the drawing exercise in class, and I drew some rats. There was no reason for me to draw them, but I felt the need to draw them. Anyways, that is how much project started.
The following class, I attempted to draw Kamala, and to my surprise, it actually came out half-way decent. At this point, I had the rats, Kamala, and that weird porcupine thing that is fun to draw ( I drew 4 of them in a row). Drawing was challenging, especially close-ups and faces, but overall not as difficult as I thought. The hard part was putting it all together. It took me a long time to come up with a dialogue, and the placement of images. Gluing them together was easy, but I had to replace the drawings a couple of times.
My target audience are the people who have read the comic. The reason behind it is that people need to understand what is going on in the comic, things like reoccurring themes such as identity crisis specifically. My project is an extension of the scene where she hides from Zoe, and sees the roach. In my scene, Kamala meets a rat, that is cute at first, but then turns into a dragon/alien rat. I’d like to call it a Dralian (trademark pending). She sees that the Dralien is about to eat her, so she will use her powers to defend herself. At first, she turns into the white Ms. Marvel, which she never wanted to be at first. Then, she turns into herself, and the Dralien morphs back into a rat.
What I am trying to illustrate is how Kamala’s powers are by controlled by her emotions, and that she can only turn into her version of Ms. Marvel only when she feels comfortable in her skin. At first, the rat was not scared. Maybe because it was not the first time encountering Ms. Marvel, but it was the first time that he saw Kamala as Ms. Marvel, and he was scared. He was scared because Kamala brought a new look, and attitude to the superhero gang. Throughout the comic, Kamala wants to be like other kids, so she is trying to fit in by doing things that her parents do not approve of. She does not realize that she should be proud of who she is,her culture, and that she is powerful when she feels confident.
If I had another week, I would work more on the drawings. I am not that skilled, so it takes me longer to come up with something good. It is easy to draw characters, but it is hard to draw everything else. I would take my time and focused on the backgrounds. I would also extend the scene, add more dialogue and more panels. I was going for humorous/serious emotional impact. Kamala is very sarcastic, so I tried keeping it that way, but I also wanted the audience to learn from this. The message here is simple- be yourself. If you try ti imitate others while forgetting where you came from, you will lose the uniqueness. We are who we are, and we need to embrace it. We need to live it, and be proud. Nobody wants to see bunch of Zoes and her friends everywhere.