The Supporting Cast Trembles Before the New Creative Team

We're a couple of months out from Saladin Ahmed and Minkyu Jing taking over as the creative team for Ms. Marvel, with a new #1 issue, naturally. This week I started wondering what'll happen with Kamala's supporting cast.

I think she has a pretty good supporting cast, between her parents, her brothers, her sister-in-law's family, her various friends at school (Nakia, Mike, Zoe), and Bruno, of course. Granted I got annoyed with G. Willow Wilson for not making more use of them. Sometimes because she set up something as a possible plot thread, then never explored it. She never did much with the revelation Kamala's mother knows she's Ms. Marvel, and I still don't know if Kamala's dad knows or not. Mostly it's just a matter of pacing. With almost every story taking 4 months minimum, if you go a couple of stories without seeing Zoe or Aamir at all, it just seems abrupt when they suddenly pop up in the next arc and are relevant. Have something going with them in the background that helps them feel like characters that have their own lives going on independent of whatever Ms. Marvel is mixed up in that week.

(I could be convinced that, because we're mostly tagging along with Kamala, us not being aware of what's happening with Nakia or whoever while she's not around is part of a larger theme of Kamala being disconnected from the important people in her lives. But you could still show us what's going on so we see Kamala actually is missing out)

All griping aside, it's a good supporting cast. Mix of personalities, views, approaches. The frustration was because I liked them and wanted to see more going on with them. New creative teams often want to put their own stamp on things. Create their own supporting casts or favorite characters. Fabian Nicieza incorporated some of Gail Simone's supporting cast in Cable/Deadpool, but not everyone. Plus he brought Weasel back into play, and threw in Bob and Irene Merryweather. And then Daniel Way pitched them all down the garbage chute, and had largely no supporting cast (at least for the two years I bought the book). Then Gerry Duggan just made a whole new supporting cast (and killed most of them himself). Or how every writer who uses SHIELD usually comes up with at least one new SHIELD agent, who will then pop up in almost anything they write that involves SHIELD going forward. But it's entirely possible no one else will ever use them. Stuff like that.

So I wonder if we'll see a difference. I'm sure Ahmed will add new characters, and hopefully they're interesting. I wonder who might get the short end of the stick as a result, though. Wilson had brought Bruno back into play the last six months or so. Maybe Ahmed will move him more into the background, for more time for Nakia or Kamala's dad, or someone new entirely.