In a strange twist of art imitating life imitating art, there’s a new Ms. Marvel comic book out written by none other than Ms. Marvel herself: Iman Vellani. The young actress said the idea for the issue came to her in a dream. A Billy Joel-inspired dream.
Marvel Entertainment shared a clip of Vellani talking about how it all came about.
“The whole comic came to me in a dream. I was listening to Billy Joel’s ‘River of Dreams’ and I was like ‘there’s too many dreams, we HAVE to do dreams now.'”
Writer Sabir Pirzada said the first part of the story is a “surreal dream experience where Kamala wakes up in the egg she’s resurrected in.” She then keeps reliving that moment “over and over again.”
Pirzada said a lot of the visuals in the comic originated with Vellani herself, and illustrate her visual voice. “She just knew that using dreams as a structure opens up so many wonderful artistic possibilities,” he said.
Vellani showed up at the Ontario comic book shop Heroes World on Wednesday to sign copies of the new comic. She was a regular customer of the shop when she was younger, and she stayed and signed copies of it for everyone who came to meet her.
Shop owner Andre Greenidge said that Vellani was “genuinely the real deal, she’s a sweetheart, she’s smart, she really loves comic books. I hope the people at Marvel recognise this, I hope Marvel uses her for comics and literary outreach, for representation, for getting young people into comic books.”
We’ll next see Vellani in the upcoming Captain Marvel sequel The Marvels on Nov. 10 in theaters.
Published: Aug 30, 2023 08:23 pm