Marvel Comics Writer Reveals Kamala Khan Was Killed Off In ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ Because MCU Boss Kevin Feige Wanted Her Character Brought “In Line” With Her Live-Action Incarnation
[UPDATE: On April 26th, a Marvel Comics spokesperson denied Ziglar’s story, telling Gizmodo that “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— [was] as an explicitly editorial decision, one in the making well before the events of Amazing Spider-Man #26.”
In a separate statement to Gizmodo, Marvel Studios also denied that Feige was involved in the decision to retcon Kamala’s origins.
UPDATE #2: This article originally and incorrectly attributed the joke about creating ‘50,000 enemies’ to Ziglar rather than Gvozden, who actually made the quip. The error has since been corrected.
The original story follows below.]
As if the entire story beat wasn’t already insulting enough to fans’ intelligence, Marvel Comics writer Cody Ziglar has revealed that the decision to hamfistedly kill off Kamala Khan in the current volume of Amazing Spider-Man was made at the specific request of MCU boss Kevin Feige, who at the time was reportedly hoping to foster synergy between the heroine’s comic book and live-action incarnations.
After appearing in just 14 pages of author Zeb Wells’ then-646-page-long run on the wall-crawler’s core title (in case one was wondering just how abrupt and poorly-thought out this development truly was), the young Ms. Marvel met her ‘end’ in Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 6 #26.
Therein, after Mary-Jane finds herself the target of The Emissary – an original villain created by Wells who seeks to merge himself with the ancient Mayan god of Mischief, Wayeb – the young Khamala attempts to divert the mad man’s attention towards herself by using her powers to take-on the appearance of Spidey’s red-headed ally.
Tragically, though she is successful in tricking The Emissary into attacking her instead of Mary-Jane, Kamala is shortly thereafter caught unawares by her zealous foe, at which point their chase is ultimately brought to an end after he drives a blade clean through her chest.
Unsurprisingly, between the abruptness of her death and the aforementioned fact that Kamala had barely even appeared in Amazing Spider-Man before she met her end within its pages, this development was met with widespread rejection from the title’s readers, many of whom took this move as yet further proof that Wells had no business writing the wall-crawler.
However, it now appears that the fan vitriol leveled towards Wells over this story beat may have been misplaced, as according to his fellow Amazing Spider-Man writer Cody Ziglar, it was not Wells who wanted to kill off Kamala, but rather Marvel Cinematic Universe boss – and current Marvel Comics Chief Creative Officer – Kevin Feige.
(But let’s be clear: There still remains no forgiveness for his own terrible creative choices on the book, including yet-again-breaking-up of Peter and Mary-Jane and completely bastardizing Ben Reilly’s character).
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Reflecting on his stint writing the web-head’s main book during an April 15th appearance on the Amazing Spider-Talk podcast – during which time he penned Ben Reilly’s final adventures as a hero before he was character-assassinated and turned into Chasm by Wells – in response to host Dan Gvozden’s joking “the fastest way to create 50,000 enemies is to be the leader writer of Amazing Spider-Man,” Ziglar opined, “you know, I think Zeb [Wells] is probably going through it right now himself.”
[Time Stamp: 16:59]
His attentions turned to his successor’s work on the title, Ziglar then recalled to show Gvozden, “It was funny watching when the whole Kamala stuff was going down and like, he had told me months before what the plan was, which was, [Kevin] Feige was like, ‘Hey, I don’t do this very often, but can you please just like, do this to make things in line with [the MCU]because we have some stuff we want to do with Kamala’.”
Per the live-action Ms. Marvel series and her subsequent comic book adventures, the plans Feige and Marvel held for Kamala’s character would eventually see her first revealed as the MCU’s debut Mutant before later being retconned into a full-blown mutant in the comics.
“So [Wells] is like, ‘F–k, I’m the guy who drew the short straw? People are going to be very mad that I have to kill Ms. Marvel,'” the current Miles Morales: Spider-Man writer continued. “I felt bad for him because people didn’t know that like, she’s gonna ‘die’ – it’s comic books, she’s gonna be back of course – but when she dies and comes back, THE Ms. Marvel [her MCU actress Iman Ellani] is going to be writing her. “
Closing out his anecdote, Ziglar playfully laughed to Gvozden, “I was like, ‘Yeah that sucks for you, I’m glad I don’t have to do that.”
“But it was fun,” he added, “it was funny watching him get savaged online knowing that he’s sort of the guy that had to answer the call of ‘Daddy Feige’ to make this sacrifice.”
At current, Wells’ run on Amazing Spider-Man remains ongoing – but trust me when I say it is not worth checking out, even for mockery purposes.
NEXT: Ms. Marvel Season Finale Ditches Kamala Khan’s Inhuman Origin, Confirms Her Mutant DNA
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