“No More Avengers”
One obvious thing about Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel is that she is a diehard Avengers fangirl. She grew up idolizing them, writing fan fiction about them, and dreaming of being like them, fighting villains and saving the world. But when the chance finally came and she became Ms. Marvel, joining Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, it was not what she dreamed of. The hardest truth for her was realizing that the heroes she idolized were not who she thought they were.
In Champions (2016) #1, written by Mark Waid with art by Humberto Ramos, Kamala quits the Avengers. Her choice did not come from anger, but from principle. She realized the system she once believed in was broken. Instead of just waiting for it to change, she decides to take the lead. With the help of Miles Morales (Spider-Man) and Sam Alexander (Nova), they forge a new path for a new generation.
At the beginning of the comic, we see them standing in the aftermath of yet another superhero battle. But they are not celebrating. They are disgusted. Surrounded by destroyed buildings and injured civilians, the hardest pill to swallow is that the Avengers do not seem to care. Instead, they fight each other, argue about methods, and treat innocent people as collateral damage.
“You see?” Kamala says to Miles. “You see what I’ve been saying? They just fight. They don’t think about who gets hurt. They don’t care.”
This moment serves as a catalyst for Kamala to realize the bitter truth: the Avengers, once her heroic role models, are fallible, flawed, and out of touch with the people they claim to protect.
This is the moment of awakening. For generations, the system has been presented as the only way. In this case, the Avengers represent the natural order of things. But Kamala sees through the illusion. She recognizes that the system is not functioning as intended, and more concerning, it is unable to even identify the problem.
Kamala then quit the Avengers and it obviously shocks everyone. Her father,friends and some of the heroes try to talk her out.”You can’t just leave,” they say. “You’re one of them now. You’re part of something bigger.”
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If this were the Kamala of the past, she might have relented and abandoned her plan, but this time she refused to back down, saying, “Being part of something bigger isn’t the same as being part of something better.”
She chose to create something new by recruiting Miles and Sam to form a new team. She named her team the Champions, because Kamala felt that they shared a vision of what heroism could be. They do not want to be the next Avengers. They want to be something entirely different.
This event serves as an interpretation of Bhabha’s concept of “Third Space.” The Third Space is a zone of cultural negotiation where new identities and possibilities emerge. It is neither the original home nor the adopted one, but something entirely new. The Champions are not the Avengers (the old system), but they are also not nothing. They represent a new space where Kamala and her team can define heroism on their own terms.
The team’s first mission is to rescue a group of young girls who are being trafficked by the villain Pagliacci. This mission is small-scale, far removed from the cosmic battles the Avengers usually fight. However, for Kamala, it is exactly the kind of mission that matters: helping real people rather than fighting gods and monsters.
After they succeed, Kamala delivers a speech which is filmed and shared widely on social media. Her words are simple yet powerful:
“We could be better than that. We have to start enforcing justice without unjust force… Help us not to take the easy way, and I promise we’ll fight every fight they throw at us. Help us win the hard way, the right way, not with hatred, not with revenge, but with wisdom and hope.”
The speech challenges the way the Avengers do things. It argues that heroism should be about caring for others, rather than about power. It asserts that protecting the vulnerable is more important than winning battles. It suggests there is another way.
Social media embraces them. People start calling them ‘Champions’, which is the name they adopt for their new team. Significantly, it is the people who name them, not the system. The name comes from the community they serve, not from any authority figure.
‘Champions’ is a Third Space because it exists in-between. It is not a copy of the Avengers. It does not reject heroism altogether. Rather, it is something new, born from the realization that the old way is broken and the refusal to accept that nothing can be done about it.
