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In 2023 Iman Vellani went from Marvel Studios actress to Marvel Comics writer. Vellani is known for playing Kamala Kahn in the MCU, but recently she’s been writing the character’s comic book adventures. This move came at an interesting time for the character, who had just been killed, revived, revealed to be a mutant, and joined the X-Men.

Speaking to a crowd at ACE Superhero Comic Con, Vellani geeked out about the possibility that her comics could potentially become MCU adaptations at some point. “Isn’t it the most powerful thing in the world to contribute to the source material? At some point, they’re going to run out of comics to use, and they’re going to get to mine,” Vellani gushed.

In fact, the actress informally pitched the idea to Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige. “I literally signed one for Kevin Feige and I was like, ‘Let me know if you need help adapting this.’ I shot my shot!”

According to Vellani, it was Sana Amanat’s idea to get her on a Marvel book. Amanat co-created Kamala Khan for the comics and served as a producer for the Ms. Marvel television series. “I was with our good friend Sana [Amanat] who co-created the character Ms. Marvel. She’s one of my best friends. We were doing some Ms. Marvel press together, and I was saying there are so many potential avenues that you could take with this character in the books. At this point I was reading a lot of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Ed Brubaker. My comics taste just expanded way beyond Marvel. Going back to the Ms. Marvel books, I was like, I feel like we could do more, and it could more experimental.”

“All she said was, ‘Do you want me to make a call? I’ll do it.’ And I was like, ‘No, you don’t have to….but if you want to.’ She got Kevin Feige’s blessing.”

So far, Vellani has written 10 issues across multiple minis and specials. “I did 10. I feel like that’s a nice round number to chill at…for now.”

It sounds like Vellani has some plans brewing.

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights: Disney CEO Bob Iger is promising Deadpool & Wolverine will be MCU's biggest movie "in a long time", how Marvel Studios is now working "much more closely" to sell Marvel comics, where Marvel sees its future audience (and it's not at Marvel, yet!), Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak, and the biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows.