MISC. MANGA, *Kamen America

With female superheroes like Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel finally making their way into mainstream movies, some in the indy market decided to create their own homage to the genre, but with an anime style to it. Mark Pellegrini and Timothy Lim did a crowdfunding for their 3-part series titled Kamen America("kamen" being the Japanese word for mask)about an American girl getting great powers and the responsibilities that go along with it.

Carly Danvers is a fashion designer who pays the bills working as an entertainer for the USO. While on location in a foreign country, she gets a piece of space wreckage landing on her. Waking up weeks later, she now has a standard set of not-fully reaveled superpowers such as flying, super-strength, and firing energy blasts, plus in keeping in with the anime theme has her hair turning blonde. She adopts the alias as Kamen America, even though the point of her wearing a mask and using a codename is somewhat moot as her real identity is public knowledge. After fighting and befriending her Russian counterpart, who is renamed Kamen Comrade, the two soon encounter another young woman given similar superpowers, the Japanese girl Kamen Comet.

Kamen America is mostly anime visually with classic Dragonball-styled attacks, which is slightly unusual as most Japanese superheroines are either sentai rangers or magical girls. The effort works out, although they don't seem to really explore the discovery of a mere mortal gaining superpowers, and them juggling their regular life goals with that of being a well known public figure. The comic doesn't dive to deep into the standard fan service you would expect from a series about a buxom super lady in tight clothing, although it also doesn't seem focus that much in the title character being an American-themed superhero leaving out any kind of politics you would naturally expect to show up. Kamen America is unique as its recent presence has started off a strong fan base asking for more of the independent offering.