Iman Vellani, known for playing Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel,” will make her solo comics writing debut with “Chachu,” a five-issue neo-noir miniseries illustrated by Marianna Ignazzi and colored by Jordie Bellaire, set for release from Image Comics and Tiny Onion on Aug. 5.
Set in 1979, the series follows Leila, a 19-year-old Pakistani-Canadian young woman with a love of film and pulp novels who travels to California to reconnect with her estranged uncle – a semi-retired private eye once celebrated for having married the starlet he was originally hired to find. When that same wife vanishes again, uncle and niece find themselves on an unplanned road-trip investigation, one that pushes Leila’s first taste of adulthood into a reckoning with family secrets and the myths both have built around their lives.
“I’ve always been deeply curious about comics as an art form because of their capacity to hold contradiction – arguably better than any other medium,” Vellani said. “That became especially meaningful to me while writing Chachu, which grew out of this tension between mourning my youth while I still have it, and an incessant urge to come of age already.”
Ignazzi, whose prior credits include “Exquisite Corpses,” illustrated the series alongside colorist Bellaire, whose recent work includes “Absolute Wonder Woman.”
