Ms. Marvel has one of the most recognizable powers in comics, but another of her abilities has been almost completely forgotten. The teenage hero's ability to stretch and size herself up selectively, or "embiggen", as the Simpsons-quoting teenager calls it, is as visually distinctive as it is satisfying when a gigantic fist clocks a bad guy. But embiggening isn't all that Kamala Khan can do. She has a rarely-used ability to completely change her appearance that might be the most powerful tool in her arsenal.
Kamala Khan first appeared in 2013 and caught-on instantly with readers, moving to her own long-running series the next year. Ms. Marvel also stars in the 2020 Marvel's Avengers videogame as the story mode's main character and is set to have her own streaming series on Disney+. In the game, players can access a range of moves that show off the versatility and power of her size-changing, but the game doesn't feature the first power she ever used.
Back in the first arc of the 2014 Ms. Marvel series, Kamala gains her powers when the Terrigen Mist activates her dormant Inhuman genes. She wakes up disoriented only to find that she's transformed into Captain Marvel, complete with the Avengers: Endgame hero's classic comics suit. Before Khan was a superhero, she was a fangirl, and the moment hammers home that she's ready to become one of the people that inspire her. But it also raises the question of whether becoming a superhero means becoming someone else.
As Ms. Marvel's adventures continued, she rarely used her ability to change her appearance. She learned that her healing factor made it harder to use her higher-level shapeshifting; the more stress her body is under, the less malleable it gets. That combined with Kamala being more comfortable as herself and coming into her own as a hero; the New Jersey-based vigilante would rather come into a fight swinging than try to trick her way out of it.
That said, her ability to change her appearance still comes in handy. In Ms. Marvel (2014) #6 the hero hides from enemy drones by turning into an abandoned couch. In 2016's Invincible Iron Man issue 11, Kamala nearly fools Tony Stark into thinking she's James Rhodes with a convincing performance.
But it's only in an alternate universe that Kamala uses her powers to the fullest. In 2015's Secret Wars, heroes and villains from across Marvel's Earths were forced together at the end of the multiverse. The miniseries Inhumans: Attilan Rising showed readers another version of Ms. Marvel from a world where she focused on her shapeshifting powers above the rest. There, the superspy known as Agent Khan infiltrates enemy territory by duplicating others, making her an invaluable asset to anyone looking to gather intelligence or bring down a rival organization.
If Kamala had stuck to her original power, she would be a very different kind of hero. Shapeshifting is usually reserved for villains, as the sort of deceptive strategy that makes for a devastating twist reveal (as the Suicide Squad could tell you). A heroic master of disguise could make massive waves on all sides of Marvel's military-superhero complex. It might be a good thing for the Marvel Universe's bad guys that Ms. Marvel would rather have a clean, honest fistfight.