About Us
THE CONCEPT:
Have you ever asked yourself why there are no Sikh superheroes?
Have you ever asked yourself why there are no Sikh superheroes?
Isn't it time to see a hero in a turban for a change?
For centuries, Sikhs have stood for equality, justice, and righteous living.
Sikhism is the 5th largest religion, with more than 20 million followers, and is not connected to Islamic extremism.
But we live in modern times, where Sikhs are often misunderstood, the subject of stereotyping and hate crimes. In the U.S., for example, Sikh kids are bullied more than twice the national average.
So who do our kids look up to? Batman? Spiderman? Ironman?
These are all characters imagined by mainstream American comic book writers, many of them created over 50 years ago.
We asked the question. The answer?
A hero is not defined by the way a person looks, but by a person's actions.
So we realized that now is the time to show the world a modern hero in a turban.
It's time for a Super Sikh!
Empowered by this idea, we created a story about a Secret Agent named Deep Singh, who loves Elvis and hates bad guys.
WHO WE ARE:
Eileen Alden: Co-Creator/Comic Book Writer/First known person to become Sikh as a result of doing extensive research for a comic book.
Supreet Singh Manchanda: Co-Creator/Silicon Valley Exec./Life-long fan of comic books, with a highly active imagination.
THE COMIC BOOK:
To create the comic, we needed to develop a compelling main character and an adventure story.
First, we decided our hero should be a natural modern Sikh person who uses great internal power of intuition, training, physical and mental strength - not a person who is granted supernatural powers or a mutant transformation. We wanted a real world character, so that you might see a bit of yourself reflected in him.
To create the comic, we needed to develop a compelling main character and an adventure story.
First, we decided our hero should be a natural modern Sikh person who uses great internal power of intuition, training, physical and mental strength - not a person who is granted supernatural powers or a mutant transformation. We wanted a real world character, so that you might see a bit of yourself reflected in him.
Second, we wanted Deep Singh to uphold his Sikh values even while he is living in a modern world with all of its complexity. Deep works hard and he always strives to do the right thing and never gives up - even when he's in a tight spot and it looks like there's no way out.
Third, there are bad guys - in real life and in comics. In our story, the bad guys are a crazy Taliban crew who is tired of Deep Singh ruining their power-hungry plans to destroy women's education.
The bad guys are really crazy and well, really bad, at a "PG-13" level, like a typical superhero comic book.
Finally, our story has to be entertaining and inspiring. It's adventure and action and comedy, all rolled into one. And since Deep Singh is a big fan, it even has Elvis. So our story takes place in a four comic book series as Deep Singh leaves India and heads to the USA for a week's vacation, trying to reach Graceland, the home of Elvis, without being killed by the Taliban.
After the story was written and revised and polished, and revised some more, we chose our illustrator - Amit Tayal.
Amit's artwork on graphic novels has been published internationally - you might recognize his work from Campfire Graphic Novels (www.campfire.co.in) and Vimanika Comics (www.vimanikacomics.com), and he has won several Comic-Con India awards for his amazing skills (www.amittayal.com).
We worked with Amit to develop the look and feel of the characters and he is bringing them to life on our comic book pages.
Please join us on our mission and support our comic book project.
Only you have the power to make Super Sikh happen!
