Deep Singh a cross between Batman and Jason Bourne.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Marvel and DC’s established pantheon of superheroes had better make some room, because there’s a new crime-fighter in town and instead of tights and a cape, he’s sporting a turban.
Comic book readers in the U.S. and India will soon be able to procure Super Sikh, the story of an Elvis-loving, Indian “super agent” named Deep Singh who battles agents of the Taliban hell-bent on eliminating the titular protagonist — which is standard villain operating procedure, naturally.
Super Sikh was created in collaboration by Oakland-based writer Eileen Alden and Silicon Valley entrepeneur and angel investor Supreet Singh Manchanda, who jointly launched a Kickstarter campaign earlier in 2015 to aid in making their vision a reality.
Within 27 hours of launching the quota for producing one issue was met, and by February they surpassed their original goal of $5,000, raising over $22,000 in all.
There will be “crazy, PG-13 bad guys,” and a hero who uses “great internal pose of intuition, training, physical and mental strength, not a person who is granted supernatural powers or a mutant transformation,” Alden revealed to San Francisco’s CBS affiliate. She went on to describe Deep Singh as a cross between Batman and Jason Bourne.
Alden and Manchada recruited award-winning, Delhi-born artist Amit Tayal for their project, whose work in graphic novels has been published internationally.
The eponymous Super Sikh hopes to shed light on the religion that inspired its lead character, which is arguably one of the most misunderstood faiths in the world, especially in the post-9/11 landscape.
Hate crimes are often perpetrated against the 30 million Sikhs worldwide, of whom over one million reside in the U.S., largely because they are mistaken for terroristsdespite having no affiliation with Islam — let alone its radical offshoots — in the slightest.
Machada, a Sikh himself, told Oakland.net that he was bullied as a child and that was one of the reasons he co-created the comic.
“I’ve always wanted to create a character that was a Sikh, but I never found someone who could write it and conceptualize it,” he said. “What I needed was Eileen.”
Super Sikh will initially hit bookshelves in English, but will soon be followed by digital versions translated to Punjabi, Spanish, and Mandarin.