Super Sikh! That's right. He's a Sikh. And he's a secret agent. He's a Punjabi 007 who fights for girls' education and loves the music of Elvis Presley, while holding down a fake I.T. job to convince his parents that he's not risking his life for truth, justice, and the five Ks of the Sikh religion.
Super Sikh is the co-creation of Supreet Singh Manchanda, artist Amit Tayal, and writer Eileen Kaur Alden. While Alden was working on a career in screenwriting, her friend Manchanda approached her about creating a family-friendly Sikh action hero for comic books. They went to Kickstarter looking for $5000 to create their first issue. They got more than $22,000 in pledges, and in 2015 began publishing. Now they're up to issue number four and their fans love the comic enough that several issues have gone into reprints.
The comic has done more than thrill readers with great stories and inspire Sikh kids. Background research for the comic and its title character led its writer, Eileen Kaur Alden, to change her life in one of the most profound ways possible.
On June 17, 2017, I spoke with Alden by Skype. You'll be able to hear her dog yipping in the background of her Oakland home. We discussed:
kickstarter.com/projects/eileenalden/super-sikh
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Saladin Ahmed is a fascinating cat. He’s best known as the Arab and Muslim American fantasy novelist who crafted Throne of the Crescent Moon which was nominated for the Hugo and won the Locus Award for best first novel. But his ethnicity also includes Polish and Irish, and his writing also includes short stories, articles, a stunning number of Tweets, and the new Marvel Comics series Black Bolt about the king of the Inhumans.
We met at the Science Fiction Research Association conference in Detroit in 2012, and he was as fun and down to earth in person as he is online. When I learned that he was writing for Marvel I just knew I had to find out what it was like for him as a novelist to leap into the world of comics, and was delighted to learn that like me, he was a lifelong comics fan who’d always wanted to create comics, too.
In today’s episode of MF GALAXY, Saladin Ahmed discusses:
Ahmed spoke with me by Skype from his home near Detroit on June 02, 2017.
CBR - Black Bolt sent to cosmic prison
Sana Amanat Talks Ms. Marvel - Late Night with Seth Meyers
Off Panel #52: A Day in the Life with Marvel Editor Wil Moss
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe
Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual
Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man
5 Ways The U.S. Prison Industrial Complex Mimics Slavery
Angela Davis on the Prison-Industrial Complex
Inhumans coming to TV + debut on IMAX
How one 31-year-old paid off $220,000 in student loans in 3 years
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