He loves Elvis... Hates bad guys

Last week, in a video that went viral, a Sikh schoolboy was subjected to racial abuse in Georgia, US. Filming the entire episode with his phone camera, the boy captured school bullies calling him “terrorist, terrorist”. But what if the bully, who perhaps lived in an all-white neighbourhood and never met a Sikh person, had read Super Sikh? “Maybe then, when he sees a brown kid in the school bus, his first thought won’t be ‘looks like a terrorist, let’s mess with him’, but rather ‘looks like Deep Singh… I love that comic!’” says Eileen Alden, co-creator of the world’s newest superhero comic, Super Sikh. Meet Deep Singh aka Super Sikh — an IT professional by day, a turbaned-superhero by night, who is also an undercover British Secret Service agent. He loves Elvis and hates baddies. Bearded and turbaned, the 20-something hunk has James Bond’s suave and the skills of assassin Jason Bourne. He is joined by female sidekick Janelle Williams, an African-American with her own “ass-kicking” skills, and a female protagonist Gurpreet Kaur, his cousin and a “STEMinist” (women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math). Together, they take on bullies, racists and the dreaded Salar Al-Amok, leader of a Taliban squad.

In 2011, screenwriter Alden and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Supreet Manchanda were tossing up ideas for stories with a Sikh protagonist. They talked of fast cars, Elvis impersonators and their love for comics. Soon, storylines began to shape up, award-winning artist Amit Tayal came on board, and a Kickstarter campaign was launched this year. Twenty-seven hours into the campaign, they had achieved their target of $5,000, and a month later raised $22,000, nearly 400 per cent more. With four issues of the comic done — the first issue is out and available for download — the comic world has found one of its first multicultural, non-superpower-wielding superhero in Deep Singh.

“Every culture needs its own heroes. The world has had just a few comic heroes, who keep getting recycled,” says Manchanda. While the Marvel universe — with a female Thor, a black Captain America and a Muslim Ms Marvel — is slowly opening its doors to diversity, the comic world still has few homegrown heroes who deal with contemporary problems or even routine menaces like racism. “It’s time to have heroes who actually reflect their ethnicity,” says Manchanda. “We want to support the idea that respecting other people and defending the innocent are universal qualities. Good guys and villains come in all packages.”

In the first issue of the comic, Deep Singh is seen bidding farewell to the schoolgirls in Pakistan he rescued from an explosion, an episode eerily similar to the recent Peshawar incident. Super Sikh climbs into his cool car, cranks up the volume on the radio blaring Blue suede shoes and hits the road for his next mission. A superhero with a penchant for Elvis? “He is an uber-Elvis fan as it reminds him of his dad. It’s also our way to connect with a global audience, for who doesn’t like Elvis,” explains Manchanda. In bits and pieces, Deep Singh’s origins are revealed — he was born in Africa, moved to Amritsar with his aunt after his parents disappeared, studied in France and the US. Unlike Bruce Wayne, heir to a billion-dollar empire, he has a normal job that “allows him to travel and implement technology globally, as a cover for his secret missions.” Much like 007’s R&D specialist Q, Super Sikh too has Gurpreet Kaur supplying him with fabulous gadgets and weapons. An acclaimed ninja master, she’s a “highly-educated, multi-disciplinary scientist”. And it is not mere coincidence that Deep Singh’s arch-enemy is Taliban squad leader Salar Al-Amok, a villain so desperate to join the ISIS that he is blowing up schools in Pakistan just to boost his terrorist profile. “He is crazy and driven by insecurity, ego and greed,” says Alden.

Super Sikh might have Batman’s devices and James Bond’s licence to kill, but his stories will talk about contemporary issues faced by hundreds of Sikhs daily, especially in a post-9/11 world where problems of misplaced racism often rear their head. For instance, the Sikh coalition has reported more than 300 instances of hate crimes, workplace discrimination, school bullying and racial stereotyping since 9/11, including the shooting at a gurudwara in Wisconsin in 2012. That the Sikhs, who have a distinguished military history, can’t serve in the US military in religiously-mandated turbans and beards, has only worked against the community. “No one takes offence at being called a Muslim — that’s ignorant. What’s offensive is being labelled as a threat to people. Super Sikh is our response to not being heard — we are reclaiming the turban in a positive way,” says Manchanda.

Deep Singh will fight prejudice, not with preachy propaganda, but with justice. “It’s a comic, so it’s a simple story, yet readers will find that one can’t assume the ‘white guy’ is the good guy, the ‘guy in the turban’ is a terrorist, or a ‘damsel in distress’ is a weakling,” says Alden, who describes herself as the first known person to have become a Sikh while working on a comic. For her research to create Deep Singh’s character, she learned Gurmukhi, read the Gurbani and turned to Sikhism (formerly an atheist, she now goes by the surname Kaur). Now, how many superheroes can claim to have done that?

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