PHOTO: THE GUARDIAN
Super Sikh is a man who fights the Taliban, loves Elvis (he listens to Blue Suede Shoes in his car) and wears a turban and aviators. He is Sikh, he is multicultural, he is a superagent, according to The Guardian.
His antagonist? A Taliban commander named Salar al Amok, whom Super Sikh stops from burning schoolbooks outside a girls’ school in Afghanistan.
In fact, in the introduction, he is seen putting a stop to this, while his favourite Elvis Presley song is booming in his car stereo.
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Super Sikh is the brainchild of Supreet Singh Manchanda, a technology executive and comic creator based in San Francisco, and Eileen Alden, an Oakland-based screenwriter.
Manchanda said he asked a group of Sikh schoolchildren if they’d want to see a Sikh superhero, and said, “They just beamed.”
PHOTO: THE GUARDIAN
Super Sikh, whose name is Deep Singh, is a 20-something-year-old who has been illustrated by award-winning artist Amit Tayal.
“He smiles, he’s happy, he doesn’t get angry,” Manchanda said, adding that he is stylish and humble. He doesn’t tolerate bullies, and is a symbol of strength.
Further, interestingly, the creators make it clear that despite the fact that his antagonist is a Muslim fundamentalist, it does not have anything to do with Islam.
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“We went out of our way to say this has nothing to do with Islam, this has to do with crazy people who don’t know how to live with normal values,” Manchanda clarified.
Alden explained how people in the US seen with turbans are immediately associated with terrorism.
“So if you see this person, he’s wearing a turban, there’s this immediate association to a terrorist,” Alden says.
And Manchanda goes on to explain, “So here are the bad guys in turbans doing bad things, and here are the good guys doing these good things so we had to create this counterfoil.”
PHOTO: THE GUARDIAN
This multicultural hero also has a cousin, Gurpreet Kaur, who is a nuclear scientist. According to the creators, she can be likened to the character Q in James Bond. She’s also a ninja master.
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The hero loves Elvis because his father used to be an Elvis fan, before he disappeared somewhere in Africa when he was just a child.
Aside from the fact that Super Sikh is racially diverse, he also stands out from other superheroes when it comes to his superpowers, or lack thereof.
This man, Deep Singh, does not have the mutations other superheroes have which makes them unusual.
“[Superheroes] have to have this mutation or something of the sort that makes them abnormal and therefore they get some powers,” the creators said.
But Super Sikh is, according to them, “Trained, he’s educated, he’s multicultural,” Manchanda said.
“This can be you and that’s a very powerful message,” he added, highlighting that they want readers to know they are not so different from this character.
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