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A Kid In A Hoodie Saves The Day

Published Sat, 10 Jun 2017 15:00:36 -0500

By Robert Jeffrey II

When I set out to write Route 3 , I did it for a selfish reason. I personally wanted to see a story featuring a black kid who was central to the larger than life story I wanted to tell.

I grew up loving Marvel, with my focus being mainly directed on the 90's era X-Men, and the Amazing Spiderman. That parlayed into a love of Generation X, and for a while I strictly followed the "Make Mine Marvel" decree. These were the stories that spoke to me as a fan, and as a kid growing up on the Southside of Chicago who had a healthy obsession with Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Stephen King, and all things sci-fi/ fantasy at my local library.

But I started to notice something. Outside of the diverse line-up of such books as the X-Men and Generation-X, many books featuring folks who looked like me were few and far between.

When I began to learn more about the people behind the scenes of my favorite books at Marvel (and later on DC Comics), I found that a large majority of these creators didn't look like me, or any of my friends or relatives on the Southside of Chicago.

I know what you're going to say. There was Storm. There was Bishop. There was Synch. There was Christopher Priest. There was Dwayne McDuffie. There was Denys Cowan.

Yes, these characters and creators were killing it with their respective work for the big two. Doing it just as well, if not better than, a lot of their peers.

But guess what? They even felt this wasn't enough. They wanted to see more representation with the teams creating these books, and on the pages with the characters.

Thus was born Milestone Media, and my world was forever changed.

Until you are the marginalized group/ person in all of these fantastical stories that we know and love, you won't understand the collective feeling of just wanting to see yourself represented.

-Not just as a sidekick.

-Not just the comic relief.

-Not a stereotype.

You want to be that bad ass brown skinned lady leading the charge, kicking ass, taking names. You want to be the black guy leading squadron's of space fighter pilots against the attacking alien hordes. You want to be the person of Hispanic descent swinging your massive broadsword, taking down an entire line of marauding orcs. And believe me, there are more groups who collectively find themseles often tossed to the side when it comes to such stories.

You just want to be represented in these awesome stories.

So like the men and women of Milestone Media, I got tired of waiting, and I sat down with a notebook and pen, and created Route 3.

Route 3 is a super-powered road trip from hell. A Stone Mountain, GA teen finds out he's been granted a set of spectacular abilities, that he knows nothing about. He's now on the run from a wide array of folks in a sort of super powered arms race across the Southeastern United States. Explosions, gunfights, telekinetic feats of awesomeness, and a little personal growth are all thrown into the mix.

We're currently running a Kickstarter to raise funds in order to print the collected 3 issue graphic novel, and get the book to fans.

We just hit our goal. 😊

So now we're shooting for stretch goals, and hoping to get even more copies of the Glyph Comics Award winning book into people's hands.

I'm proud as hell of the work that my team, and the fine folks of Terminus Media, have done with producing this book. I'm even prouder of the support that we've received over the years for this series, leading up to yesterday where we successfully hit our goal of raising funds.

It just shows me that people want to see a kid in a hoodie saving the day. Just like another kid on the southside of Chicago also wanted way back when in the mid-90's.

Click here to find out more.

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