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What Makes A Hero?

Jordan Clark writes,

What would you say a hero's responsibility to the community they defend is? Is it enough to just save people or should they do more? Is it wise to put that much faith and goodwill into one person no matter how powerful and altruistic they appear?

And what is a community's responsibility to a hero that defends them? Should they stand back and let them save the day all the time, or step up and help when they can? Do they owe them anything besides gratitude?

These are the main themes behind my Kickstarter, Elk Mountain, which is live now. Our hero Valor's origin mirrors Superman's in a lot of ways. Like Clark, he's an alien. Clark from Krypton, Valor from Panama. Like Clark, he was found and raised by a couple who tried their best to raise a child with superpowers. Unlike Clark, he decided to stick around in his small town and becomes its protector.

And it's this decision that really shapes our story. Valor is born just outside of the US border and brought to Wyoming by his mother, but she's forced to flee fearing retribution from the Panamanian government.

This makes Valor, like thousands of other kids, a Dreamer. And like so many of those kids he considers himself an American, having never known any place else as home.

And yet almost every day, people are being sent back to countries they've either never been to, or their family fled from to give them a better life.

Like many other immigrants, Valor plays a vital role in his community. And yet there's an underlying fear that follows immigrants. For some in this country, there's a fear of the unknown. A fear that immigrants are here to take our jobs, and worse, intensified by political fear mongering.

And immigrants have their own fears. Fear that no matter how hard they work and try to blend in, they'll never belong. Fear that their families will be broken up for good.

Elk Mountain aims to show the struggles of an immigrant hero, and we have an amazing team to do just that. I am joined by Vince Underwood on pencils and inks, Brittany Peer on colors (TMNTU, Misfit City, Dodge City) and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou on letters (Shanghai Red, PanelXPanel, Strip Panel Naked).

Check out the first few pages as well as some inked pages and check out our campaign. We'll be running a special one day reward for Bleeding Cool readers giving you the whole 64 pages graphic novel plus physical backmatter showing the making of the book, as well as a commission from Vince for just $45.

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