rise of the desi superheroes rise of the desi superheroes

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INDIA IN NEW YORK FEBRUARY 28, 2014

I PAGE 6 from there you have this fantastical superhero comic,” he says. Others working with the doctor duo, include Sajad Shah, artistic director and penciler; Adelso Corona, inker; and Alonso Espinoza, colorist. But Mirza and Mehtabdin’s passion outside of their profession as physicians is what made the project possible. Mirza has been a comic book buff since he was a kid, and Mehtabdin’s interest in the political and cultural history of his parents’ world is a ‘hobby’ that dominated his undergraduate career, when he studied International Relations and Political Science of South Asia and the Middle East. They put their heads together strategically to create Zindan.

“I

ground; I thought I was just another normal kid who grew up in a suburban neighborhood. But all of a sudden I had brown skin and my parents were from Pakistan and I was going there for vacation in two weeks. How would I explain that? So, it kind of came out of necessity that I really needed to learn about who I was, where my parents came from, and why they came here.” Though a comic book series seems like an unlikely result of the knowledge they developed separately over the years, both say this was something they felt had been coming all along. With medical school and almost two years of residency under their belts, they finally had stable and secure enough lives to sit down and actually make it happen. It was just this past October when Mirza came across Sajad Shah’s talent and reached out to him to discuss the idea, and the artist was on board immediately. Since then, an outline for the complete Zindan series and the writing and cover art for the first book have been completed. One of the biggest goals of the project is to empower South Asian youth to be informed about and proud of where they are from. Mehtabdin explains that as a young person growing up in the US, he felt that even schools didn’t really teach much about the history of India or the surrounding region, when there was so much rich and positive learning to take away from it. Zindan is a way for kids to get this message through popular culture when they’re often not getting it from formal education or the media. “The more serious reasons for doing this aside from wanting to simply create a comic is this need to step up and bring forth some ideals that I think the Muslim world and our background have appeared to have lost at this day in age with the whole conservatism radicalism stuff that’s become so synonymous with the culture, even though it really isn’t,” Mirza says. “We wanted to push back against that. Khurram and I can’t go over there and really fight against all that’s happening, but what we can do is create ideas, create heroes, create values that hopefully will help squash that fundamentalist garbage that’s coming out of the region. We want to challenge that. So it’s a fun story, but there are underlying themes that make it much more.” What do they think of Marvel Comics new Ms Marvel being a 16-year-old Muslim girl? “It’s a great step for them, and it’s a great thing for them to be bringing South Asian culture to the mainstream. I think we’re going to be compared to them, and I’m honored to be part of that comparison,” says Mirza. “But we’re a little different in that we are actually taking a step to go outside the boundaries of America and take our readers to the Indus Valley and the Middle East, and have them embrace characters that are fully immersed in that place and society.” “We’re not trying to alienate the West,” he adds, “we’re trying to show that there are a lot of similarities between these different cultures and times. We’re trying to make a really fun comic with a great story that anyone can pick up and enjoy, and we happened to involve characters who are a little unique. People can see that not every hero that ever existed was born in New York and is classically Caucasian or of a specific background.”

RISE OF THE DESI SUPERHEROES

’m a big comic book fan and collector. If you’re connected with me on social media, you will know that’s probably the most obvious thing about my personality,” Mirza says. “I grew up reading all these comics, but there’s never been a strong South Asian presence in them. There have been a few Muslim characters. There was a big commotion a while back about a Batman sidekick, Nightrunner, that was in one of the story arcs. So every now and then they do sprinkle some diversity in there, but for the most part, comic books have been sort of black and white. There wasn’t really anything for South Asians. I saw that there was definitely a need there, and being a fan of comics for a long time, I really wanted to make something that people like myself could identify with better.” In their brainstorming, they decided that they wanted to set the story within Mughal history, something that has grown to be important to them as they’ve matured and as global events have transpired during the course of their lives. Mirza briefly considered making it a present-day story and somewhat autobiographiThe back cover. cal, about a young desi in New York City, but he realized that all the comic book superheroes are from modern metropolitan cities, so he wanted to change things up a little. accept the version they know and move on. So it’s pretty As a collector of Mughal miniatures, that period popped cool that you can actually turn a fact-based story into someinto his mind. thing romanticized.” Mehtabdin’s love for the knowledge of this time was a noNeither Mirza nor Mehtabdin grew up hearing these stobrainer in terms of fit and it lent itself to the narrative. ries or being surrounded by their family’s Muslim or In the series, as well as in factual history, Shah Jahan, a Pakistani heritage. unifying force between Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus during Mirza grew up in Cincinnati and Mehtabdin in Albany — his rule and a liberal ruler, was preparing to pass on this they both describe their upbringing as quintessentially peaceful legacy to his eldest son, Dara Shikoh. American, with minimal exposure to their South Asian culWhile all of this was occurring, something was simmering under the table, Mehtabdin explains. But his younger broth- ture. It wasn’t until college when they undid some of the whitewashing, as Mirza puts it, and sought out information er Aurangzeb forcefully took power and changed the course and further understanding about their roots on their own of what was a tolerant Mughal Empire. terms. “This story is essentially about two kids, Zain and Timur, This was a significant time for both of them. Mirza who are orphans or kind of wanderers — they hustle to get through their everyday lives — and we come to find out that learned to love Bollywood and joined Indian dance teams, and Mehtabdin, who had done bhangra in high school, they’re the long lost sons of Dara Shikoh,” Mehtabdin adds. “That’s where we’re going with the story, without revealing jumped into a world of history and politics, Arabic and Farsi. too much, but we wanted the historical accuracy there too. “I was a teenager in the middle of upstate New York when Because a lot of people don’t know how the Mughal Empire 9/11 happened,” Mehtabdin says. “I was the only Muslim evolved or what led to the decline of the empire. What kid in my class. I didn’t know anything about my backchanges did India go through at the time? People just

The Last Ansaars of Zindan is set to be released June 1, 2014, via www.thelastansaars.com online store.

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