Created By: Eileen Kaur Alden and Supreet Singh ManchandaIllustrated By: Amit Tayal
Published By: Rosarium Publishing
Purchase Price: $1.99
Super Sikh follows the adventures of Deep Singh. He's a Sikh man who works for the United Nations as a secret agent and has a love for Elvis passed down by his father. By day he's the second shift manager of small corporation. By night he's not a superhero, he just really hates bad guys.
Super Sikh is brought to us by Rosarium Publishing, this time from the minds of Eileen Kaur Alden and Supreet Singh Manchanda. It's a story of a hero but different from your stand superhero books. Depp doesn't have any super powers and rarely uses gadgets given to him. He's not immune to needing to sleep or eat. He's by all means a normal guy who goes out and does all kinds of crazy things.
The first issue shows an average day for Deep. He saves a school for girls that was being attacked by terrorists. They wanted to destroy the school because women shouldn't "fill their heads with numbers and reading." With a single rocket he takes out all the terrorist and harms none of the hostages or damages anything in the surroundings. Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds but I'll get back to it later. From there we see Deep try to get some rest before heading out to his day job but his aunt and uncle convince him to take a vacation. Because Deep loves Elvis he wants to go to Graceland and they book the trip. He turns in his vacation form and picks up some new gadgets from his cousin. On the plane he thwarts a hijacking but is arrested anyway. He's placed in a holding cell for people under arrest by the TSA for being suspicious. It's filled with black and brown people only. One man tells him "Welcome to the American Dream."
This book is over the top ridiculous and I love every page of it. I love how during the opening pages it just keeps adding to the list of accomplishments that Deep has. It's for no reason other than to be excessive. It's a book that deals with some serious topics but makes fun of how ridiculous they are. During the plane hijacking as Deep is working to save everyone and constantly reminding him that he's the good guy there. A man yells out "He's trying to confuse us, change our sympathies. Heard about this on Fox News. Hold on to your hate people!" I audibly laughed for several minutes at the ridiculousness of that statement, yet people like that really do exist. It's contrasted by the next panel which makes a Princess Bride joke.
There's a running gag where everyone constantly mispronounces Deep's name. If you're a minority you've probably had this happen to you before. Sure sometimes people may mishear you. But, I know I've been Darrell, Terrel, Darnel, Jarell and so on. Again, it's a real thing that goes on but they poke fun of it, at one point placing a picture of Deep Singh next Dee Snyder and wondering how people make this mistake.
The artwork in the book is also great. It's really crisp and clean for a modern feel. Yet it also comes with plenty of sound effects that cover the page for that old school 60s Batman vibe. The action scenes are also super exaggerated which is cool. Back to being over the top, when Deep fires the rocket launcher a huge explosion is seen that covers everything behind him. Yet when he goes down to the school nothing is out of place, not even a single leaf. It's just so hilarious.
In the black community we have a genre of films called Blaxploitaiton. These are films created by black people that are usually ridiculous and exaggerate racial stereotypes to make fun of them. The most recent one to rise to popularity was the film Black Dynamite. I feel like Super Sikh is doing the same thing here. If they're able to point out how ridiculous the stereotypes are eventually people will stop leaning on them. A person yelling out for others to hold onto their hate as they're being saved is ridiculous. While Fox News may place some dramatic music behind it and graphic images to attack other cultures it looks and sounds ridiculous outside of that situation. I don't think Sikhploitation was a genre before now but Super Sikh has made it one. Similar to Blaxploitation it's not about people making fun of Sikhs, it's about Sikhs making fun of the absurd ways people use to stereotype them and because of that it's amazing. It's something you don't want to sleep on otherwise you'll regret taking so long to read it like I did.
You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet. You can also check out his playthrough of Sleeping Dogs or Skyrim
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Comic Books
