So I created this poster, turban and beard but not me, just somebody who looks Sikh. But homegrown intolerance and hate are something I feel American superheroes shouldn’t be fighting.
And I’m just always thinking why are superheroes not fighting explicitly hate and intolerance, right? They of course have, you know certain enemies, you know could be foreign powers.
I mean those are the most pervasive villains in America. What if this character was Sikh with a turban and beard?” And to me, it just came naturally that this Captain America would fight hate and intolerance.
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When I saw this Captain America movie poster, I was like “Oh this is an interesting iconic character.
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And when I see things on TV or in culture, I’m always thinking what would that person or that context look like with people who look like me? This is October 2011, and I’m thinking, “Okay, how do I bring people to my booth? There’s gonna be hundreds of artists, big studios,” and that was around when the first big Captain America movie that came out. People kept telling me, “hey you gotta go to the Comic-Con, that’s a great place to showcase your work!” So I went there as an exhibitor, I rented a table. So this is 2002 when I started cartooning, and about 10 years later as an extension of this work, I went to my first New York City Comic-Con. And as an extension of that cartooning work - see, I was an engineer by day, cartoonist by night. It was a challenge, and so I became a cartoonist in the aftermath of 9/11 to reflect stories of people that look like me. People just told me to “go back home” and called me names. I was othered before 9/11 as well, but I was really othered after 9/11. It just so happened as part of my work as a post-9/11 kind of artist, I was not an artist before 9/11. Yeah, I think, the way I would frame that before I started doing this, Captain America was not somebody I was really into or was a superhero that I followed a lot as an American, and of course, an iconic American superhero. So why is Captain America one of your favorite heroes so much more that you regularly cosplay as him? Even though many are fans of Captain America, maybe not as intensely as yourself, at least in your cosplay. It’s not something you necessarily see every day and I would say in particular from BIPOC people. Thank you so much for speaking with The Nerds of Color today! Your project is very interesting. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Vishavjit sat down with The Nerds of Color to discuss his story, what he hopes to achieve with his cosplay, what he thinks about the conversation about what Captain America should stand for, the process of starting the Kickstarter, and much more. Why does he regularly cosplay a character many see as a jingoistic symbol? Working with director Ryan Westra, he is now fundraising on Kickstarter to tell this story, American Sikh, in an animated setting so that people might know what his exact journey was. Despite all of this, he remains an optimist for people to treat each other better, and found through his regular cosplaying as Captain America that he could somehow achieve that. He survived a genocide against Sikh people in India as a young boy, and after he and his family fled to the US, he’s constantly experienced racism and Islamophobia (despite not being Muslim) in the pre- and post-9/11 era. Animator and cosplayer Vishavjit Singh has experienced tremendous trauma in his life.