This was an idea I had for an interfaith team of religious superheroes. I figured I could make a statement about religious tolerance by showing these characters of different faiths working together. Wanting to keep the team small and manageable, I limited it to four characters and chose the three main Abrahamic religions and what I believed to be the largest non-Abrahamic religion currently practiced crossed the world.
So, to represent Judaism, I selected my hero SAMSON. For Christianity I created MAIDEN HEAVEN. For Islam I originally intended to use NINJIHAD, but then I thought that that character was too underpowered, compared to the Jewish and Christian members. I wanted all 4 to be some of the most powerful superheroes on the planet. So I revamped DJINNX to make her expressly Muslim (as Djinn are referenced in the Qu’ran). For a Buddhist superhero I took the idea I’d long had for Brother Nature, a hero with environmentally based powers, and created WORLD CHAMPION.
I was never too crazy about that last character, it just felt uninspired to me, but I couldn’t think of anything better at the time. Plus I later found out (after I’d already commissioned the above group image from Celina) that it’s actually Hinduism that’s the largest non-Abrahamic religion, not Buddhism (which is the 2nd), so I’d need to change that character anyway, or perhaps expand the team to include a couple of other religions? I know I’d want the team to have an equal of male and female members, so if I do increase it from 4, I’d have to go up to at least 6, so I can have 3 men and 3 women, and going by the worldwide numbers that means I’d add a Hindu and a Shinto member. But I don’t know much about those two faiths, so I’d have to do some research on them first. Plus, “The Righteous Six” just doesn’t have the same ring to it, so I’d have to come up with some other name.
This is an idea I’ll come back to someday.
The J.R. LeMar Journal 