A comic named Female Force: Kamala Harris will be released on Wednesday, 21 October, a day after her birthday.
“We believe that it is important for readers to have inspiring role models, to learn about extraordinary individuals that have overcome challenges to make a difference in the world. That was the thought process Darren G. Davis went through before creating the comic book series ‘Female Force,’", stated the press release around the comic.
This is the first time the comic is featuring a woman of South Asian, Indian-American origin, Davis, the TidalWave publisher told The Quint. "She's a trailblazer!" he added.
Female Force was birthed in 2008 around women electoral politics. "We noticed that Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were both being treated unfairly in the press," said Davis, speaking in comparison to their male counterparts.
The Kamala Harris edition has been in the works "for the past six months now," much before Harris' Vice Presidential nomination, Darris told The Quint.
"Even if she didn't get the Vice President nomination, we really did feel like she has done so much to make the world a better place for everyone. We want to show not only girls, but people her achievements," he added.
“We wanted to showcase the strong women in today’s society that have inspired generations and shaped the culture of today,” Davis said.
“Kids and adults alike can look up to these women as great role models. One of the coolest things about the comic books is that we found schools using them for reluctant readers.”
Kamala's edition joins TidalWave’s ever-growing library of more than 200 comic book biographies. Previous titles have profiled Mother Teresa, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Condoleezza Rice and Cher, among several others.
As you flip through the pages of the 22-page comic, you see a baby Kamala Harris, with her mother Shyamala Gopalan, donning a salwar kurta. You see them worship at a Hindu temple. There is even a mention of Gopalan's upper caste bloodline.
“The Kamala Harris comic book helps readers in their connection to the main character on a personal level that the news, for its nature, set distance. Due to that, the goal of this project is to tell people details that most of them previously knew but couldn't feel related to their lives,” said the comic book artist, Juan Burgos.
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