Bengaluru-based writer and filmmaker Falah Faisal’s graphic novel Musalman (Yoda Press), illustrated by Spud (@theartistspud), spins a twist on superheroes. Musalman isn’t a superhero who fights villains with punches or high-tech gadgets, but one whose strengths are his humour and his heart. “It started off as a joke,” Faisal tells us. “My stand-up comedian friend would make a joke about how he looked like Muslim Clark Kent.” This made him think of a world with a Muslim Superman.

Faisal recalls reading Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar around the same time. “In the comic, Superman lands in erstwhile Soviet Russia and becomes a tool of state propaganda in the period between 1953 and the 2000s,” he says. This alternative take on the American original intrigued the writer. “I thought, what if Superman lands up in a madrasa in India; what would change?” These early ideas nudged him to create his first comic Musalman vs Trade Center. The green body-suit wearing superhero flies through the World Trade Center in New York, and nothing happens to it. The comic questioned Islamophobia, which followed the 9/11 attacks, through light comedy.