Introducing the Epics of Enkidu

This morning, as I was doing my normal "I don't want to get out of bed" scroll through Twitter, I received a message about a campaign for a new indie book that is about to open for backing on Indiegogo. 

The Epics of Enkidu
By: Ahmed Alameen and Felix Torres

The Indiegogo page offers several tiny morsels of information (since it is in pre-release) but it is enough to intrigue me:

1. It is a sequel to the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest surviving literary work.  This is a massive text to take on as it's something you learn about in middle school (when you learn about Mesopotamia), it's something you study in literature classes in high school and college. It is not just significant for its age, but the tale it tells as well.

2. The primary character is a person with autism.  This is something I absolutely love. We have seen comics take on issues of race, gender, sexuality; we've seen comics take on raising the visibility of persons with disabilities.  We've seen comics offer insight into the lives and minds of people with a variety of mental health conditions, but not really Autism. As the spectrum of Autism continues to expand with individual conditions/syndromes being diagnosed with more accuracy this creates a space to positively empower someone on the spectrum. With 1 in 6 children under the age of 17 being diagnosed with Autism, there needs to be an increase in creative representations so these children could find someone to identify with!

3. The little nuggets of art on the indiegogo page look like they live up to the task of taking on an epic work of literature.

Everything intrigued me about this project, so I reached out to the creators with a couple of questions.  Here's a tease of my full interview with writer and creator

A Quick Q and A

CBP--Can you offer a quick summary of the story?

AA-The Epics of Enkidu is a comic book that features a superhero who happens to be Autistic, in what could be the sequel to the oldest story ever found in human history, The Epics of Gilgamesh. The story follows Enkidu who is brought back from out of time and does not remember who he is. Being autistic, his brain works so fast, that everything around him moves too slow, which makes him socially odd and interacts with the world differently, but it does help him analyze everything, and it allows him to see the patterns of things; things that can happen before they happen. It can be handy when he is in danger, but not when you try to communicate with him.

CBP-Why did you choose to create a main character with Autism?
AA-I wanted to dedicate a character for my nephew, who is an awesome autistic kid, and the muse for my story. And through this story I want to raise awareness about autism and help people understand more about how it is like to be on the spectrum, and also I want to inspire the autistic community to overcome their daily challenges, and hopefully realize that they can be heroes. 

CBP--Were there any challenges with writing/illustrating this kind of character? 
AA-It wasn’t, but if you asked me that question four years ago, it would have been. The reason I was writing the story with confidence is because I became very interested in history, especially Mesopotamian history, and when I decided to write the story, I already had all the materials I needed to use for weaving my plot(s).

Conclusion

I'm intrigued enough by the story of the premise to set an alert for the Indiegogo campaign when it opens.  Ahmed's interview responses (you'll see more Friday!) make me want to empty my wallet!  Click the banner box at the top to check out their full trailer for the comic and set an alert for Saturday's launch!