The Four Color Media Monitor

Aleteia announced there's a new comic published titled Medal Knight, drawing ideas from a Catholic representative of Poland who'd sacrificed his life during WW2 to save another man's:

There’s a new superhero on the block, and his story was inspired by a Catholic saint. Medal Knight is the latest graphic novel from Voyage Comics, a publisher committed to creating high quality entertainment informed by Catholic values. Voyage’s offerings include features on the lives of saints, like Digital Disciple: Carlo Acutis and the Eucharist, and adventures inspired by the works of great Catholic thinkers, like The Phantom Phoenix series. Now, with the addition of Medal Knight, St. Maximilian Kolbe joins their list of influences.

Medal Knight follows the story of Max, a gifted 18-year-old with a penchant for invention and engineering. Enrolled at a highly advanced technical school that pushes him to achieve great things, Max makes great strides in the field of robotics while taking pride in the potential of his inventions to help the world. [...]

Philip Kosloski, author of Medal Knight and founder of Voyage Comics, explained that Max was inspired by the influential Polish saint Maximilian Kolbe. Kolbe is most prominently known for his martyrdom at the Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz, but what many do not know is that this Catholic saint was a technology enthusiast:

“One of his classmates in seminary later explained how he was enamored with the Wright Brothers and the aerodynamics of flying. He was often seen by his fellow seminarians sketching drawings of spacecraft in his spare time, filling the margins of his theology notebooks.” Philip Kosloski added, “In the biography A Man for Others: Maximilian Kolbe, Bronislaus Strycznys explained, ‘Already, he anticipated the possibility of reaching the moon with a rocket and he thought of many other unusual inventions.’”

[...] Medal Knight pays homage to all these elements of St. Maximilian Kolbe’s life with this new, exciting superhero. With phenomenal art from Sergio Cariello of the Action Bible! and Phil Kosloski’s genuine and realistic dialogue, Medal Knight is the exact comic needed in the post-Avengers comic book world. Tony Stark, eat your heart out!

It's decidedly preferable reading stuff like this than the embarrassment the Avengers became under hack writers like Brian Bendis and Jason Aaron in the past 2 decades. Historical figures like these can certainly make great wellsprings, so congratulations to Voyage for thinking these tales up.

Labels: Europe and Asia, history, indie publishers, technology