Pasadena’s Bob Wyman estimates he’s been to San Diego Comic-Con at least 20 times over the years, even once showing up in Doctor Who cosplay with daughter Sally Krueger-Wyman.
But this year, the father-daughter duo arrived with a different mission. Tucked into a booth in the crowded confines of the Small Press Pavilion, they were telling all comers about the 8-issue comic series they’ve co-written – “Supercharged!” – and the games and collectibles they’re producing as part of the nonprofit, Earthshot, which Wyman co-founded.
Like all comic book heroes, they’re aiming to save the planet.
“Earthshot is a climate education nonprofit where we use entertaining media – like comic series, Fortnite islands, cards and games and collectibles – to communicate with our audience how clean technologies can successfully address the climate change,” says Wyman.
“In addition to having a really cool murder mystery, adventure and romance, we also have an EV Tech Talk in every issue, where we explain electric vehicles and why they’re so cool.”
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While they are relatively new to comics creation, Wyman is a longtime collector of Silver Age comics (that explosively creative period between 1956-1970), and Krueger-Wyman is a writer whose work has appeared in About Place Journal and Barzakh Magazine. We’d met years ago via the poet Lisa Krueger (Bob’s spouse and Sally’s mother), but it was still a complete surprise to encounter them at a booth on the crowded floor of the convention center.
Both have extensive experience in doing good. Wyman practiced energy and environmental law for 40 years, including serving on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee for more than 30 years, among other accomplishments. Krueger-Wyman, who lives with the chronic illness dysautonomia, is the executive director of the nonprofit Los Angeles Dysautonomia Network while also doing post-graduate work at USC.
“When I retired,” said Wyman, “I figured, well, I think we need to have a kind of a mass market communication strategy, because climate change is paralyzing. It’s so daunting and the time scale is so large, it tends to paralyze people, and it’s also, unfortunately, become politically polarizing.
“So if you want to communicate successfully about climate change, you can’t preach at people and you can’t say the sky is falling,” he says. “But you can get people excited about solutions.”
After working on a racing game to illustrate the effects of carbon emissions on the environment, they realized they needed a compelling narrative first.
“Nobody’s going to be interested in our racing game unless we have a story. So let’s create a story,” he says, adding with pride. “Sally started to outline, because she was writing in several media. She writes both fiction and nonfiction.”
“I’m a romance reader, also,” said Krueger-Wyman, while deftly handling questions from conventioneers, such as “Got anything with magic in it?” and requests for candy during our conversation. “So, for it to be interesting to me, it had to have a little romance in there.”
The father-daughter combo teamed up with some super friends – a crew that includes artists Jim & Ruth Keegan, co-writer Claudia O’Brien and Pasadena high schooler and intern Reese Goldstein, among others – to create the comic “Supercharged!”
In the series, which is halfway through its 8-issue run, graduate student Cara enlists the help of a truck driver named Jack to transport her EV battery prototype safely across the country to L.A. in hopes of winning a contest to secure funding. But from page one onward, bad guys are attempting to steal the powerful battery and harm the pair – not to mention Jack’s beloved red truck, dubbed Ruby – to prevent her from sharing her work or achieving her goal.
Inside each issue, there’s an informative back section focused on real-world EV innovators, from Palm Springs EV, which converts existing cars to electric vehicles, to Mercedes-Benz’s efforts to create electricity-generating solar coating.
Having attracted corporate sponsorship from a variety of green companies and utility organizations, Wyman says they’ll continue efforts to develop high school programs, build out the board games and develop projects for TV.
And the mission they developed within a certain well-known videogame? Players work to virtually cap abandoned oil wells, and the money the nonprofit raises from this goes to … cap actual abandoned oil wells in the real world.
“It’s basically: Play Fortnite, save the world,” says Wyman. “We’re all about using entertainment to communicate solutions to climate change.”
For more about “Supercharged!” and the nonprofit, check out the Earthshot website.