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Superheroes Everywhere

It’s always rewarding to discover something new about someone you already know

By Kellyn Brown

This is the second year in a row we
published our Amazing Issue, and for the second year in a row we found it easy to find people, feats and facts that amaze us. This is an impressive valley, and so are the residents who call it home.

From neighbors who are exceptional moms and elite athletes, to a landscape that features enormous lakes and a pristine national park, most of us who live here acknowledge how lucky we are and do what we can to stay.

Again, this year, we tapped our part-time designer, who is also a full-time comic book artist, Dwayne Harris, to illustrate the cover of the newspaper. To us, nothing conveys amazing like a superhero and Dwayne is amazing in his own right.

Along with writing and illustrating traditional comics, he writes graphic novels, my favorite of which still sits on my bookshelf and is titled “Amnesia.” It is a fascinating story about the consequences of everyone on Earth suddenly losing their memory. I grew up on comics, love science fiction and read the short novel in one sitting. The next day I told Dwayne how impressed I was by the book. I had discovered something new and amazing about someone I had known for years.

It’s always fun when that happens. And it happens a lot.

I remember sitting in the crowd at an open mic night with a friend of mine when I first saw his high school daughter take the stage, an impressive feat even if her performance wasn’t amazing. It was.

I know amazing skiers and snowboarders who somehow log hundreds of thousands of vertical feet every year while holding down jobs as engineers and designers.

I know amazing volunteers who serve as Big Brothers and Sisters or give their spare time to the homeless shelter or a number of other worthy nonprofits based in the Flathead.

Again, it’s always rewarding to discover something new about someone you already know – something that may amaze you more than others. In the case of Dwayne, since he gave me that graphic novel years ago, I’ve followed his work as he has continued to make his mark on the competitive comic book industry.

You may have seen his work in series such as “Black Powder” and “John Henry,” but if you haven’t, you really should. I’ve watched as he has made inroads with art directors at Comic-Con, the annual comic convention featuring the business’ heavyweights. His graphic novel, “Amnesia,” has especially drawn attention and has been optioned for a movie.

I’ve long appreciated the stories and art featured in the pages of comics and the idea of a hero at the heart of it. As a kid, my mother would take me to the comic book store to buy my favorite issues and to the theater to watch movie adaptations of my favorite characters. I still have a box of comic books in my storage shed.

When my family would take me on camping trips, I would wander through the woods with makeshift weapons pretending to save mankind from a fictional threat. Eventually, I thought at the time, I would certainly use these skills to fight crime. Instead, I grew up and became an editor and mostly sit in front of a computer all day.

Superheroes aren’t real in the sense that I imagined as a kid. And what I consider amazing today is far different than what I thought then. Now, when I wander into the woods – or, in our case, a national park – I’m amazed by the landscape without having to fight a villain.

And those who I consider heroes no longer wear costumes. They’re local artists, community volunteers and exceptional athletes. They truly belong in comic books.