Spirit of Kwanzaa: Heroic Ghostly Avenger

darth_paul on Dec. 26, 2012

After making a trio of Jewish/semi-Hanukkah inspired heroes, and a whole slew of Christmas-themed heroes, I decided to try my hand at creating a character for the third most prominent of winter holidays, Kwanzaa. “Spirit of Kwanzaa” here is the result. I do not celebrate Kwanzaa myself, and before I created this character, I knew zero about it other than that it involved lighting candels much like people do during Hanukkah. So, it was very interesting doing the research about all the concepts and ideals that make up the celebration in order to work it all into an origin for him and bring it all together as the basis for his powers and abilities. Also, while he has a tragic origin involving gun violence around a winter holiday, I want to make it clear that I am in no way making any kind of political statement in light of similar tragedies that have occured during this 2012 holiday season. I wrote this long before any of those events occured, and anything I have written for this character is purely and oddly coincedental. (I would never make light of anything like that anyway.) My intent was strictly to create an impactful origin for the character in the vein of simliar “avenging spirit” types such as “Deadman” or “The Specter.”