Daniel Grussi
I always had an interest in blending creativity, art, and storytelling with disability advocacy. On a personal level, I have a younger cousin with down syndrome and grew up with a learning disability. In my childhood, I struggled a lot academically, socially, and felt emotionally isolated and a lot different from my peers. On top of my ADHD I also struggled with severe anxiety and a speech impediment. Because of these challenges, for the longest time I felt broken and never wanted anyone to know about what I went through for fear of them rejecting me. I believed that because of my differences I did not have any value to contribute to the world. However, in the midst of this great struggle I turned to the one place where I could escape beyond my limitations- my imagination. In my spare time I would spend countless hours daydreaming, reading comic books, drawing. As I read many comic book stories, my creativity and imagination came alive as I read about all the classic superheroes, such as Batman, Spider-Man, etc. In these fantastic stories you had ordinary people change their world for good using the extraordinary powers bestowed upon them. In many ways these heroes helped me to see the world not as it was, but as it could be. They dared me to dream of a world where I could make a difference. But as much as I loved these characters, I realized there was something missing. There weren't any superheroes that faced similar issues like me. Over the next few years, throughout high school and into college, I researched the mythos of superheroes and their importance in popular culture. What I found was that these stories have a profound ability to impact people in how they think about the world. And what began to form was an idea. I began to dream of a universe of a new type of superhero. Superheroes who lived with all kinds of different disabilities who not only went on great adventures to save the world, but radically changed the way people think about those who are affected by disability.
Chris Black
Although I haven’t had a direct link in my life to many people affected by disabilities or mental health issues, I still want to actively take part in showing love, kindness, and most of all inclusiveness to people with these issues; particularly through the Courageous Comics mission. My excitement for helping people and interest in superheroes is well connected to my passion for video games. When I was a young lad, I enjoyed watching video game developer interviews and saw how passionate the workers were about their creation. In one particular interview a designer said, “to accomplish anything in life all you need is hard work, perseverance, and creativity”. The last word, creativity, really stuck with me where the only limitation is the imagination. This boundaryless feature of imagination gives an infinite number of possibilities to generate compelling characters and stories; all it takes is a little hard work and perseverance with a single seed of an idea to get the imagination engine started. Imagination is something I held onto throughout my education. In elementary school, I discovered I didn’t have a passion for drawing, or even the ability to draw well (stick figures are still my forte). Then, in middle and high school I discovered I had a curiosity for unanswered questions, which is why I went on to pursue a graduate biology degree in college. FYI, I always made time for playing video games despite how grad school stress made me want to pull my hair out :). It is through playing video games and observing the developers’ passion for creating different worlds that lead to my goal of “creating my own world” by suggesting answers to scientific questions. Basically, there is this duality of creativity in two of my life’s passions- video games and science. Since the thread of creativity is interwoven in my passions, it’s no accident I became involved with the creative side of Courageous Comics. In my late teens, Daniel and I would casually talk about characters he made and he would show me his drawings in-between classes. Then, in college we really began fleshing out ideas over audio chats while playing online games and I even began to come up with characters and stories of my own. We had total freedom with being ourselves and saying whatever comes to mind. It’s really this freedom that fosters a creative environment. What I discovered was creating stories is a lot of fun and that these stories have the power to also change how people feel about themselves.
Louis Ward
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