Father and daughter fight climate change with comics

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.”

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 paralysing. It’s so daunting and the time scale is so large, it tends to paralyse people, and it’s also, unfortunately, become politically polarising.

“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 realised 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 LA in hopes of winning a contest to secure funding.