INKANTO

You might’ve noticed some recurring characters in some of these projects. For the last few years, I’ve been working on a story about a superhero called Inkanto. His real name is Owen. He’s me! And while some might call writing a story about yourself being a superhero childish, I think I’ve made something kind of special with it. At first, it was just “haha, what if me and my friends were superheroes”, but then it turned into something with an original story that has a lot to say about the world, about feelings of powerlessness and hatred, about cycles of abuse, about the flaws in our legal and justice systems, about families, blood or otherwise, and so much more. And then I started realizing that it didn’t just have a lot to say, I had a lot to say about me.

I’m not someone who has a bad opinion of himself. I try to be my own hype man whenever I can. But I do struggle with insecurities, and as I came up with this story, I realized that I was discussing these insecurities through this fictionalized version of myself. Hell, I had actually leaned into it unconsciously. Several of the threats Inkanto faces are literal parallels of himself. So I leaned into it further. I made these doppelgängers represent some of those insecurities. Social struggles, the fear of change, general feelings of inadequacy, anger issues. Through fighting these threats, Inkant!Owen, as I’ve come to call him to distinguish him from the real Owen, comes to accept these parts of himself. He reaches out to these mirrors of himself and offers them a hand, and they become new friends. In the case of the anger issues, represented by a monster, he accepts that his struggles will always be part of him. Even if the monster dies, it will always live on in some way within him. But that’s okay. Because he knows who he is, and he knows how to live with those struggles. And as he grows and accepts parts of himself, so do I. Sure, some might call it a cheesy self-insert superhero story, but I say cringe culture is dead. What I have here is meaningful. Not just for me, but for any other person who might come across this story and have similar feelings about themselves.

I hope you enjoy what you’ve seen so far of Inkanto and his world, and I hope to show more.