3. THE RISE OF THE HEROES NO ONE SAW COMING.

Read from the Magazine Edition

By Fernando Velez

After so many years and more than twenty issues, Kraven Magazine started to feel heavy to me in a way I hadn’t felt before. Not creatively—I was still full of ideas—but financially, emotionally, and physically, it was becoming harder to carry. I was losing money and feeling exhausted. I was also fighting my own battles at the time, trying to stay present, trying to stay focused, trying not to let my own pressure swallow me.

I knew I needed to stop for a moment and listen to my instincts. The magazine had already given me everything it was meant to give me. It taught me discipline, responsibility, and how to build something from nothing. But I had always wanted to tell stories in a different way. I had always dreamed of movies, of characters, of worlds that could live beyond pages. After almost three years, I started asking myself how long I was going to stay in the same form before allowing the dream to evolve.

In one of the last issues of the magazine, one of my writers wrote an article about the misrepresentation of queer people in the comic book industry. At the same time, we had a small section where my friend Duy wrote short fictional comedy stories. I remember thinking, 'What if we merged those two ideas?' What if he writes a story about a gay superhero? At first, it felt playful, like a transition, like a way to test something new.

But then my mind opened in a way I wasn’t expecting.

I would walk around the Castro district in San Francisco and see drag queens, activists, people with scars, people carrying heavy stories, people who had been hurt and still showed up for themselves every single day. My community was already full of heroes; they just didn’t wear costumes – and no one was writing their stories.

And suddenly, I was back in my childhood. Back to those notebooks. Back to that idea of a gay person with powers who could save the world. Back to that question I once asked myself: would he save a world that would never  save him? That question had never left me. It had just been waiting for the  right moment to return. That was when I understood something very clearly: We couldn’t keep waiting for others to create heroes for us. And we couldn’t keep accepting that our stories were secondary, niche, or optional. All my life, I wanted to be a storyteller. This was the moment when wanting was no longer enough. I had to commit to becoming one.

And another memory came back to me.  My older brother was in the hospital, and it was Three Kings Day. My parents saw how many children were alone while  families were celebrating at home. After my brother passed away, my father and two friends would dress up as the Three Kings. I would dress as a clown. We would go to the hospital and ask the kids what they had asked the Kings for. Then I would run to my mom, and she would go straight to the truck full of toys she had bought with her Christmas bonus. Throughout the year she would sell candy, flan, anything she could, just to keep that truck full. That’s how those gifts appeared. 

  One time, a mother came to us crying. She thanked us because her child had passed away while playing with the toy we had just given him earlier that day. That was the first time I understood what being a hero really meant. Not saving the world – just being present when it mattered. Giving someone one moment of joy. One memory. One feeling of being seen.

When I began thinking about creating heroes, I wanted characters who had walked through difficult journeys – heroes whose real power came from their struggles. I wanted to create representation that had been missing in an industry capable of shaping how entire communities are perceived. 

These would be marginalized individuals who discover abilities that could save humanity from extinction at the hands of an ancient enemy. Suddenly, they hold the fate of the world in their hands while facing that relentless question: Is humanity worth saving?

The story is not simply about good versus evil. It is about systems versus individual conscience, and whether these heroes can choose to fight for a world that has never fought for them. Through the heroes' journey, I wanted to give a voice to those who would see themselves reflected in these characters for the first time.

That was the moment everything shifted.

I started writing seriously. I hired artists to sketch. I chose names. I built origins. I wrote episode by episode without knowing where the story would go next, producing and creating at the same time. Friends offered to help financially,not because they understood shares or companies—and not because I did, but because they believed in me. That belief carried me more than money ever could.

And then I learned how expensive art really is. Every sketch. Every page. Every correction. Developing one character alone was heavy. Now imagine six heroes, plus villains, plus an entire world. I produced a pilot and I wasn’t happy with it. I took it to WonderCon in Anaheim to see what would happen, knowing that moment could either end everything or change it.

There, I saw a mom reading our character descriptions to her children. And I heard her say, “When someone tells you that gay people are bad, you tell  them they are heroes.”

That sentence changed my life.

I understood that this wasn’t only for us. It was for people outside our community too. For teenagers, parents, and allies who didn’t know how to understand us yet. This wasn’t just representation. It was education through empathy. It was art creating bridges.

I couldn’t stop after that. While traveling in Paris with Waiyen, my partner at the time, the city showed me a different approach for the comic. So I went back and started again. Waiyen joined me, we hired more artists. We rebuilt the first episode while I was writing and rewriting, covering walls with sticky notes. We were couch surfing. Every dollar went into the comic. For five years, we worked like that. We redid the first episode three times until it finally reflected the level of art and truth we believed in.

Without realizing it, all those notebooks from my childhood, all those scattered ideas, all those stories that had lived only in my head now physically surrounded me. On walls. On tables. On paper. Becoming the foundation of an entire universe.

We completed the first mid-season: six episodes numbering two hundred seventy-two pages. We were ready to launch. And then the pandemic hit.

Everything stopped. We had no clear way to move forward. No path to launch. After working so hard to create this first 272-page book, after saving every hard-earned dollar to finally print our first comic, the world suddenly stopped. The money we had set aside had to be used just to survive the early stages of the pandemic. I couldn’t think straight anymore. My mind was in disbelief — after years of dreaming about printing our first comic, a pandemic, like for so many of us, changed everything we had planned.

That’s when Waiyen said, “What if we try Kickstarter?”

I hesitated. We had tried these platforms before when we first had the idea for the comic, and nothing had worked. So when he said, “Let’s try again,” I was scared — scared that the world would watch me fail all over again. But I had no other choice.

The community showed up. Just 120 people — but that was enough for the next domino to fall. We didn’t need thousands to believe in us, just a handful who could carry us into the next phase. Because of them, we were able to release our first book in the middle of a world that had shut down.

But even after the release, things were still difficult. We couldn’t advertise on social media because queer content was categorized as a “social issue,” which restricted our ability to run paid ads and limited how we could reach our audience. With events canceled during the pandemic, we were left with thousands of unsold copies. 

We tried posting in Facebook groups, and the kind of hate we received was unbelievable. How could these so-called “macho” guys feel so threatened by queer heroes? It became emotionally draining, because every time the haters attacked the community, the community expected me to defend them. My days became filled with anger and resentment. I felt like I was becoming another hater in return. Once again, I found myself wondering if humanity was worth saving.

Still, we refused to give up. We kept creating while continuing to find ways to promote the work. As things slowly began to reopen, we started attending events again. One of the first was Redmond Pride, where we helped organize the inaugural celebration. It was a small Pride, but we connected directly with people which reinforced how important the project truly was.

There, we met a film student who approached us about creating a short documentary for school. What began as a small class project eventually became more than five years of documenting our journey. These events allowed us to network, to get exposure and to expand our reach. 

Yet, the cost of traveling to events and paying for booths versus what we were able to sell never balanced out. At local comic conventions, we were often buried among massive corporations like Marvel, DC and others that already controlled the narrative. It was difficult to be seen.

At this point, we started to doubt whether this project had a future. Friends and people around me had stopped believing in me after so many years of me “trying.” The cost of living, the cost of production, the cost of marketing — it all felt immense for me. My friends were already buying homes and building successful careers, while I felt behind like a little kid chasing an impossibe dream. 

So there we were with an expensive storga room holding fragments of a dream, the unsold books. We were still responsible for paying the artists, who depended on this work to survive in Venezuela. We became extremely broke. We had only enough savings to cover the next month’s rent. Our relationship was fracturing, and Palm Springs Pride was approaching in just a few weeks. I had to decide whether to stay home and play it safe, or risk the last of what we had left to attend.

I chose the risk.

We loaded the books and went, knowing we were putting our last safety net, and our relationship, on the line.

As the event began, people slowly started gathering around the booth. Then the line formed. They waited to hear about the universe, flipping through the pages, asking questions, and buying copies. Some returned emotional after seeing themselves reflected as heroes. Others expressed gratitude for representation that made their children feel visible. In that moment – standing there with everything at risk – I realized the project mattered far beyond me.

Not only did we sell far more than we’d even hoped, but something completely unexpected happened: A producer stopped by and purchased a book. Later, he returned and bought the rest of the books from the series. Before leaving, he came back once more and invited me to interview for a mentorship program at Sony Pictures Animation – an opportunity that could only be accessed through a direct invitation from a producer. His name was David, and that moment opened a door we had never imagined would be within reach.

He helped me prepare for the opportunity, which required that I pitch an adaptation of a psychological thriller into a comedy and present it to executives and producers at Sony Pictures Animation. I became one of the finalists for the program, which included mentorship from Sony Pictures directors on how to direct a fifteen-minute animated short connected to the Spider-Man franchise.

The producers believed that the technical skills I still needed as a director could be learned while actively working, and instead, David encouraged me to pursue the possibility of developing an animated television series, with me attached as the director.

After that, things began to move. A local news outlet in Seattle featured the comic, and we finally started moving inventory that had been sitting for nearly two years. Other media outlets began to follow. For the first time, it felt like the project was gaining traction and lifting off the ground.

I was asked to move to Los Angeles to pursue  the possibility of landing a deal for a television  adaptation of Class6. 

After pitching to a Sony Pictures Animation creative director he connected us with a production company who came aboard and we began searching for a writer with experience on similar projects – but then the industry strike happened.

By that point, our inventory had finally sold out. We needed to reprint, but I didn’t want to simply reproduce something I had started nearly a decade earlier. I had grown. I had learned from working with the producer. I was no longer the same  person who had begun writing this story at twenty-five.

Before moving to Los Angeles to continue pursuing the deal, I made a different decision. Instead of rushing forward, I went to Thailand. I needed silence – no distractions. I needed space to disconnect and focus on expanding my creativity. 

There, a new phase of the project began.

I changed the name, created a new logo, and started rewriting episodes one through ten. But I faced a major limitation: the artwork already existed. My creativity was confined by drawings and expressions I could not easily change, and expanding the dialogue too much would have increased production costs and delayed the project for years.

So I made another decision.

I began writing a novel version of the story – one where I could finally tell it exactly the way I wanted.

When I finally moved to Los Angeles, the strike continued to delay the project. The producer became fully committed to another feature film (The GOAT), and the doors that had briefly opened began to close again. Major studios already had licensing agreements with other superhero universes, which created conflicts of interest and made it difficult for a new independent property to move forward.

Then, the 2024 election cycle shifted the industry even more. Studios began pulling back from projects centered on diverse and inclusive stories in order to appeal to a more conservative audience. That forced me to stop and reconsider the path I was on. I didn’t want to pursue deals with companies that would remain silent when representation became inconvenient.

If this universe was going to exist, it needed to be so immersive, so layered, and so present across different mediums that it could not be ignored or easily set aside. I pushed my creative level even higher, asking myself how this world could be experienced beyond a single format.

For the past several years, I have been building not just a story, but an entire universe – with very little money, no safety net, and no option except to keep moving forward. Every failure moved the work one step ahead.


Everything stayed on the table because I have continued to believe that representation matters, and these heroes are more than characters on a page.

Looking back, the magazine didn’t collapse; it completed its mission: it carried me to the comic. Another domino had fallen.

And this universe exists because once I understood what a hero really was, I knew I couldn’t stop until I built a world where those heroes could live forever.