🖤🤍 Careem "Khalil" Kanaan by our talented collaborator @jesncin for the @sonofalkhalilzine 💚❤️
hard to summarize 150+ pages of worldbuilding in one post, but here’s the core of my Superman reinterpretation:
this is not just “Superman but in Palestine.”
the project exists to re-center what Superman actually means by placing him somewhere where oppression is not abstract, neutrality is not an option and doing good has real consequences
if Superman is supposed to represent hope, protection, and moral clarity, then i wanted to ask:
what happens when those ideals exist inside systems built around occupation, surveillance, displacement, and narrative control?
“The Last Son of Krypton is also the son of the holiest of lands.”
Khalil is Palestinian–Kryptonian and raised in Al-Khalil, Palestine. He was raised by a Palestinian family after the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, grew up through the Second Intifada and the partition of Al-Khalil, and first became Superboy in response to the intensifying blockade on Gaza.
his relationship to Palestine isn’t symbolic. it’s lived.
the core contradiction of the story is that he has the power to save people in moments, but not the power to dismantle the systems hurting them overnight.
every intervention has consequences. every act of protection creates escalation. visibility itself becomes dangerous.
so the story stops being: “is Superman good?”
and becomes: how does someone stay good in a world that punishes people for protecting others?
a huge part of the project is also about belonging.
Khalil belongs through love, language, memory, and lived experience. His relationship to homeland is emotional, cultural, and lived.
Mama Mariam tells him: “Resistance, habibi. It’s fertile. Like the soil of your homeland.”
a lot of the emotional core of the project comes from the fact that Khalil was not raised by people who taught him power mattered more than humanity.
he was raised by people who taught him dignity, care, homeland, and responsibility.
the project is heavily focused on:
protection vs consequences
truth vs narrative control
survival vs dignity
resistance vs assimilation
hope as an active choice rather than passive optimism
another major character is Layla Loai, a Lebanese-American investigative journalist who moves to Al-Khalil as a correspondent.
where Khalil’s conflict is: “how do i protect people without making things worse?”
Layla’s conflict is: “what happens if the truth stays hidden?”
she believes silence protects systems more than people.
one of my favorite things about Layla is that she isn’t written as “the journalist love interest.” she’s someone whose worldview is built around the belief that if truth is buried, harm continues unchecked.
she lost her sense of permanence very young, grew up Arab in post-9/11 America, and became someone who refuses imposed narratives even when the truth isolates her from others.
where Khalil fears the consequences of visibility, Layla fears what happens when people look away.
a lot of her storyline deals with visibility vs safety, diaspora and belonging, as well as grief and disconnection
truth as responsibility rather than neutrality
one of the things i care about most in this project is that the people around Khalil are not props for his story. they embody different responses to systems of control, survival, fear, and resistance.
i also spent a ridiculous amount of time building the systems, symbolism, relationship architecture, and political logic of the world because i wanted it to feel structurally coherent rather than aesthetic.