“I am so thankful for the great coverage from the wonderful Monterey County Weekly newspaper!”
Nick Tomb
Sometime in the long process of developing an integrated maritime strategy for the country of Ghana, Nick Tomb – from the Institute for Security Governance in Monterey – made a joke that the strategy would be better understood as a comic book with an interesting plot, rather than a policy book or a government website.
And when stranded at home during Covid, he found himself writing one.
“It’s not your grandfather’s comic book,” he says about The Adventures of Maritime Domain Awareness Man, the first issue of the comic series to be released April 4. “It’s a 21st-century adventure.”
Tomb came up with the story of a Ghanaian boy named Kofi, a son of a fisherman, who suddenly discovers he has superpowers that allow him to know whenever there’s trouble at sea, and his friend, a girl named Esi, who is growing up to be an ocean scientist and advocate.
Once he finished the story, Tomb hired illustrators and culture brokers from Ghana, who drew the illustrations and helped with the cultural background. “I’m very proud of that part,” Tomb says. They brought the characters to life and increased his cultural awareness – for example, by introducing the Mami Wata, the African spirit of the seas who gives Kofi his unusual powers.
“I was feeling nervous – a white guy in California writing about West Africa,” Tomb says. But his Ghanaian friends loved the story and supported him through the process.
The book’s target audience is young readers, but also anyone interested in environmental protection. The series is an attempt at what Tomb describes as “edutainment” – much-needed education with a strong entertainment component. He’s already written the second volume of the comic series (in which Esi becomes politically active) and is working on another.
“I’ve learned so much while writing this book,” Tomb says, giving an example of aquatic plants that absorb carbon four times as fast as terrestrial plants, and what it would take to harness the power of tides at the Golden Gate Bridge, where trillions of gallons of water move through every day. “I would like to inspire young people to explore those ideas further.”
