Mighty man reimagined

Mighty Man was created for township audiences and published as part of Afri-Comics, marketed as South Africa’s own version of Superman. Some of the early issues even called him “The Human Law Enforcing Dynamo.” The tricky part, though, was that at the time, the laws he was supposedly upholding were mainly apartheid laws. What’s more, Mighty Man never stepped outside the boundaries of the township—usually Soweto—when it came to the threats he faced. He didn’t challenge broader systems or authorities. Instead, he was a Black hero seemingly made for Black readers, with enemies that were always local: township gangsters (tsotsis), drug lords (dagga merchants), and anyone seen as disturbing the peace or threatening ‘law and order.’ Now, our role is to reimagine him in a new, integrated South African context—one where justice means more than enforcing the status quo, and where a hero can speak to a shared national future, not just a narrow past.