FORGE A HERO COMICS PRESENTS

About Forge A Hero the family-run superhero card booth

We're a family with a printer, a camera, and a very strong opinion about who gets to be the hero.

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PAGE ONE · THE ORIGIN

It started with a sketch

Everything on this table came out of a notebook first. Including the name.

The original FAH! logo, drawn in marker on lined notebook paper
the original, marker on lined paper

Our logo was drawn by our 12-year-old son. He figured out that "FAH!" reads like a comic sound effect: POW, BAM, FAH! Which is exactly right, and better than anything the grown-ups came up with.

We kept it, uneven spikes and all. The only thing we changed was giving the letters a white outline so they still read when the mark is the size of a fingernail.

That's the whole booth in one story, really: a kid makes something with their whole heart, and the grown-ups take it seriously enough to print it.

PINNED TO THE BOARD

What we actually do

Ten-ish minutes at the table. Three things have to be true.

  • The kid designs it, not the computer

    Their own face becomes the hero. Then they choose the suit, the colors, the powers. The art gets made from their choices. We're just the people running the machine.

  • It happens in front of you

    No app, no waiting, no email address. You stand there and watch it come together. If it comes out wrong, we're right there and we do it again.

  • You leave holding it

    Rarity-badged, numbered, stamped on the back, in your hand before you walk away. Card #001 of a set that starts with them.

READ THIS ONE TWICE

The promise about photos

No legalese. Three sentences, and we mean all three.

  • The photo is used to make the art, then it's gone from our tablet. We never keep it, we never put it online, and it never goes in any gallery.
  • Nothing gets shown anywhere unless a grown-up ticks the box saying so, and that's artwork only, never the photo.
  • The download link on your card expires on its own after a month, so it can't be found later by someone who shouldn't.

If you'd rather skip the camera entirely, say so at the booth. Kids can design a hero from scratch and it works just as well. The full notice, including who the photo passes through →

— the two grown-ups, and the kid who drew the logo

Why we make these

There's a face kids make the first time they see themselves as a hero: a half-second where they check whether it's really them, and then decide that it is. We started doing this because we saw it once and wanted to see it again.

Come find us

Birthdays, card shows, school fairs, company family days. If there are kids and a table, we'll forge heroes on it.