By Juan Cole | Informed Comment | (Graphic Novel) | – –
Ali Saleh was an ordinary American teenager at Dearborn High. His father, Dr. Mahmoud Saleh, who had been born in Egypt, was a photovoltaic engineer. He made an epochal discovery that would make solar panels highly efficient and almost free. A coworker in his laboratory, Jack Tradu, was covertly an industrial spy and let a Big Oil corporation know about the threat.
The CEO, Whittier Comstocker, ordered a hit on Dr. Saleh. He was kidnapped by the mob and killed at a fracking site. But Saleh had fought back and the hit man, Beau X. Franke, got drenched in fracking sludge, turning him into a monstrous oily creature, the Slick. The Big Oil corporation was delighted to use him thereafter for sabotage.
Ali and his family were frantic when his father did not come home for several days. His mother, Nadia, tearfully called Dr. Tradu but could not get any information on his whereabouts. Ali found his father’s passkey and sneaked into the lab on the weekend. He found the Slick in his father’s office and tried to take on the monster. It arranged for him to slip on its trail of muck, and Ali fell into the photovoltaic equipment, setting off an explosion. He gained the ability to tap into sun, wind, wave and geothermal power and transform them into electricity with his own body.
Ali Saleh is the Green Current.
He will not rest until he destroys Slick and brings to justice the evil corporation that killed his father. He will recover his father’s stolen research, so that the world can be saved from destruction at the hands of carbon emissions and global warming.
In the meantime, Ali’s mother Nadia has determined to get a job at her husband’s old lab, to try to find out what really happened to the love of her life.
to be cont’d . . .
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