Art by Thom Zahler
Journalist Julie Wilson is conflicted. Her reporting routinely uncovers hunger and environmental crises across the United States but she feels powerless in regard to preventing them. While venting to her cat Persephone one evening, the feline offers to transport Julie through a secret portal. Once on the other side, she meets a group of superheroes fighting against the very issues that she is concerned about. Julie also realizes that she has superpowers herself and transforms into the superhero Demeter. She then travels across the United States with her new colleague Hunger Halter to teach both children and adults about how they can help end hunger and support the environment.
Although fictional, the above narrative serves as a vehicle for the real-world hunger relief organization Feeding San Diego as it embarks on a similar mission. In 2024, the nonprofit published a specially-created comic book called Hunger Action Heroes Unite! to educate students about issues surrounding hunger and the environment, as well as an interactive curriculum that compliments the storyline. The project was then piloted at nearby Creekside Elementary School to great success, paving the way for the illustrated Hunger Halter and Demeter to likewise travel across the country, just like Julie Wilson.
“Sadly, across the United States, more than fifty million people turned to hunger relief organizations this past year,” Dana Williams of Feeding San Diego explained during an “Empowering Kids to Fight Hunger & Food Waste” panel at the 2025 San Diego Comic-Con. “This is happening at a time where there is also over a hundred and twenty billion meals – I’ll repeat that – a hundred and twenty billion meals worth of food that is going to waste. This is surplus, high-quality food that is literally ending up in our landfills. It’s the equivalent of about sixty-three million tons of food. It’s valued over three hundred billion dollars.”
There is an environmental concern as well, as an estimated eight percent of greenhouse gas emissions is attributed to food waste. From the perspective of Dana Williams and organizations like Feeding San Diego, if this surplus food was donated to help those in need instead of being buried in landfills, two problems would be resolved simultaneously.
“There’s no reason why in 2025, people should be going hungry in this country,” Williams stressed. “There’s more than enough food to feed everybody. It’s really a matter of logistics.”
As well as education, which is where Hunger Action Heroes Unite! comes in. The seeds for the project were planted in 2022 when Feeding San Diego and the recently opened Comic-Con Museum teamed up for a Hunger Action Hero Art Contest. Students in San Diego County submitted over 350 illustrations of a Hunger Action Hero as part of the contest, with the number subsequently whittled down to ten. The public was then asked to vote on their favorites, after which two winners emerged – Hunger Halter and Demeter.
Allan Lavigne of the Bronze Armory next turned the submitted designs into actual costumes, a pair of actors were hired, and the superheroes made their public debut on July 20, 2022, at the Comic-Con Museum. Much like the Hunger Halter and Demeter of the Hunger Action Heroes Unite! comic book, the pair visited local schools, sorted food donations at Feeding San Diego, and even greeted travelers at San Diego International Airport.
For Dana Williams – who spearheaded the Hunger Action Hero Art Contest – the resulting success was only the beginning. “I’m a mom,” she explained at San Diego Comic-Con. “And also for the last six years I’ve been the director of our community communications at Feeding San Diego. So I’m always trying to think of how do we particularly connect with the youth in the community and across the country to help them understand that they can be part of the solution.”
A comic book immediately came to mind and clinical psychologist Dr. Janina Scarlet of Superhero Therapy was hired to write an origin story for Hunger Action Heroes Unite! The completed script was then illustrated by Thom Zahler. Afterwards, the finished product was handed off to Jennifer Harris Edstrom, who designed a project-based curriculum specifically for the comic book.
“We decided we wanted to do something where students would have an authentic experience,” Edstrom explained during the “Empowering Kids to Fight Hunger & Food Waste” panel. “Where students would assume the role of their own superhero. That’s fun, right? I mean, I want to be my own superhero. And then they work with their team and they become their own council of superheroes, and they tackle a problem in their own way.”
With a comic book in hand and a curriculum in place, a test pilot for the project was the next logical step, which is where Amber Schulman of Creekside Elementary School came in.
“We started with the learning about everything, and that was so impractical when you’re learning about how food really effects the body, and nutrition, and also then finding out how much of it is actually wasted and how many people that are going hungry,” Schulman said at San Diego Comic-Con. “I mean, that was shocking to (students). And then learning about ways that they can become empowered… donating, volunteering… but also about not wasting food, the impact that we have on our environment. And we learned about composting, and we composted in the classroom. All of those things had such a big impact.”
When students were divided into groups afterwards – or, rather, “Councils of Superheroes” – to select a project to work on, they all focused on ways to donate to Feeding San Diego. One of them, for instance, collected 807 pounds of food that Feeding San Diego then transported to Los Angeles to help families effected by recent wildfires. Another spent approximately two hours on site at Feeding San Diego, where they sorted, weighed, and packaged over eight thousand pounds of produce. The third group, meanwhile, organized an after-school lemonade snack stand that raised $910.50 for Feeding San Diego.
Although everybody agreed that the curriculum’s primary mission was a success, Hunger Action Heroes Unite! also made an unexpected impact on other students at Creekside Elementary School. “I noticed how inspired my class became to help others and then I noticed as well with other students in the school,” Amber Schulman said. “Seeing them made a difference. And that’s what I feel like we really want. We want students and kids to feel like they are empowered to make a difference, and the more kids that stand out and do try to do that, other kids see that it’s possible.”
For Dana Williams of Feeding San Diego, Schulman’s observation dovetailed with her own hopes for the project. “A while back I realized that awareness precedes choice, which precedes change,” she explained. “And so how better than to connect with today’s youth and even adults than through pop culture. By tapping into the world of comics and being a part of the delights of Comic-Con, we really can help raise awareness. Not just for this comic book but really for social issues in general and the time when we can all be a superhero by just taking action.”
While none of us may ever get to assemble with the Avengers or join the Justice League of America, the Hunger Action Heroes have proved that we can still unite as superheroes and make a difference nonetheless.
Anthony Letizia