Move over Elektra.
Some New York City students are into a new superhero. Her name is Crimson, and she fights off sinister credit card offers that can lead to debt and despair.
Students in a Brooklyn after-school program - who took part in the Comic Book Project - created the character, wrote a story about her battle against overspending, and illustrated it for their own comic book, which was published earlier this year and distributed to schools across the city.
Michael Bitz, the founding director of the Comic Book Project, said students in five upstate cities also will be able to create comics with a financial literacy theme, under a grant the project received from the New York State Banking Department last month. The department awarded a total of $1 million to 11 organizations to promote financial literacy in the state.
Mr. Bitz said students in his project start out by researching issues like staying out of debt. "It's not focused on children learning about mortgages but on the consequences of being fiscally responsible or irresponsible," he said.
Six children from sixth through eighth grade worked on "The Legend of Crimson," which shows the heroine getting carried away with credit card spending and falling into an abyss of overdue bills. With patience and determination, she gets back on track. But then villains with credit applications attack her. So she transforms into Crimson and defeats them with her superhero powers.
Mr. Bitz said he started the Comic Book Project in 2001 at an after-school program in Queens to get children reading and writing for fun. The project soon added themes to the learning experience, for example, leadership, teamwork, the environment, and most recently, financial literacy. It spread to other after-school programs in the city and, by last school year, to nine other U.S. cities - with 10,000 students taking part.
A panel of experts selects the best comics, which are then printed by Dark Horse Comics in Milwaukie, Ore., the publisher of "Star Wars" and "Conan."
A different version of the comic book is printed for each city, featuring the work of students there.
Mr. Bitz said that four complete stories are chosen for publication, along with single panels from other stories, so that each participating after-school program is represented.
About 5,000 copies of the comic books are distributed free to schools in each city.
John Cavalcante said students in an after-school program he supervises at P.S. 120 in Queens took to the topic of money a lot better than he had expected, enthusiastically doing the research, writing, and illustrating.
Mr. Cavalcante, a site supervisor for Virtual Y programs offered by the Flushing YMCA, said about 50 fifth- and sixth-graders at the school participated last school year. Twice a week from late November to early April, they worked on the comics in teams of about five students, with some assigned to writing and others to art work.
"I definitely feel that they learned valuable lessons," he said.
Mr. Bitz said the project taps in to the resurging interest children are showing in comics, which he attributed to the popularity of Japanese animation and blockbuster movies based on characters like Spider-Man.
The project is hosted by Columbia University Teachers College. For students who are considered "underserved," grants cover the $6 it costs to participate. Mr. Bitz said JPMorgan Chase & Co. supplied a grant for New York City students two years ago when the theme was leadership.
The grant from the state banking department, will let about 5,000 children in Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and Yonkers participate.
Aside from the published comics, all of the
Mr. Bitz said the project appeals even to young children. A group of third- and fourth-graders, who told him they had never thought much about money, created a comic called "Costly Candy" about a young boy who borrowed money from a friend to buy chocolate, then could not repay.
"Because they're so young, they were thinking about spending money on candy," he said. "They're not just having fun making the comic book; they're really connecting with the issue."
