Not All Superheroes Wear Capes

Kode Abdo, more famously known as BossLogic, is a bona fide builder of worlds. In the ever-teeming digital space, he commands a vast blast radius that includes art work for the biggest names in comic books and by extension, pop culture. Marvel and Disney are only some of the entities that have benefited from the swooning scale of his brush. When the pixels sparkle, you know it's him. His work rewards both the child and adult in you. Here, he shares with us how art and life can imitate each other in the wildest, most mind-blasting ways.

- Indran Paramasivam

It’s known that you started to draw at six years old. What about drawing called out to you?

It was mainly because I was bored at school. So, in my textbooks, I’d draw on the blank pages and the faces. Like, I’d see someone and think to myself: she needs glasses. I’d constantly get into trouble for it. I didn’t have any sort of problem or condition that prevented me from focusing. I just knew what I liked, even back then. I do wish I paid more attention, though. You want to be good at the basic stuff early on.

And what were you drawing back then?

Back in the early days, it was anything I liked, including wrestlers like Sting and Goldberg and Dragon Ball characters. There was this programme called Cheese TV, which had all the cartoons we loved as kids. I’d watch those shows and transfer the characters I liked to paper.

What you do today as ‘BossLogic’ testifies to the endurance of a strong childhood passion. Why has that been important to you?

At a later age, if you’re not going into it for the right reasons— for a passion that grew organically—I feel like you won’t put as much effort into it or hold on to it when the waters get rough. If that happens, will you sink or swim? It’s usually sink. I’ve seen that happen many times. Social media is a perfect example of this. There are artists who don’t get traction or clout there and just quit. They hang up their gloves because they’re not getting the praise they want. And I’ve always said to them, “If all social platforms went down, do you still have an identity?”