At first glance, “Solution Squad” looks like any other comic. There are heroes, villains and vivid colors that bounce off the page as the good guys battle the not-so-good guys. But take a closer look, and an underlying theme emerges.
Superman may be able to fly, and Spider-Man may have Spidey Sense, but Jim McClain has an even more unlikely superpower.
He gets kids to enjoy math.
“The characters are made in such a way that their powers are math concepts,” McClain says.
The characters have names such as Absolutia, who can raise or lower temperature; La Caculadora, who can do mental calculations at lightning speed; and Radical, who can see and manipulate patterns of electromagnetic energy. There are also the twins Abscissa and Ordinate.
“You have Abscissa down here with the X,” McClain says, pointing to the X exhibited on the front of her Solution Squad uniform. “She runs along the horizontal access. Her twin brother, Ordinate — with a Y — is strong, and he can fly along the Y axis. Together they are called The Ordered Pair. They’re twins, but she was born first, so the X goes first, then the Y.”
In addition to introducing characters who represent math concepts, the comic’s heroes sometimes communicate using a prime number code.
“The heroes developed it to get out of the trap that they are put in, but then they use it to communicate with each other so the bad guys can’t understand what they are saying,” McClain says. “Once the student has done the lesson in the back (of the book) to develop the code … they have the code key and can decode their messages. I will use it forever.”
The comic also makes use of math terms throughout its installments. The heroes’ air transport is called the “Coordinate Plane.” One adventure begins with the plane en route to a rendezvous with team’s seagoing headquarters, the SOH-CAH-TOA (Sine, Cosine, Tangent).
“Even though kids aren’t ready for SOH-CAH-TOA yet,” McClain says, “I’ve planted the seed.”
Unlike many past popular super squads, McClain’s heroes are diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity and even body type. He did that on purpose, because he wanted the characters to reflect his own students.
“To get girls to learn math was a challenge for me from decades ago, because they don’t think they are any good at it,” he says. “Fortunately, we’ve advanced, but back in the day, that was a challenge to get girls to think they were good at math. … Girls can do math just fine, thank you very much. So I balanced the group that way just for that purpose, the racial and cultural blending came from my students.”
In addition to introducing math concepts to help students academically, the comic creator wants to make sure that “Solution Squad” can be an escape for any young readers in need of one. Just as his heroes were for him as a child.
“When I was a kid, Batman and Superman smiled,” McClain says. “Batman did not go around with bloody fists and beating the heck out of everybody. … Those were the characters that I loved. Superman and Batman were my adult male role models. … In recent years, Superman and Batman have been somewhat dark, especially in the movies. … So the first thing I make sure my characters do, they smile. All of them smile.”
This story comes courtesey of SouthBendTribune
