Yonkers Comic Con Teaches How to Become Heroes The World Needs

Downtown Yonkers, NY — September 27, 2025

"Block your left shoulder! Right shoulder! Duck! "Block your left leg! Right leg! Duck" A Jedi master paced back and forth as he barked instructions at young trainees at the Padawan Training Station. He was in character for the 2025 Yonkers Comic Convention held at the Riverfront Library. "Force push! Action pose," he continued as the padwans waved around padded-baton light sabers.

As the group practiced harnessing The Force, the life-creating energy in the world of Star Wars, an evil Sith appeared and tried to convince the children to embrace the hate, anger, and greed of the dark side. The Jedi master turned to his pupils, equipped with their newly acquired combat skills, and gave the call for battle. "We know better than to join the dark side! How about we show this Sith the door!?" The children eagerly lined up for their chance to put their new moves to the test as their parents stood on the sidelines, recording memories with their smartphones.

In its third year in 2025, the Yonkers Comic Con was a free event to celebrate the love of graphic novels, superheroes, villains, and action stars. The event featured three floors of activities, a fashion show, and cosplay segments where people dressed as their favorite characters for a day.

From its beginnings in a Yonkers classroom to an annual event that attracts thousands, the YCC became a free platform for the public to gather over a shared love of superhero movies and comics.

And as the YCC grew over the last few years, so did the forces of political turmoil across the nation. In a way, the origin story of Yonkers Comic Con shares the path of the characters it celebrates. This is known as a "hero's journey" or "hero's quest," and along the way, YCC has enabled everyday people to begin imagining themselves as the heroes society needs today.

But, before we learn about how Yonkers Comic Con came to be, we need to understand what the Hero's Journey is.

The Hero's Journey and the Origins of Yonkers Comic Con

In 1949, Joseph Campbell, a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, published his first book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The work detailed the world of patterns he noticed in his study of myths and stories across time and cultures. He called it the "hero's journey". The concept would go on to influence the way stories were told and how we understood the human experience for decades to come. Most notably, Campbell's work was a major influence on George Lucas, who claimed he wouldn't have been able to create the cult classic without it. Decades later, in the same city, the origins of Yonkers Comic Con were unfolding into a journey of its own, revealing how each of us is on a quest of our own.

Since before the COVID-19 lockdown, Evan Bishop, an artist and English Language Arts teacher, has been working as a substitute teacher for Yonkers Public Schools. He says he was a favorite among his students, from pre-k to 8th grade, because they gravitated toward his love of the arts. They were always looking for ways to be involved in his creative pursuits, and before he could implement anything, the nation went under lockdown. Months passed before he could see his students in person again.

"When I returned to the school for hybrid learning, the same energetic and vibrant young people were tapped out," Bishop said in an interview with The Leveler News. He brought his concerns home and would discuss them with his "life partner, soulmate," and Yonkers Comic Con co-founder Katori Walker.

One "magical day" in 2022, after a busy night with little sleep, when his "boundaries for rules and responsibilities were blurred" by fatigue, Bishop walked into a 5th-grade classroom without a lesson plan. As the kids settled in and Bishop began planning the day, in rushed the school principal with a stack of paperwork, barking instructions about a matter better suited for a private meeting. Their demeanor zapped the energy from the room, Bishop recalled. "As she's talking, I'm really just looking at the kids, and I'm seeing what low energy they have get lower and lower and lower," said Bishop.

Under a cloud of fatigued frustration, papers in hand and principal out the door, Bishop walked over to the trash and threw away the papers. The children gasped under their masks, and their eyes lit up. "When you talk about the hero's journey, immediately I was no longer at this simple path and veered to the left," Bishop explained. "What came to me organically was 'who wants to create a comic book?'"

That moment reenergized the room, and Bishop successfully recovered the energetic children he knew before lockdown.

Now that he had a lesson plan, he realized he had struck gold and repeated the question to all of his classes. This all happened on a Tuesday. "By Thursday, all the kids are talking in the lunchroom, the buzz is in," Bishop said.

"When I said, ‘Who wants to create a comic book? ' that was my inner child being defiant, and I saw them light up, like in their head it was like this artist wants us to create a comic book."

That Friday, the principal called Bishop into her office. Surely, he thought, he was going to be fired for his defiance. Instead, she encouraged him. "She loved the idea because I was leaning into English Language Arts." She wanted the final presentation to be showcased on the bulletin board in front of the school. “So I won her over just off the strength of being authentically me in that moment.”

The moment Bishop listened to his inner guide and made the choice to defy authority for the greater good of the students would be considered by Campbell the beginning of his hero's journey called the "call to adventure," where a moment of discomfort pushes a character over a threshold and forces them to make a choice that begins a quest. Bishop would go on to use these storytelling techniques to teach his students not only how to craft a comic but also to see themselves as heroes.

"Whatever you put after the words 'I am' you declare and manifest in the world. So, if you say
'I am a hero'
now you can showcase it through the comic you're creating."

- Evan Bishop & Katori Walker, Founders of Yonkers Comic Con

Using Character to Create Characters

After temporarily throwing away the principal's paperwork during that first class, Bishop taught the students about social issues and brainstormed common themes around helping people. "I was able to use that mindset to lean in to social issues," Bishop said. Once the kids understood the concept of social issues as problems that don't just affect them, but also other people or a city, country, or world, the kids developed a list of about 40 problems, including mental health, ageism, and LGBTQAI rights.

"Katori and I would talk about how much we experienced as adults (during lockdown) and how much these kids experienced," he said. "How do I capture a conversation with them in a way that's not deemed inappropriate?" As the couple cooked dinner, they devised a plan.

In developing this curriculum, Bishop and Walker kept the work grounded in the real world and ensured that the children saw themselves and what they knew in their creations.

"We decided it would be even more empowering for them, besides creating a superhero that they know, but that they be the superhero," Walker said of the development process. It was important that "they create a superhero in their likeness so they can feel empowered that they can change the world," she said. "Right now, they have to listen to their parents, they have to listen to the rules, they have to listen to the teachers. We wanted them to empower themselves and create something that they felt was truly their own and that they could make a difference."

The students had free rein to create the world they wanted, but they had one rule: "The world they were creating couldn't include violence. We wanted to challenge them so that they could come up with a creative way to solve whatever the issue was," Walker said. They had superpowers, but they couldn't harm nature or animals. Developing non-violent ways to problem solve maximizes creativity. "You can't just pull out a sword and solve the problem," Bishop said.

Hidden beneath the fun of creating, participants learned writing, proofreading, spelling, and vocabulary, but the pair also had a goal to do more with the creations.

After developing the curriculum, they brought it to Yonkers Arts, where Bishop was a board member. They adopted the idea into workshops that anyone could attend at other institutions. They called it the I Am A Hero: Comic Book Creation Workshop. Over the course of several sessions, attendees would develop characters and layout stories. "Whatever you put after the words 'I am,’ you declare and manifest in the world,' Bishop said. "So if you say I am a hero now, you can showcase it through the comic you're creating."

The art class proved to be transformative. Walker and Bishop brought the program to different institutions in Westchester, New York City, and remotely.

Walker was moved when she watched a class of children deemed "juvenile delinquents" transition from disinterested attendees to excited participants.

"One person was like 'we're living out what we can't do right now,'" Walker recalled. "That's when the keys really turned for me. Like, okay! This is even more than what we imagined. This is an inspiration. Whatever circumstances they may be going through in their real life, by creating something, they have the power to make a change and live through that story. It's giving them an opportunity to say, 'Well, if I can create this character and create a better ending, I can maybe do this in real life,’" Walker explained.

Showcasing the work was an important element of the course. Much like the school bulletin board showcase work of Bishop's grade school students, the pair wanted to bring the project to the public and incorporate a celebration of these original superhero narratives.

In 2022, they applied for a grant from ArtsWestchester for a Summer 2023 showcase that would become a seed of the comic convention. About 40 people attended the first showcase. In 2024, they moved the event to the Yonkers Public Library, where thousands of people attended.

Honor, Cosplay, Representation, Release

Yonkers Comic Con is one of many larger comic conventions that take place around the world, but it provides the city and surrounding communities with an opportunity to experience comic culture for free. Without an entry fee, entire families can enjoy an afternoon of fun without breaking the bank. It's also a risk-free opportunity for newcomers to explore a new interest and for veteran cos-players to test out costumes.

For all the games, face painting, comic vendors, and activities, the central purpose of Yonkers Comic Con remains honoring creators, both historical pioneers and the next generation of creators and their creations, whether it was on the wall, in a comic, or on their bodies.

As diversity, equity and inclusion became a boogeyman in society in 2025, Evan Bishop and Katori Walker defiantly leaned into diversity. The event was designed to be a safe space for all identities and a "no judgment zone". Security was instructed to look out for offensive costumes and agitators. The 2025 Talent Show portion of the day featured young hip-hop break dancers, and one of the vendors was the BoricuaVerse, which celebrates Puerto Rican characters and cultural reinterpretations of fan favorites. Bishop says they followed the principles of hip-hop to create an inclusive space, a sort of guiding principle a hero commonly uses to navigate unknown territory.

The event featured both a super villain fashion show and a cosplay showcase, highlights of the event that are unique compared to larger comic cons. Usually a quiet space, the library's auditorium was transformed into a space for people to be celebrated and cheered loudly by the crowd. And in the context of current political efforts to remove black and brown representation from culture, the ear-piercing cheers that rang out for Puerto Rican Mandalorian or Dominican Spiderman are evidence that there's a demand for people to see themselves reflected.

Yonkers Comic Con was intentionally inclusive. At one point, too many people had signed up for the cosplay showcase, so the organizers decided to allow everyone their 30 seconds in the spotlight. Superman, who was first to cross the stage, almost didn't make the cut, but when Walker saw how devastated he was about signing up too late, she decided to let anyone else who asked participate. When the teenagers dressed as Superman crossed the stage, he threw open his arms and just stood there. The audience's reaction was explosive. "The audience was authentically celebrating him in a way that he probably never got celebrated before," Walker said with joy. Bishop, who was stage directing at the time, recalled the cosplayer as he left the stage. "I'm giving fist bumps to everyone who left the stage, and he said, 'This is the best day of my life!' "It was powerful," Walker said. "Imagine if I didn't let him go, if I didn't let the other people go."

In this way, Yonkers Comic Con is an elixir for the community, otherwise known as the "Return with the Elixir" portion of the Hero's Journey, where the adventurer returns to their ordinary world with the ointment or lessons needed to transform their community. The 2025 event attracted between 4,000 and 5,000 attendees, according to Bishop and Walker and library tallies.

In a growing darkness, it was an afternoon of much-needed light and joy and a delight for Yonkers and the surrounding communities. What started with an attempt to keep young people in high spirits ended with the uplift of an entire community. A hero's feat indeed.