The primary character in our new Medal Knight series is named “Max,” after an influential Polish priest now known as St. Maximilian Kolbe.
St. Maximilian Kolbe is most well-known for his example of self-sacrifice at the concentration camps at Auschwitz, where he stepped in the place of a man condemned to die and convinced the Nazi soldiers to kill him, instead of another prisoner who had a family.
His example of Christian charity has always been an inspiration to me, but what surprised me when I started to dig deeper into his life was his fascination with technology and space travel.
One of his classmates in seminary later explained how he was enamored with the Wright Brothers and the aerodynamics of flying. He was often seen by his fellow seminarians sketching drawings of spacecraft in his spare time, filling the margins of his theology notebooks.
In the biography A Man for Others: Maximilian Kolbe, Bronislaus Strycznys explained, “Already, he anticipated the possibility of reaching the moon with a rocket and he thought of many other unusual inventions.”
Max: The Innovator
While it might seem like Kolbe’s obsession with space travel was reserved to simple doodles in his notebook, they were in fact backed-up by scientific specifications!
He went so far as to submit his idea for a spacecraft to a scientific journal in 1918! He was only 24 years old at the time, but had a creative mind, matched with a remarkable intellect.
After reviewing his proposal, one of his professors even suggested that he should file a patent for his spaceship!
His specifications, as well as his original drawings, can be found in the book, The Writings of St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, Volume II.
When looking at his original drawings is how he anticipated the Apollo spacecraft in the design of his spacecraft, decades before any rocket was launched into space.
Max and his Silver Bullets
What superseded his fascination with technology was his desire to win souls for Christ. He sought to evangelize the world, recruiting his own “soldiers” to form a “militia.”
St. Maximilian’s “militia” was called the Militia Immaculatae (Knights of the Immaculate) and their weapon of choice was the Miraculous Medal.
For the rest of his life Kolbe would carry a pocketful of these medals, which he would call his “silver bullets.” After meeting someone and exhorting them to live as a faithful Christian, he would hand them a Miraculous Medal and let the Blessed Mother take care of the rest. Throughout his life many souls were brought back to Christ through the handing out of these “bullets.”
When creating Medal Knight, we wanted to pay homage to the inspiring life of St. Maximilian Kolbe, bringing all of these elements together into a new superhero for the modern world.
Philip Kosloski
Philip Kosloski is the founder of Voyage Comics & Publishing and the writer and creator of the comic book series, Finnian and the Seven Mountains.