How Vancouver’s Kabam created a new Indigenous Marvel hero

At New York Comic Con earlier this month, Vancouver-based Kabam unveiled a brand-new playable character named Chee’ilth for its popular Marvel Contest of Champions mobile fighting game.

Unlike most incoming ‘Champions,’ however, Chee’ilth, a First Nations hero, wasn’t actually drawn from any preexisting Marvel comic. Instead, the Canadian developer wanted to create its first-ever completely original Indigenous character for Contest of Champions.

“We found an opportunity to tell some stories that don’t often get a chance to be told,” says Justin Ostensen, the senior game designer at Kabam who spearheaded the development of Chee’ilth. “A lot of the stories that exist across cultures for First Nations people are often mono-culture. They’ll be a Cree character who speaks Cree and is Cree and is represented by Cree. And those are fantastic, but it’s not often the story that a lot of First Nations people get.”

For Ostensen, it’s a chance to tell a story of his people. “First Nations people don’t really get a lot of opportunities to tell their own stories. Oftentimes, it’s other people telling our story for us.” He notes that he shares a Skatin Nation background with Chee’ilth, on top of drawing from his experiences with growing up in Tla’amin Nation territory and now living Ktunaxa Nation territory. “Marvel loved the idea — they always want to bring a new story that hasn’t been represented or heard of before,” he says.

In Chee’ilth’s case, her superhero origin story is notably quite different from the likes of Spider-Man or Batman who were driven to crimefighting after personal loss. When a nuclear reactor goes off near her small town and people quickly turn into Hulk-like gamma mutates, Chee’ilth, a firefighter, is spurred into action. During her response efforts, she rescues her abusive father, which draws the attention of two Indigenous spirits, Brother Grizzly and Sister Eagle. Impressed by Chee’ilth’s honour and courage, the spirits bestow upon her their special powers, enabling her to venture out to save the mutates.Ostensen says this whole story is largely inspired by his mother’s own upbringing. As a First Nations child, she was taken from her family by the foster system to be given to a white family in an era known as the ‘Sixties Scoop.’ This led her to be raised in a “pretty troubled home,” says Ostensen. In total, it’s estimated that roughly 20,000 Indigenous kids were taken from their families during the Sixties Scoop, and Ostensen wanted Chee’ilth to serve as a tribute to them.

“When I reached out to other First Nations people, [this] wasn’t exactly an uncommon situation for them, too. And so I wanted to bring to light this sort of harsh reality. I was speaking to a lot of First Nations elders, and [in] a lot of the stories that they have, the heroes in those stories didn’t overcome impossible evil because they were stronger or more mighty or anything like that,” he says. “They overcame evil because they were pure of heart — because they had compassion and love in their heart when it seemed impossible. So I wanted to bring that into Chee’ilth. Her ‘spider bite’ moment, as it were, isn’t somebody dying and her deciding to do the right thing. It was, ‘I need to do the right thing, even if this person wouldn’t do the right thing.'”

He says it’s a “rare opportunity” to get to tell an Indigenous story on a stage as large as Marvel’s, which he hopes will help it reach many people. So far, Ostensen says he’s touched by the reaction fans have had to the announcement, with particular appreciation being given to Kabam and Marvel’s efforts to work with experts to tell Chee’ilth’s story “properly.” Moreover, he says it’s gotten people excited to hopefully see similar care and attention being given to characters from other nationalities and cultures. It’s a testament, he says, to why this sort of representation is important.“Growing up, I didn’t get to see almost any First Nations people in art and literature, let alone one from Skatin Nations or one of my small bands on the West Coast. And I think that people really underestimate the value of seeing people who look like and who have the same story as yourself in art and media. Not only that — seeing them as heroes who can overcome impossible odds,” he says. “There is real value in being able to see someone who looks exactly like you up on the big screen or up on the stage doing something heroic and everybody cheering them on. You get to feel a sense of that pride in yourself and in your story.”

In total, the journey to bring Chee’ilth to Contest of Champions has spanned two years, starting with early ideas surfacing in November 2021 and leading into active development beginning one year later. It was a lengthy process that consisted not only of Kabam’s usual close partnership with Marvel but also a variety of Indigenous consultants that included cultural experts Alison Pascal (Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre curator and Linda Epp (Two Worlds Consulting) and First Nations artist Austin Harry. Ostensen says these consultants provided a “huge amount of feedback” on everything from Chee’ilth’s overall look and backstory to finer details like the exact kinds of tattoos she’d have as a member of Skatin Nation.

Of course, Contest of Champions being a game means that Chee’ilth has to feel fun to play, as well, and Ostensen notes that the consultants had a lot of valuable feedback in that regard as well. In particular, he says Kabam had initially planned for two wolf spirits to serve as her baseline. However, the cultural experts noted that grizzly bears are better known for being protectors and warrior spirits, especially in Skatin Nations. Kabam also wanted there to be a curative element involved with Chee’ilth, so the experts suggested eagles due to their association with healing and drawing out sickness in Indigenous cultures.

These abilities enhance her core fighting style, which is centred around a large axe known as an adze. Ostensen notes that some of her moves are also inspired by her background as a firefighter, and altogether, he wanted her to be a big “bruiser” kind of character.

“One of the edicts that I had early on was I wanted this character to be ‘big, powerful, strong’ — because there’s a lot of characters, especially minority characters, who are often martial artists or tricksy, they’re fast and they’re all sorts of these things. And I’m like, ‘That’s cool, that’s excellent, [but] let’s have something a little different,” he says with a laugh. “‘Let’s have the big bruiser character get to be [Chee’ilth.]’ The other thing is that a lot of women superheroes don’t get to be the big bruiser who takes on the impossibly big opponent. I wanted to see something a little different, a little unique. Our character is, quite frankly, huge!”

Looking ahead, Ostensen says he’s got “ideas” for what else can be done with Chee’ilth and would love to see her team up with fellow Marvel Indigenous heroes Dani Moonstar and Kushala. “If the fans are excited about the character and they demand more of [her], I’m sure that Kabam and Marvel would love to add more!”

From left to right: Dani Moonstar, Chee’ilth and Kushala.

For now, though, he’s just reflecting on this milestone in his career. In November, Contest of Champions will celebrate its 9th anniversary, and Ostensen has been working on the game for nearly that entire time. “It’s genuinely a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing. I don’t think people really fully understand how few games make it past even one year, let alone 10 years — we’re gonna rock it past 10 years, I’m very, very adamant about that,” he says.

He adds that even though he’s worked on more than 100 characters for Contest of Champions, he never imagined he’d be able to bring an Indigenous hero like Chee’ilth into the game.

“I’m so proud of everything that we’ve been able to accomplish. I really thought that when I got to first add a First Nations character to a game, it was going to be 15, 20 years down the line when I’m a grizzled veteran who starts his own studio and finally has enough control or say,” he says. “But for Marvel and Kabam, this is such a huge priority for them — they saw my passion and how much it mattered to me and they just wanted to run with it. You don’t really get those sorts of opportunities or this huge of a stage outside of games that have been running this long, and I’m just over the moon happy with it.”

Chee’ilth will be available on November 30th. Marvel Contest of Champions can be downloaded for free on iOS and Android.

Image credit: Kabam