superhero

• David HaleAug 31, 2025, 08:15 AM ET

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  • College football reporter.
  • Joined ESPN in 2012.
  • Graduate of the University of Delaware.

SOMEWHERE IN THE bustling metropolis of St. Louis, a mother and father watch in awe as their young son shows signs of … superpowers!

Here is Jeremiyah Love, age 4, scaling walls and swinging from the rooftops.

Here he is, an eighth grader, leaping tall buildings in a single bound.

Then a teenager in full command of his powers, torpedoing around enemies and through brick walls.

Yet, all around him, dark forces gather.

If his life were a comic book, like the project he has spent the past four years creating with his father, Jason, and a team of artists, this would be Jeremiyah’s origin story, one not all too far from reality for Notre Dame’s star running back. He swung from moldings on the 10-foot ceilings above his living room as a toddler, developed into an all-sport star who could dunk a basketball in eighth grade and became one of the nation’s top recruits by his junior year on the football field at Christian Brothers College High School.

As the story goes, Love entered the opening game of the season against powerhouse East St. Louis still bothered by nagging injuries from the track season, and his coach, Scott Pingel, had no plans to let him play. But the starter and the backup went down, so in Love went, and on his first touch, he ran a counter to the right side and sprinted 80 yards to the end zone.

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“He made everyone else on the field look stupid,” Pingel said. “He’s making big-time D-I recruits look silly. That’s when everything really took off for Jeremiyah.”

But no origin story is complete without conflict, and if Love’s legend was burnished on the football field, he hardly fit the image of the all-powerful superhero away from it. He was isolated and introverted. When he felt uncomfortable, he retreated into those superhero stories — comics, graphic novels and, especially, anime. The worlds of heroes and villains and adventure made sense in a way his real life often didn’t.

“People thought that I was weird,” Love said. “I didn’t really have friends. I didn’t like to talk to people. I liked to play by myself. I just preferred it this way.”

For a while, those urges to isolate himself seemed like the villain in Love’s story, the thing that set him apart, the battle he had to fight. What he has come to understand as his legend has grown at Notre Dame and as he has grappled with how to tell his story on the pages of his own comic, is that those things that made him different were actually the source of his strength.

“That’s the whole point of the comic, of the message we’re trying to put out,” Jason Love said. “Sometimes kids like Jeremiyah are labeled, but he reverses all those things — all the doubters and cynics. That’s his superpower.”

“Jeremonstar” will be released publicly in late September. Chris Walker

JEREMIYAH WAS 6 when he played his first football game in a county rec pee wee league. He took a handoff, cut and ran for 80 yards. He was a natural.

He ran track, too, and he was always the fastest kid on the squad.

It was basketball that Jeremiyah loved most, though, and on the court, he stunk.

“He lacked the coordination and rhythm,” Jason said.

So at 7 years old, determined to get better, he told his father he wanted to work with a trainer.

As a young boy, Jeremiyah was “a little daredevil,” Jason said. Jeremiyah was curious and intelligent, but in school, he was a bundle of energy, frustrating teachers as he struggled to follow lessons. Jason spent hours trying to force his son to sit still. They’d perch on chairs at the dining room table, and Jeremiyah would have to sit with his hands clasped without moving for 10 seconds. If he got agitated, they’d start again. It was a daily struggle.

“We wrestled with Jeremiyah being different for a long time,” Jason said. “It was a constant battle of redirection and refocusing and trying to see what works to make things more manageable for him.”

Jeremiyah has never been officially diagnosed, but Jason said he often displayed signs of ADHD or obsessive-compulsive disorders, and as Jeremiyah got older, the battles became more intense. If Jeremiyah misbehaved, Jason, an Army veteran, tried to discipline his son by putting him into “muscle failure positions,” like holding a pushup as long as possible, Jason said.

“He’s so bull-headed, he’d do it for 20, 25 minutes,” Jason said.

Eventually, Jeremiyah’s arms would quiver and sweat would drip from his forehead and, knowing his son wouldn’t submit, Jason would relent.

Then, something clicked for Jeremiyah’s parents. Their son didn’t see these acts as punishment. He saw them as a challenge, and Jeremiyah relished the challenge.

It was the same as his struggles with basketball. Jeremiyah could’ve stuck to football and track, but he embraced basketball because it was hard. He worked with a trainer, he got better and, by eighth grade, he was dunking.

Once Jason and Jeremiyah’s mother, L’Tyona, understood their son’s triggers and motivations, there was a blueprint for how to manage his energy. In a challenge, Jeremiyah found focus, and with focus, he found success.

“If you challenge his competitive nature, he turns into a different creature,” Jason said. “He wants to dominate.”

Jeremiyah Love would retreat into superhero stories while growing up. Chris Walker

JASON REMEMBERS SITTING in his kitchen one afternoon and hearing a voice from another room speaking Japanese.

Who was in the house?

He rushed into the living room, and he found Jeremiyah, sitting alone in front of the television. He was watching anime — a Japanese animation style — and interacting with the characters on screen.

Jeremiyah was 10 years old, watching with subtitles, and he had picked up enough of the language to provide his own running dialogue.

“I just fell in love with it,” Jeremiyah said. “I stumbled upon it on Netflix when I was about 6. As a kid, I liked cartoons, and anime looks like cartoons but it’s not. I kept watching more and more, and I got addicted.”

Jason had always been a fan of traditional American comics — X-Men, Superman, Batman — and he’d watched popular Japanese series like “Dragon Ball Z,” so when his son showed interest, he saw it as a way to bond.

Jeremiyah grew up in the Walnut Park neighborhood of northwest St. Louis. It was “very dangerous,” as Jason put it, and Jeremiyah remembers a soundtrack of gunshots and police sirens in his youth.

The danger outside swallowed up its share of kids Jeremiyah knew back then, he said, but he spent most of his time playing in his backyard or suiting up for sports or perched in front of shows such as “Naruto” and “Xiaolin Chronicles.”

“It was his whole realm,” Jason said. “He was watching shows I didn’t know anything about, but it was a passion of his. And anything Jeremiyah is focused on, he’s all-in.”

Jeremiyah had been talkative and outgoing in his youth, but the older he got, the more he withdrew.

In anime and comics, however, Jeremiyah found a world where he could transform into someone else — or, perhaps, simply be the person he knew he was but wasn’t yet ready to show the real world.

“It was his chance to be in a different place, a different world, where he can release all of his powers,” Jason said.

Growing up, Jeremiyah said he hadn’t considered how much he struggled. It was “a challenge to push through,” he said, but he loved a challenge. Only now, as he has revisited his story in creating his comic, has it occurred to him how big those hurdles had been.

“As a kid, when you’d be ostracized or excluded — it doesn’t feel great,” Jeremiyah said. “But I’m thankful I was that way. I never got into the wrong things, never hung out with the wrong people. The way I was protected me from that. My parents did, too. I’m thankful for how I was raised and who I was as a person. It just goes to show, don’t be afraid to be yourself, because that’s the best thing you can be.”

Jeremiyah Love was very diligent in deciding who would be working on this project with him and his dad. Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

THE FIRST IDEA for the comic involved Jeremiyah morphing into an animal. Something big, bombastic and strong, Jason said. They sketched out the whole book with artists’ mock-ups and a complete plot. Jason had invested thousands of dollars into the project.

Jeremiyah thumbed through it and delivered a verdict: He hated it.

“He killed the first project,” Jason said. “That broke my heart. We had to start all over. But he tells you when he likes or dislikes stuff, and there’s no misunderstanding. But it showed me he was dedicated to this process.”

It was Jason’s idea to make the comic. He had pitched it to Jeremiyah during his junior season, when he was skyrocketing up the recruiting rankings and blossoming into one of the most explosive backs in the country. Back then, neither had any idea how to make a comic, but Jason figured it was a good opportunity to tell his son’s story in a way Jeremiyah would connect with.

Nearly five years later, Jason and Jeremiyah are finally ready to deliver. “Jeremonstar” will be released publicly in late September.

“This is not a cash grab,” Jeremiyah said. “It’s something I want people to like and enjoy. I want to tap into this fan base, and I want to connect with different people who are kind of like me.”

That first idea, though, was too childish. Jeremiyah scoffs at anyone who chalks anime up as a kids show. It’s fantasy, yes, but it’s so much deeper, he said. And him turning into an animal? All wrong.

So the Loves went back to the drawing board — a massive project that included world-building, story arcs and character development.

“We’ve been through a lot,” Jeremiyah said. “It is not easy to come up with a compelling superhero story.”

But this wasn’t simply a superhero story. It was Jeremiyah’s story. It had to be perfect, and that’s where the Loves kept running into problems. They’d hire an artist, a writer or an agency, and after a few months of work, they’d realize the whole output was perfunctory. Most artists they talked to saw dollar signs because of Love’s football prowess, but Love needed the story to be personal.

In December 2024, they met Chris Walker, and finally, they felt a connection.

“Chris was Yoda for us,” Jason said.

Walker had spent a decade working with Marvel and DC Comics, had worked as a creative director at an agency and had even helped design the cover for a graphic novel by rapper Ghostface Killah. He now runs his own creative agency, Limited Edition, and he had recently found some success partnering with the Chicago Bulls and MLB Network on sports-related properties. He was hoping to grow that market when he reached out to Notre Dame’s NIL collective, which connected him with the Loves.

When Walker met Jeremiyah, he was sold instantly.

“He’s talkative, but you have to sit down with him for a while to get to that,” Walker said. “I’ve had friends like him, who don’t like to be the center of attention. I thought, here’s the No. 1 running back in the country, and the moment I met him, it was like being around family.”

Walker liked the pitch of an anime-styled comic. He worked with Buffalo Bills linebacker Larry Ogunjobi, who told him how anime helped him learn discipline, and he had read an interview with New Orleans Pelicans star Zion Williamson, who said 80% of the NBA were fans of anime. Clearly there was an untapped market.

The Loves also had a plan to grow their universe. Jeremiyah’s story would be the first volume in what they hoped could become a cultural touchpoint for athletes from all sports.

“Athletes aren’t telling their stories in a fun, interesting way that people are going to gravitate to,” Jeremiyah said. “We want to go far with this.”

Walker brought on industry veterans to help carry the project over the finish line, including an editor who worked with Marvel. The team worked with Jason, holding Zoom calls nearly daily to discuss the project’s next steps, and developed a timeline and marketing strategy for release.

At Notre Dame’s 2025 spring game, the group handed out bracelets with a QR code directing fans to a webpage promoting the comic. In the months since, Jeremiyah said he’s continually hearing from fans — through DMs and even kids at the barbershop — who want to know when it will be ready.

“People are going to read this and understand you can be more than a football player,” said Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman. “That’s a misconception that, if you want to be a great football player, all you can do is think about that sport. But it’s not true, and Jeremiyah is a perfect reflection of that.”

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The summer retreat before Jeremiyah’s junior year in high school was held in a timeworn lodge with about 80 rooms owned by the Catholic Church. Pingel held the retreat each year as an opportunity for his team to bond before the season. This would be Jeremiyah’s first stay as a full-time member of the varsity squad, but Pingel had known him for years. Pingel’s son was a year younger than Jeremiyah, so he had seen Jeremiyah grow from a string-bean running back into a phenom.

On the first night of the retreat, Pingel had noticed a buzz among the players and heard music echoing through the hall. He meandered toward a crowd gathered around a piano, certain he’d find a handful of teammates clowning, but as Pingel edged his way to the front, he saw Jeremiyah.

“He was just tickling the ivories,” Pingel said. “And everyone’s around him singing.”

There are a lot of lessons Jason and Jeremiyah hope the comic conveys about perseverance and commitment, but because this is Jeremiyah’s story, the idea that no one needs to conform to an identity other than their own is key.

“There are tons of kids like me, and they feel down about who they are,” Jeremiyah said. “I want to communicate that it’s OK. There’s no problem with that. Be you, and big things can happen.”

Jeremiyah Love has been working on his comic book alongside his dad. Chris Walker

JEREMIYAH STILL HAS his “quirks,” as Jason describes them. He insists on symmetry, like aligning his shoes just so, from left to right. He’s finicky about how his clothes fit. His belt buckle has to rest exactly right on the front of his pants. It’s habits that, years ago, might’ve frustrated Jason and L’Tyona. They see it differently now.

“We told him he’s the master of himself,” Jason said. “We told him he’s the greatest. And we just gave constant positive reinforcement.”

Pingel had always been struck by the contradiction of Jeremiyah Love, the football player, with the kid he’d gotten to know, reserved and occasionally distant, but curious and highly intelligent.

Jeremiyah is like a lot of comic-book heroes. By day, he shows one side of himself. Then he dons a uniform and becomes something else.

“The athlete needs to be an extrovert, going out there running over people and hurdling people,” Pingel said. “That’s kind of his alter ego.”

In the comic, Jeremiyah’s superpowers are derived from his real-life traits — speed and strength and willpower — but Pingel keeps thinking about that summer retreat when he truly understood Jeremiyah’s talent.

Football is where the alter ego can come out, where Jeremonstar is the effervescent star. But the real Jeremiyah is always in there, and, Pingel thinks, that’s the more interesting character.

Working together on the comic has been a cathartic experience, Jason said. For all the progress they have made with Jeremiyah over the years, Jason said he was never confident they’d have an overtly emotional bond. But like Pingel finding Jeremiyah at the piano, Jason keeps discovering new depths in his son.

“He’s come out of his shell now,” Jason said. “He’s more empathetic, more outgoing. I’ve learned a lot more and seen my son blossom into a young man.”

Jeremiyah burst into the national consciousness a year ago, accounting for more than 1,300 yards and 19 touchdowns, helping to lead Notre Dame to an appearance in the national championship game. By the time the Irish met Ohio State with a title on the line, however, Jeremiyah was nursing a knee injury. He managed just four carries for 3 yards in a 34-23 loss to the Buckeyes.

“I didn’t have all my superpowers,” he said. “I had the will, but sometimes, will isn’t enough.”

This offseason, Jeremiyah has worked to refine his superpowers. He better understands what it takes to stay healthy over the long haul. He’s trying to be less of a magician with the ball in his hands and focus more on his straight-line speed. But he insists he doesn’t have goals, just “things to work on,” nor is he haunted by last year’s disappointment.

“I just want to get to know myself better as a football player,” he said. “If that ends up us making it to the national championship again and winning it, great. If it doesn’t, that’s OK, too. I just want to make sure I’m the best me and the team is the best version of them.”

In high school, Pingel used to see his reluctant star endure autograph sessions, media appearances and countless conversations with recruiters, and he’d ask him: “Do you like being Jeremiyah Love?”

Pingel wanted to know if Jeremiyah was OK in the spotlight because it was never a role he relished, but it’s a question that might just as easily be asked in broader terms, too.

The answer, every time, was yes. Jeremiyah Love is completely happy being himself.

“He’s a warrior. He’s a fighter. He’s an introvert. He has his behavioral challenges, and he’s prevailed” Jason said. “Through hardship, you find yourself. And if you prevail, in my eyes, you’re a superhero.”

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