Tirur: Captain America is dead. Hulk is in a coma. A spaceship has exploded after being hit by a missile. And Spider-Man has teamed up with new superheroes to save Earth.

No, this is not the plot of a new Avengers movie. It is the creation of V Devesh, a Class X student of Tirur Boys Higher Secondary School, who has filled three books with his own superhero stories and drawings.

His Avengers adventure begins when Captain America, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor and Hulk detect a mysterious wave and set off in a spaceship to investigate it. Their spacecraft gets trapped in a portal capable of multiverse travel. A part of the vehicle is damaged, leaving the crew struggling to regain control. Before they can recover, a missile strikes the spaceship, triggering an explosion.

The superheroes are rescued by another character, Afod. But the respite is short-lived. Hulk slips into a coma, while Captain America and Thor are eventually defeated and killed in the battles that follow.

But the Avengers are not finished yet. Spider-Man and Rado join the team along with Afod, and together they take on a series of new threats to protect Earth.

For Devesh, superheroes are not merely characters to watch on screen. They are characters to redraw, reinvent and give new lives to.

He sketches each character himself, mostly in stick figure form, and writes their dialogues in English to suit the situations in his stories. Besides the Avengers, he has created an original team called Scholary, with characters of his own. Three books are now packed with their adventures, told through a mix of stories and drawings. And the unlikely birthplace of this superhero universe is his school library.

With more than 20,000 books, the library has around 200 books related to nearly 30 animation series. Devesh had read all of them by the time he reached Class IX. His years of reading eventually inspired him to start creating stories of his own. Library staff members M A Rehman and Kala Vasudevan say Devesh’s extensive reading has helped him develop a good command of English, which he puts to use in his stories.

His interest in storytelling began in Class V. Since then, his notebooks have become home to superheroes, villains, battles and adventures born entirely from his imagination. Devesh is the son of V Pradeep Kumar and K S Radhika of Thrikkandi. His sister is Krishnapriya.