February 16, 2005

They Fight Crime , Arab style. Jalila, Zein, Aya and Rakan are superheroes from the land that invented comics 4000 years ago (well, hieroglyphs, anyway.) (Top link to WashPost, reg. req.)

Egyptian publishing house AK Comics states that its goal is "to fill the cultural gap created over the years by providing essentially Arab role models, in our case, Arab superheroes to become a source of pride to our young generations." ... "The religious backgrounds of the heroes remain undisclosed so that no religion or faith can be perceived as better than another." With distribution planned in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, North Africa and the Persian Gulf states, what will the authorities make of these new well-muscled and ample-busted role models? Especially as some strict forms of Islam forbid the depiction of living creatures in art, superheroes presumably included. Read on, true believers...

  • Interesting. Cheers. I find it quite worrying how pervasive the American comics style is, sometimes. Its like people think that that is how superheroes, comics even, have to look.
  • I thought the same thing. Almost as if Todd McFarlane were doing these books.
  • Guess the American style ain't so bad, eh what? I prefer Beano myself. I agree the characters are sort o' riske. Still cool.
  • What's interesting about the drawing style is that the comics, written in Egypt, are actually drawn in Brazil. It'll be interesting to see how the style changes when/if the first generation of Egyptian comics artists and inkers come into their own.