Saturday, April 26, 2008

What's in a Comic


Mona




Apparently Alot!

Attending Dr Naif Mutawa's lecture on his creation of “the 99” was an inspirational journey for me as I am an aspiring web-comic artist with same goal of presenting Islam in fresh new medium without being completely blatant of the religious implications, but just a general awareness.

Mutawa's vision had begun through various random encounters; he has been through some tough times as an Arab Muslim and faced a fair share of hardships with the dream of wanting to be a writer and facing censorship issues with the country.

Some of the interesting comments he made was the presence of religious backdrops and references in hugely famous movies and comics. He gave the example of Christianity in North American based comics, how each character was an orphan, had a message for the people and was given a power from above. Much like Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him).


  • Spiderman: both his parents died, was bitten by a spider swaying from an above web while Peter is in the middle of a science demonstration

  • Batman: Bruce Wayne witness his parents murdered which drove him to fighting crime and the bat is symbolic of a Bat which life’s high above

  • Superman: Clark Kent was adopted by the Kent’s family and his power came from a radioactive source that came from above and beyond the world

Likewise, Japanese comics focused around teamwork which is a prevalent attribute of the culture.

One thing I found so fascinating was when he spoke of when he had first started publishing the comics of “the 99” and at the same time the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) was in its peak, so that anyone who went into a search engine and potentially typed “Muslim cartoon” would have most likely reached to “the 99”.

What I loved about the idea of this comic was that it was stressing Islam in a way people are use to, there is no indication throughout the book of anything related to the religion, and yet it is still heavily rooted in its visual atmosphere.

Suffice it to say, I managed to meet this extraordinary man in person, obtain an autograph and many comics to read up on.

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