Tag Archives: egyptian

cultural, interviews, online

Deena Mohamed: “It’s kind of a myth that people won’t support ‘diverse’ work.”

Self-portrait by Deena MohamedEarlier this year, Egyptian comics creator Deena Mohamed, perhaps best known internationally for her work originating the superheroine Qahera, spoke with Egyptian Streets about her latest creation, the graphic novel trilogy Shubeik Lubeik which won Best Graphic Novel and the Grand Prize at Cairo Comix Festival in 2017.

Comic Artist Deena Mohamed on Representation, Authenticity, and Egyptian Art

In addition to minding a balance between authentic, native Egyptian themes and interest by Western audiences, Mohamed also looks to dispel myths not only about women but also about “diverse” work:

“It’s kind of a myth that people won’t support ‘diverse’ work. What actually happens is the opposite – people want you to write about ‘the issues’ (for Westerners, Islam and feminism, for Egyptians, feminism) but they want you to write about it in a very specific way,” she told Egyptian Streets.

“They want really superficial, easily-quoted takes,” she elaborates. “They love women empowerment, if women empowerment means sharing [online] a hijabi superhero comic without ever reading the messages behind it. […] At some point you start to feel very patronised.”

See more of her work at DeenaDraws.art and on Twitter @itsdeenasaur.

academic, contributors

Martin Lund on the Possibilities of “Pantheonic Bricolage”

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[The following piece was originally published at MartinLund.me and it is reposted here with the author’s permission.]

The Marvel Universe pantheons

Is It a Thing? “Pantheonic Bricolage.”

If you are at all familiar with my work, you know that I have a particular interest in the intersections between comics and religion. I have spent countless hours studying comics in relation to Judaism and Jewishness, on editing a book about Muslim superheroes (the release of which is so close now I can almost taste it!), and I’m currently drafting a book about the recently deceased evangelical comics propagandist Jack T. Chick (about whom I have written here and here).

In addition to this, I’m also working on a guide to comics and world religions with a couple of fellow scholars of the topic. We have hashed out a rough structure and are working separately on our chapters. In addition to writing about the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), I will also be tackling what we have chosen, for now, to call “Archaic Traditions.” (I just might make another “Is it a thing?” post about that label somewhere down the line.)

This means that I am writing about Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and Old Norse religions. And I am loving it to no end. There is so much interesting material to work with here, and I will be sharing thoughts and reviews as things progress.

But for now, I want to bounce a thing off the internet and see what happens.

I want to talk about what I have been calling, for lack of a better term: “pantheonic bricolage.” It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t.

Continue reading Martin Lund on the Possibilities of “Pantheonic Bricolage” →