Tag Archives: sexuality

articles and essays, from the Internet

Didactic or Dynamic? Superheroes from the Middle East

(The following article by Fredrik Strömberg was originally posted on the Mizan Project website. It is copied here with permission.)

Superheroes from the Middle East: Adaptation of the Genre?

A selection of comic books published by AK Comics and Teshkeel.
A selection of comic books published by AK Comics and Teshkeel, including The 99 (photo credit: Fredrik Strömberg).

This is the third essay published here on Mizan Pop in our Muslim Superheroes series. The first and second installments in the series can be read here and here.

America has been exporting superhero comics for more than seven decades; nevertheless, there have been few commercially successful comics created in that genre in the rest of the world. Given that there have been several violent conflicts between the United States and Arab or Muslim-majority nations over the last few decades, it is intriguing that attempts at establishing a line of original superhero comics were made in the Middle East in the first decade of the twenty-first century by two different publishing houses: AK Comics in Egypt and Teshkeel Media Group in Kuwait.

Continue reading Didactic or Dynamic? Superheroes from the Middle East →

cultural, from the Internet

Superpowered, Mormon, and Gay: Brian Anderson’s STRIPLING WARRIOR

Cover to STRIPLING WARRIOR #1Last week, The Advocate provided coverage on the third in the Stripling Warrior comic book series, a superhero title featuring gay Mormon protagonists. As Advocate writers Neil Broverman and Jase Peeples note, Elders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints generally do not recognize the existence of homosexuals in their membership; while the attraction may be acknowledged, a committed relationship based on such impulses constitutes apostasy. QED: no homosexuals. As the lyrics to the Broadway stage show Book of Mormon quip, “It’s a cool little Mormon trick.”

Stripling Warrior creator Brian Anderson, on the other hand, feels that being gay and being Mormon (as well as being partnered, as he , “are not mutually exclusive.” And, his Kickstarter-supported series, with art by Jame Neish, “steeped within the mythology of the Mormon Church, depicted with healthy, queer sex lives” is intended to “be provocative and impactful.”

More information on the reception and future of the series can be found at Anderson’s So SuperDuper site.

Cover to STRIPLING WARRIOR #3

academic, art, from the Internet

DHQ Features “Graphic Images of YHWH,” Adapting Ezekiel to Comics

In their final issue of 2015, Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ) dedicated nearly the entirety of its content to the theme “Comics as Scholarship.” Included among the sensational pieces there was B.J. Parker’s daring imagining and annotation of Ezekiel 16, a text “early Jewish communities were wary of including […and] Christian communities have likewise wrestled with.” Parker not only fashioned his own comics version of the scripture but also some of his own exegesis. Such an approach, says Parker, “requires the scholar/artist to engage in fascinating and novel means of reflection.”

A panel from B.J. Parker's adaptation of Ezekiel 16 (DHQ 9.4, 2015)

B.J. ParkerSee Parker’s graduate student profile at Baylor University. His full adaptation can be downloaded as a .PDF file or .CBZ file for viewing (sans annotations).

academic, contributors, controversy

Discussing and Debating HABIBI

To paraphrase The Sound of Music, how do you solve a problem like Habibi?

HABIBI by Craig Thompson

Collected here, S&S’s own Jeff Brackett, Dave McConeghy, and A. David Lewis take to Twitter to examine the issues with bringing Craig Thompson’s 2011 graphic novel into the college classroom. (And Nick Sousanis and Chris Dowdy each make a special appearance!)

interviews, online

Talking with Charles Schneeflock Snow on SORDID CITY BLUES

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Since 2003, Charles Schneeflock Snow has been writing and drawing Sordid City Blues, which chronicles the lives of young urban adults faced with difficult questions of relationships and faith. Sacred and Sequential met with Mr. Snow in a comfortable corner of the Internet to discuss his work and his recent resumption of the series after a five-year hiatus.

Sacred and Sequential:  Thanks for talking with us, Charles. Let’s start with the most straightforward question: What motivated you to write Sordid City Blues?

Charles Schneeflock Snow: It’s an obsession. I worry about sex and religion a lot (both by themselves and in combination). Drawing comics is the main way I cope with things that worry me, so here we are.

S&S: What kind of response to your work do you get (or expect to get) from readers who identify as Christians? How might this response be said to differ from that of other audiences

Snow: Well, I know some Christians who like the comic, and identify with the characters’ lives. Which doesn’t differ too much from the response of more secular readers, honestly. But SCB doesn’t have much penetration into Christian culture – there’s a long list of doctrinal and moral prerequisites you need for that that I could never live up to.

Which is fine. I’d never want SCB to be a “Christian” comic. Christian is a fine noun, but a terrible adjective.

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