Tuesday, October 24, 2006

the 99

After my entry on Green Lantern and other Black superheroes, Hood gave me a heads up about The 99, a new comic about a team of Muslim superheroes whose powers are all based on the traditional ninety-nine names of Allah.

Here is an interview with the comic's writer/creator, Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa and here is a more detailed article (originally from the New York Times) which gets into the general background of the characters and talks about the hurdles Dr. Mutawa has had to go through in order to make the comic book a reality.

Although comic books in general feature several heroes with "Oriental" associations, believing Muslims seem to be more rare. To my knowledge, in the DC universe, the most prominent Muslim hero is the Janissary while in the Marvel universe, the most prominent hero is a mutant known as Dust. In both cases, the characters are women.

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