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BAETH THE SENDER

Real Name: Fadi Hassem
Home Country: Jordan
Age: 18
Height: 173 cm
Weight: 72 kg
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Black
Base of Operation: Jordan
. . .

Why can't a comic be Islamic?

August 8, 2006

Tufts Magazine
by David Brittan
Naif Al-Mutawa, A94, used to worry that young Muslims didn’t have enough positive role models. Then, a few years ago, he learned about a set of children’s stickers glorifying suicide bombers. That did it. He put his clinical psychology practice on hold, raised $7 million in capital, and set about creating heroes the Muslim world could be proud of. THE 99, a comic-book series to be launched in September, stars teenage superheroes who are each endowed with one of the 99 virtues of Allah.

Allah’s virtues are much like Judeo-Christian ones. "Generosity, strength, wisdom, foresight, mercy, and dozens of other attributes that aren’t used to describe Islam in the Western media today," Al-Mutawa said in a recent email while on a business trip to Saudi Arabia from his native Kuwait. In THE 99, those Allah-inspired gifts turn ordinary teens into Jabbar the Powerful (a formidable giant), Sami the Hearer (a boy with unusually acute ears), or Noora the Light (able to see the "light of truth" or, when provoked, zap bad guys with her laser vision).

The story of THE 99 has its origins in an event known to every Middle Eastern schoolchild: the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258. The House of Wisdom, an actual repository of ancient knowledge, is destroyed in the invasion, but not before its curators manage to download the collected works—and here fantasy takes over—onto 99 mystical gemstones that are later scattered across the globe. Recovering the gems before they fall into the wrong hands becomes the mission of THE 99.

The superteens must put their heads together in creative ways. "Each plight in THE 99 needs three of THE 99 to solve it," Al-Mutawa said. "So there is promotion of teamwork and different methods of solving problems."

The comic, previewed in English and Arabic at www.the99.org, features stark lighting and dramatic angles. Machine guns go brakka brakka brakka. Helicopter blades go wusp wusp wusp. If THE 99 looks and reads like a typical Marvel comic, it’s because Al-Mutawa’s co-writer and all of his artists have worked for Marvel. "I promised my investors top talent," Al-Mutawa explained. His publishing company, Teshkeel Media Group, also distributes Arabic versions of Marvel comics, which have been doing "fantastically well."

Although a new career as a maker of superheroes is a departure from psychology (after Tufts, Al-Mutawa received a Ph.D. from Long Island University and specialized in treating victims of torture), it is not a complete break. "I create the characters—give them internal conflicts—and create their back stories," he said. "This is all psychology."

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