The 99

I actually received these comics in the mail last week from Naif Al-Mutawa, who is the creator of "The 99," one of its writers, and the guy in charge of Teshkeel Media Group, after blogging about this new series earlier this month.

The series is written by al-Mutawa and Fabian Nicieza, with pencils by John McCrea and inks by James Hodgkins and Sean Parsons. If you've read comics for a while, you should at least recognize Nicieza and McCrea, who've been working in comics at both Marvel and DC for ages. Two of the three issues I got were free introductory comics, designed to get new readers on board with the characters and the concept.

"The 99" is the first effort at creating a truly multicultural comic since Milestone Media's comics back in the mid-1990s. Teshkeel has previously published some Marvel Comics titles in Arabic, and has entered agreements with DC Comics and Archie Comics to publish Arabic-language comics throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Al-Mutawa came up with the idea of creating an Islamic-themed comics series while trying to think of a way to help Muslim kids bridge the gap between the East and the West, while giving Muslim children some more positive Muslim role models than they usually see in Western media. And yeah, I think part of the goal of the comics is certainly outreach and education to Western comics readers. The basic concept: a team of international superheroes who take their names and their powers from the 99 names of Allah.

Read more at Hero Sandwich.