“The 99”: Islamic Superheroes – A New Species?

Abstract

This article deals with an “Islamic” comic strip which started in May 2006 as the flagship series of “Teshkeel Media Group, KSC” under the Arabic title “The 99” (tis‘a wa-tis‘ūn). An Islamic comic strip seems at first sight to be an outright contradiction in itself, given the dominating features of comics on the one hand and Islam on the other, i.e. the ostentatious presentation of muscle-bound heroes in comic strips and the Islamic iconoclasm which tends to disapprove of physical representation altogether.