The discipline of Middle Eastern studies in the West has often been resistant to incorporating new theoretical and conceptual paradigms. Arab Comic Strips provides at least one indicator that this trend has begun to change. The study reflects the influence of both political economy and post-modernism. The former's influence can be seen in the authors' focus on mass culture and "history from below," while the latter's manifests itself in the authors' use of semiotics and their eschewal of any linear model of social change or totalizing discourse. The strengths of Arab Comic Strips lie in its comprehensive treatment of the genre it scrutinizes. The authors present extensively detailed studies of comic strips that range from Iraq and the Gulf to North Africa and France. Further, the strips they select cover a wide thematic and ideological terrain. Pan-Arabist, Islamist, hybrid Western-Arab, and radical leftist strips all receive in-depth analysis. Through this analysis, the reader gains great insight into political and cultural debates specific to particular regions of the Arab world. The juxtaposition of strips representing different thematic, ideological, and geographical perspectives constitutes comparative analysis at its best. -- From http://www.jstor.org (Dec. 4, 2013).

• Winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation •Eisner Award Nominee • Hugo Award Nominee A brilliantly original debut graphic novel that imagines a fantastical alternate Cairo where wishes really do come true. Shubeik Lubeik—a fairy tale rhyme that means “your wish is my command” in Arabic—is the story of three people who are navigating a world where wishes are literally for sale. • A Best Book of the Year: The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NPR “The mythic qualities of Mohamed’s world bring our own world into sharper focus . . . Mohamed’s humor often feels like a protest, as do the thick and assertive lines of her drawings . . . The effect is gritty, brazen, and full of spunk.”—The New Yorker Three wishes that are sold at an unassuming kiosk in Cairo link Aziza, Nour, and Shokry, changing their perspectives as well as their lives. Aziza learned early that life can be hard, but when she loses her husband and manages to procure a wish, she finds herself fighting bureau­cracy and inequality for the right to have—and make—that wish. Nour is a privileged college student who secretly struggles with depression and must decide whether or not to use their wish to try to “fix” this depression, and then figure out how to do it. And, finally, Shokry must grapple with his religious convictions as he decides how to help a friend who doesn’t want to use their wish. Deena Mohamed brings to life a cast of characters whose struggles and triumphs are heartbreaking, inspiring, and deeply resonant. Although their stories are fantastical—featuring talking donkeys, dragons, and cars that can magically avoid traffic—each of these people grapples with the very real challenge of trying to make their most deeply held desires come true.

Through his own life story, from childhood through is life as an adult, El Rassi illustrates the prejudices and discrimination Arabs and Muslims experience daily in American society. He contends with ignorant teachers, racist neighbours, bullying classmates and a growing sense of alienation. He also examines the roles that media and popular culture play and with examples from film and news media, he shows how difficult it is to have an Arab identity in a society saturated with anti-Arab messages.

Zeina Abirached, author of the award-winning graphic novel A Game for Swallows, returns with a powerful collection of wartime memories. Abirached was born in Lebanon in 1981. She grew up in Beirut as fighting between Christians and Muslims divided the city streets. Follow her past cars riddled with bullet holes, into taxi cabs that travel where buses refuse to go, and on outings to collect shrapnel from the sidewalk. With striking black-and-white artwork, Abirached recalls the details of ordinary life inside a war zone.

Comic books for adults have become one of the most novel and colourful forms of cultural expression in the Arab world today. During the last ten years, young Arabs have crafted stories explaining issues such as authoritarianism, resistance, war, sex, gender relations and youth culture. These are distributed through informal channels as well as independent bookstores and websites. Events like the annual Cairocomix festival in Egypt and the Mahmoud Kahil Award in Lebanon evidence the importance of this cultural phenomenon. Comics in Contemporary Arab Culture focuses on the production of these comics in Egypt and Lebanon, countries at the forefront of the development of the genre for adults. Jacob Hoigilt guides the reader through the emergence of independent comics, explores their social and political critique, and analyses their visual and verbal rhetoric. Analysing more than 50 illustrations, included here, he shows that Arab comics are revealing of the changing attitudes towards politics, social relations and even language. While political analysts often paint a bleak picture of the Arab world after 2011, this book suggests that art and storytelling continue to nourish a spirit of liberty and freedom despite political setbacks. Comics in Contemporary Arab Culture provides a fresh and original insight into the politics of the Middle East and cultural expression in the Arab World.

Featuring over 80 full-color portraits of the pioneering legends of American comic books, including publishers, editors and artists from the industry’s birth in the ’30s, through the brilliant artists and writers of behind EC Comics in the ’50s. All lovingly rendered and chosen by Drew Friedman, a cartooning legend in his own right. Featuring subjects popular and obscure, men and women, as well as several pioneering African-American artists. Each subject features a short essay by Friedman, who grew up knowing many of the subjects included (as the son of writer Bruce Jay Friedman), including Stan Lee, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, Will Elder, and Bill Gaines. More names you might recognize: Barks, Crumb, Wood, Wolverton, Frazetta, Siegel & Shuster, Kirby, Cole, Ditko, Werthem… it’s a Hall of Fame of comic book history from the man BoingBoing.com call “America’s greatest living portrait artist!”

The roster of Muslim superheroes in the comic book medium has grown over the years, as has the complexity of their depictions. Muslim Superheroes tracks the initial absence, reluctant inclusion, tokenistic employment, and then nuanced scripting of Islamic protagonists in the American superhero comic book market and beyond. This scholarly anthology investigates the ways in which Muslim superhero characters fulfill, counter, or complicate Western stereotypes and navigate popular audience expectations globally, under the looming threat of Islamophobia. The contributors consider assumptions buried in the very notion of a character who is both a superhero and a Muslim with an interdisciplinary and international focus characteristic of both Islamic studies and comics studies scholarship. Muslim Superheroes investigates both intranational American racial formation and international American geopolitics, juxtaposed with social developments outside U.S. borders. Providing unprecedented depth to the study of Muslim superheroes, this collection analyzes, through a series of close readings and comparative studies, how Muslim and non-Muslim comics creators and critics have produced, reproduced, and represented different conceptions of Islam and Muslimness embodied in the genre characters.

In the third installment of the acclaimed series, the Sattouf family begins to implode under the pressure of Hafez al-Assad's regime and the suffocation of their rural Syrian village. The Arab of the Future is the widely acclaimed, internationally bestselling graphic memoir that tells the story of Riad Sattouf’s peripatetic childhood in the Middle East. In the first volume, which covers the years 1978–1984, his family moves between rural France, Libya, and Syria, where they eventually settle in his father’s native village of Ter Maaleh, near Homs. The second volume recounts young Riad’s first year attending school in Syria (1984–1985), where he dedicates himself to becoming a true Syrian in the country of Hafez al-Assad. In this third volume, (1985–1987), Riad’s mother, fed up with the grinding reality of daily life in the village, decides she cannot take it any longer. When she resolves to move back to France, young Riad sees his father torn between his wife’s aspirations and the weight of family traditions.

In Syria, culture has become a critical line of defence against tyranny. Syria Speaks is a celebration of a people determined to reclaim their dignity, freedom and self-expression. It showcases the work of over fifty artists and writers who are challenging the culture of violence in Syria. Their literature, poems and songs, cartoons, political posters and photographs document and interpret the momentous changes that have shifted the frame of reality so drastically in Syria. Moving and inspiring, Syria Speaks is testament to the courage, creativity and imagination of the Syrian people. 'Syria Speaks is a remarkable achievement and a remarkable book – a wise, courageous, imaginative and beautiful response to all that is ugly in human behaviour. This extraordinary anthology gives a voice to those we may have forgotten, or whom we may classify as simply passive and silent victims. The people shown living, dreaming and speaking here are far more than victims and only silent if we refuse to hear them.' A.L. Kennedy 'An extraordinary collection, revealing a dynamic and exciting culture in painful transition – a culture where artists are really making a difference ... You need to read this book.' Brian Eno

Enjoy one hundred and twenty scenes from the vibrant city of Abbasid Baghdad, starring book-loving author Popeye (Al-Jahiz) and winebibbing poet Curly (Abu Nuwas), along with their friends Coral (a singing girl) and the Caliph of one of the world's most influential empires in history. Each episode is derived from historical sources, and designed to entertain, educate, and amaze.