It’s befitting that the Arab world’s first trilingual comic book is the brainchild of a group of four well-traveled and cosmopolitan Beiruti, the city that has become the region’s colorful capital of innovation.
Samandal, or Salamander in English, is the brainchild of Fadi Baki, Lena Mehrej, Omar Khouri and Hatem Imam, a group of friends well-versed in the international art scene committed to raising the comics genre from child’s play to a bonafide art form.
Reuniting in Beirut in 2000 after graduate studies and work opportunities took them away to the United States and the United Kingdom, the four friends decided that it was time to create a local platform for their preferred art form, giving others a chance to express themselves through comics at the same time.
In the creation of Samandal the group was inspired by both the entertainment quality of their childhood comic book heroes, particularly the popular Anime Grendizer, and the ability of comic book visual art to directly and powerfully express opinions about everything from politics and history to identity and Lebanon’s transformative civil war.
While previous local comic book efforts such as Beirut 89, Zerooo and Jad’s Workshop had paved the way somewhat for local reception of Samandal, this new publication was unique for being trilingual (Arabic, English and French) and for accepting submissions from around the world, creating an innovative and dynamic platform for visual arts.
The magazine is truly a book of inspiration combining exciting and varied artistic styles with stories that range from the entertaining and frivolous to the penetrating and insightful. While the style isn’t easy to get used to, it’s not difficult to detect the appeal of the comic art style for artists, writers and readers alike. The directness and immediacy of the medium allows for the relation of a lot of ideas and themes in a minimal space, underscored and reinforced by the messages and symbols contained in the art.
For contributors, Samandal is a place where hitherto marginalized stories and comic arts styles can gain a wider audience, encouraging other comic book aficionados to share their work and value it as a true art form with serious material. It is also a forum for artistic investigation, where experimental pieces are accepted alongside more mainstream comic strips. From love stories to sophisticated political critique, Samandal’s diverse and stimulating content reflects the versatility of the comic art form and its ability to bring forth both literary and artistic masterpieces.
In addition to the regular contributions of the founders, some comic artists have published serialized stories in consecutive issues with Fouad R. Mezher’s “The Educator,” which depicts a character’s subversive intervention in the life of an Orwellian-style security state, standing out as a controversial favorite.
Now in its fourth year, the team recently published issue 10 of Samandal. In this period, the magazine’s audience has expanded drastically, attracting diverse following from Beirut’s Palestinian refugee camps to London. Available widely in Lebanon, the magazine is also on sale in Berlin, London and New York, with some issues available in downloadable pdf form on their website.
For more information about Samandal, visit www.samandal.org.
