"Until about 1964 most comic books in the Middle East were in either English or French.... Then a forward-looking editor began to wonder why comic books could not be translated into Arabic."
Illustrated Publications, a Beirut-based company, did just that, starting with Superman. As
a reporter for "Al-Kawkab Al Yawmi" he swooped into the Middle east from distant Krypton on February 4, 1964. The mild-mannered report, Clark Kent, became Nabil Fawzi,
whose name roughly translated to "Noble Victory". The text of the comics was translated, but the rest of the comic looked an awful lot like the Superman of the United States, except
the covers lacked context, Superman's S logo was reversed, and some of the colors were skewed in odd ways.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 31, 2011 -
5 comments
Frankenstein Defeats Evil Computer. Mysterious Grass-Roots Gal-Revolt Rocks Gotham! Are Hippies Slowing Down Space Progam in Protest? Headlines ripped from the pages of such great newspapers as the Daily Bugle and the Gotham Gazette await you at
Dateline: Silver Age.
posted by gamera
on Apr 30, 2010 -
16 comments
Darkseid tries to join the Legion of Superheroes, Batman wrestles the serpent in the garden of Eden, Clarke Kent shoots Abraham (Brainiac) Lincoln...
Hall of Silver Age Elseworlds first pages - from DC Silver Age Elseworld stories that never happened, from the Elseworlds 80-Page Giant collection, which was pulped after controversy surrounding
Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter - which later became the only story in the collection to see print again.
posted by Artw
on May 14, 2009 -
21 comments
ComicsFilter (but bear with me): Frank Miller & Jim Lee will be the writer and artist, respectively, of
All-Star Batman and Robin, a new miniseries intended to make the characters simple, interesting, and easy to follow after decades of backstory. Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely were announced to be doing the same thing on
All-Star Superman, and any comics fan will tell you that these four guys are some of the best in the entire field. Between these two projects,
DC Comics most likely has the top-selling books in the tiny comics industry sewn up for most of 2005, which is reason enough to publish them.
But there's also a question for non-comics readers here at MeFi: DC are really doing this for you. They want new readers (best-selling comics are lucky to top 150,000 copies these days), and they think publishing accessible comic books linked to the release of large movies (The Christopher Nolan film
Batman Begins, based in part on Frank Miller's
Batman: Year One, will be released roughly alongside
All-Star Batman & Robin) is the way to do it. But is there a snowball's chance in hell you'd read something like this? Would your kids, if you have them, be interested, do you think? (Frank Miller, it bears noting, is also the creator and co-director of
Sin City, a film you might've seen a preview for recently -- truly insane cast.)
posted by logovisual
on Jan 5, 2005 -
69 comments
Batman vs. Superman. Tonight we find out who wins at the end of the seven hour marathon which started a few minutes back on Cartoon Network. All week long the fans have been voting for their favourites, and from the last two hours of this marathon will be dedicated to the winner. [It's on Cartoon Network in the US.]
posted by riffola
on Jan 26, 2002 -
21 comments
