With the new program, the American University of Beirut joins a few other institutions offering degrees and supporting research on comic art, including the University of Florida, the University of Toronto and the University of Dundee, in Scotland. I hope that within five to six years, we will be able to encourage young artists to pursue a career in art and make a comfortable living.” “They were left cash, yet now their art is worth millions, unfortunately mostly after their. “Look at the first generation of Arab masters in cartoons and comics, the Mahmoud Kahils, Pierre Sadek, and the Bahjouris of the Arab world,” he says.
Now, he hopes that the program will aid the careers of future comic artists, providing them with opportunities that he and other artists were denied. He pursued architecture and engineering instead. Early on in his career as a comic artist, Sawwaf decided it wasn’t a realistic career choice. Mu’taz Sawwaf and the initiative’s founding director, Lina Ghaibeh are both published comic artists as well as avid comic book collectors. Named after its biggest donor, the Mu’taz and Rada Sawwaf Arabic Comics Initiative will also hold an annual conference to promote the artistic field and sponsor the Mahmoud Kahil Awards to highlight emerging creative talent in the field. In September, the American University in Beirut (AUB) began a new academic program focused entirely on the study, archiving and promotion of Arab comic art. But comic art remains an often unexamined and under-supported part of Arab artistic effort.Ī new initiative is intent on changing that.
Editorial cartoons are fundamental parts of every daily newspaper. Comic magazines Samir, Lulu and Mickey Geeb (Pocket-sized Mickey) and Arabic translations of Tintin, Superman and Asterix and Obelix have been read and loved by generations of Arabs.