From Eisner to Miller Through Moore and Gaiman, not to forget Rosa and Barks to name a few.

Analyzing oneself is fun because you can say whatever the fuck you want eh.

Comics have been in my life since I knew how to read, and I seriously mean that, ever since I was a kid I used to read the translated disney comics my mom used to buy every week (me, my mom and then later my brother all read them) but I didn't get into reading till that week my mom banned the TV (Thank you mom) in which I started reading actual books I think I was between 6 and 8 at the time and the first book I read (when I was really pissed my mom said no TV for a week and i was crying at the time ) was a dusty old book I picked up from the cupboard that I'm guessing belonged to my great-grandfather (because we were living at his house at that time) the book was called myths and legends from the west (2asateer men al 3'arb) it was in arabic, and it mesmerised me, reading different myths and folk tales from europe, the twelve tasks of hercules, tales about devils and demons, and one story that I still love till now, it was called son of the devil about the good side of the devil, but he wasn't reffered to as satan in this story but rather as the light bearer, Lucifer. I'm not a satanist and the devil has no good side, but this folk tale touched me inside because it was about a young boy who couldn't find a place on earth where he belongs and everyone kept yelling at him to go to the devil or to go to hell, till he actually met the devil (in human form) and told him about that, so Lucifer offered him a place to live and work in hell, where he grew up working filling vats (I don't remeber with what exactly) and playing with his new friends the little demons in hell. till he ended his deal with the devil (to work for a certain amount of years), and became rich beyond imagination, so he decided to go back to the surface only the years in hell had turned him into a hideous demonic beast, he didn't care and still went to the surface, his charm and money astonished people, and they treated him with respect (after fearing him at first). he lived happily for a while, till he loved this girl, but being the hideous beast he is he couldn't approach her, so he called for the devil again and asked him what to do and the devil showed him this lake that if he bathes in it he turns back into a human ( and I think he could never go back to hell but I'm not sure) and he did turn back and he and the woman got married and lived happily ever after. and i've never thought about why i liked it before (I was a kid, kids love stories) but I guess in retrospect the whole aspect of a kid finding his place somewhere (even in hell) and reaching ultimate happiness, gives hope to everyone, because even if every door is shut in your face you can still find hope in the devil (which is used here as a metaphor to the worst places or as something you never thought can even help you).

that was total rambling from memeory and it isn't the core of this blog, but still this story has a resonance in me and it is one my earliest readings even if it wasn't a comic but and actual texty read. but my growth with comcis came step by step first it was the disney comics (named mickey magazine in egypt), then it was Calvin and Hobbes by the Legendary ( at least for me) Bill Watterson, which I used to get from my mother's cousin's wife (who was american and hence had the comics) I remeber one of the 2 books i have I actually got when I got into the bathroom at my mom's cousin's house and it was on top of the toilet 9but that wasn't the first one I got though), this also marked the first time I ever read on top of a toilet ( I still do till now, but now i also play psp in the toilet :P ), i never thought Calvin and Hobbes where influential in my life till I started doing "Driving home" thinking that it was partially penny arcade inspired apparently the humor was deeply instilled in me by the adventure of that six year old boy and his stuffed tiger, becasue being of the same age as the protagonist at the time (if not a little older) caused me to embrace his imagintation (which was vast) to the extent of me imitating some of his games (like acting as if he is in a noir film and narrating his moves, while at the time I didn't know noir films, I liked the concept of the detective style stories ala dick tracey and sin city) anyway transitioning from that era of vast imagination, and carefree life, into my pre teen years when I started to read archie comics and sonic (along with disney that never stopped EVER), archie's love relationships with betty and veronica and at times Cheryl blossom were just too awesome, I remember at one point i actually copied one kissing scene between both archie and betty (which was admired by my mom and my grandfather, but i got yelled at when I showed it to one of my teachers at school for it being immoral but I didn't care, because it's normal to kiss [ this lead me to another discovery just now on how I do obscene art at times and not care about the reprecussions, I NEVER CARED] ), as a matter of fact i recall now drawing archie a bunch of times (early fan art heh) and I think this was about 1995 or 1996 because i remember one drawing I did of archie he was a space cowboy, which has nothing to do with the tommy lee jones movie because it wasn't made then, but due to the conflict in my heart between woody and buzz of toy story on which is better, because i drew archie as an astronaut, but i loved woody so much that i had to make him a cowboy as well, hence the compromised space cowboy. sonic was a nice action addition. aroun that time i also read translated abtman and superman comics, but they where the comics based on the animated show (because the artwork was that of the animated show, I know that now looking at the actual batman and superman comics), they where done by nahdet masr printing house (which currently own the rights to disney after dar el helal lost them, although I loved dar el helal's version of the disney comics more than nahdet masr), i also read other locally made comics like 3ala2 el din and bolbol, which either contained locally written comics (like super 3abdo in 3alaa2 el din) or translated from french comics ( like most of bolbol's comics). Tintin came at around this time too, my mom used to read it to me ( she new about it from before she used to read it when she was younger, come to think of it my mom was always a comic enthusiast herself reading the disney comics, the local samir comic, and this comic she used to tell me allot about called sahar or sa7ar, which was a photo comic i guess from a soap opera turned into photos with speech bubbles, it was a romance comic and her being a girl she loved it) tintin comics where always amazing they were translated to arabic as well most of the comics i read during this period into my teen years where arabic. Local comics like belya el 3ageeb, flash, smash and el 3ameel el serry thalath asfar ( Secret agent 000) were also veyr influential during middleschool and highschool. In highschool I read asterix in english from my school library knowing asterix from a cartoon I knew as a kid I head to read it and I did. i actually never got introduced to the marvel characters till very late the first time i encountered the Xmen was in a super nintendo game NOT A COMIC, although I got ot know superman and batman from comics at first, then movies of course, my mom knew the incredible hulk from the old tv show (but then again most of egypt knows the incredible hulk, mostly as the green man which is his localized name, but most people from that show's generation know it interestingly enough "al ragol al akhdar") but till then my interest in comics was none more than reading through and enjoying the stories, at this time I noticed one artist in the disney comics that had a distinct style and stories that I always enjoyed to me he was the best that ever wrote stories of the disney ducks, later on in life i discovered his name was Don Rosa, to me he is most famous for the amazing 12 episodical master piece "The life and times of scrooge mcduck" chronicling the life of scrogge from a young shoeshine boy in glasgow to the richest man in the world owning that large money bin on top of killmotor hill, with refrences to american history carefully woven into the story and since scrooge wasn't rosa's character but Carl Barks', Rosa carefully read Barks' stories (which he idolized) to find every refrence by scrooge to his history, and placing it into that chronicling of the past of scrooge that was never thought of by barks making rosa the only other person to have his duck stories cannonized alongside with barks (I know this now, but i didn't know it then though).

I never minded reading more comics, and different comics, not caring what i read at that time, English comics where a novelty, but whenever I could get my hands on one I would read it at once. I got more intersted when I saw 300, and enjoyed frank miller's style, and decided to download sin city, and also more comics that i never read as a kid like Xmen and spiderman (I never got to read them all tough maybe a bunch but not all) but it wasn't till last fall that my comic enthusiathem started gearing up and then went into high gear that spring, you see in that fall I started to wrok as a comic artist for dimensions (the student run school newspaper at my university), launching driving home a comic based on the antics of me and my buddy mohamed samir, with characters resmebling us and straight parody of our esteemed university and what goes on in there, as far as I know it was a success, not a hit but hey at least one of my professors noticed it and talked to me about it a couple of times ( and he was an engineering proffessor), ithe summer before that i was trying to make a random comic that i think was called redemption but i don't really remeber, it was your average zombie action comic that I never got to go past page four both times i started to work on it. oh i forgot by that time webcomics had kicked into gear with vgcats and penny arcade spearheading the group, also experience with friends and life grew in me i am a college student now (at that time). it was the spring though that was the catalyst of me trying hard to get into that panelled world of drawings balloons and sound effects, before that spring I tried to draw anime (having been introduced to anime by then but I'll be back with the full story after this) and manga style and actually trying to work hard to improve my style because the year before i have met another of my very closest friends ahmed shaltout because we worked on ICIT 2006 and 2007, making the mascots and other multimedia stuff, his incredible artwork made me want to push myself harder to work harder, and then this eventual spring came spring of 2007, a selected topics course opened up with the title COMICS AND SEQUENTIAL ART the proffessor was an aquaintance from a previous encounter ( he was a student of my drawing proffessor before becoming a proffessor himself, my drawing proffessor introduced us to each other saying that we will get along very well, because he got his masters in comics and sequential art, we became close and he coached me in the direction of reading good comics, because at that time i didn't care remeber I even read the locally created action comics which were below mediocre made by AK comcis, although I enjoyed their launch issues they just went downhill from there being rip offs of marvel, dark horse and DC) but when i took that course my eyes where opened up in the right direction, seeing the potential of that great medium and in that course we had a required readin to read Maus by art speigelman, as well as we had a couple of text book readings from Will eisner (he built the course's syllabus from scott mcloud's and will eisner's comic education books) which introduced me to that legendary jewish godfather of the modern day graphic novel, Will Eisner, one of my highest respected comic writers and artist as well as the first to coin the term "graphic novel" to seperate the from from the pulps and the funnies, a contract with god and his other stories like new york big city, or that other one that was about colonizing space (I don't remeber the name), all his stories where carefully written in an amazing script and perfect plots, they were the genre that my proffessor youssef ragheb (the comics proffessor) advocated, the social comics, comics that talk about everyday life away from action comics filled with men in tights and masks fighting crime, but a more adult oriented civilized form, of drama mixed with a little action at times, but not over blown. but that wans't enough, not for Eisner, no, he went the extra mile with his amazing pagework in which his comic pages where artforms in themselves thinking of composition and style of the page, eliminating panels when he needed and breaking the walla of panel at other times, that took his work to a whole new level, and made me adimre him even more. also this was about the same time i read miller's ronin, then ofcourse 300 like a week or two before that movie came out (and i still think the comic was way much better than the movie, even though gerard butler gave every woman something to fantasize about and every man, a reason to hate themselves and need to go to gym to later run around naked in underwear and red capes yelling awooh [A3ooh ya bongi]) miller's style mixed with lynn varley's colours where just as amazing as every (lynn varley the hidden soldier and miller's right hand man in most of his coloured work IF NOT ALL, Varley is the colourist the Miller trusts since ronin, 300 and even The dark night returns) i still think Ronin is miller's best piece of work (and I'll come to that later) at around that time I also discovered this amazing author, Alan Moore (after ofcourse watching V for Vendetta) Moore that enigmatic english writer, famous for books such as the Watchmen and V for Vendetta, also the league of extraordinary gentleman, plunged my into this world of metaphorical panel work and gut wrenching flashback's, one of my favourite pieces by him was " A Killing joke" for DC which was basically an explanation of the joker's past through a great story that involves the joker, commissioner Gordon and of course The Batman himself and a large chunk of flashbacks and a final joke and punchline by the white faced green haired lunatic (which was not created by bob knae original creator of the dark night, but by Jerry Robinson, one of his gohst wirters from the era when batman appeared in DC's Detective comics, when they decided to make batman #1 jerry pitched the idea of the joker as the archenemy and it stuck). weird how both miller and moore made a batman at one pooint in their lives, but then again who wouldn't want to put his twist on that playboy millionaire masked vigilante. Moore's watchmen being a literary masterpiece (that i unfortunately never got to finish, but i'm getting there) was another major influence in my work ( The unpublished one). but then no respectable comic enthuthiast ever forget neil Gaiman, and even if i've never read The sandman (blasphemy i know) his piece "Marvel 1602" which was basically the marvel universe in that titular year, was enough to prove to me that that man can write good shit.and so by the end of that year it was clear that at some point in my life I have to get a comic book out there.

When I came to the land of the free and the home of the brave, i encountered The Time Warp (that's the comic book store in boulder) and you can Imagine what happened then, to say the least now i have a huge comic collection, currently reading fables the next big thing from Vertigo and the manga frank miller used to read as a kid "Lone wolf and cub" ironically enough with covers illustrated by miller and varely (but it was this manga that highly influenced millers style, obvious in his work in daredevil and his creation of elektra, yes elektra is miller's creation as well as "Ronin") needless to say lone wolf and cub is as amazing as it should be, and more. and so maybe now I have more experience with comics than before, but this retrospect has opened my eyes on the influences I had growing up, and myabe putting me on track towards the future, because this analysis just reminded me of allot of things that had been lost over time.

but ofcourse american comics weren't the only thing that influenced me at the time, you see growing up there were always these arabic dubs of these badass cartoons (Anime but I didn't know that at the time) so watching tv growing up I encoutered several anime that just influenced me till now from the flash back heavy superpowered soccer anime captian tsubabsa (localized as captain maged) the original mech anime Mazinger Z and Grandizer, the amazing Speed Racer and his mach 5 to the three video tapes my grandma bought me one day one of them was robin hood (the anime one of the most badass of anime with a character that was soo bad ass he just might've been my childhood version of sephiroth), the masked tiger ("Al namer al moqana3" a wrestling anime that scared the shit out of me because the fourth and last episode in the tape had a biting werstler that bit the masked tiger rendering him unconscience that biting wrestler used to come in nightmares, i dunno if he was a vampire but i doubt it.) and after my grandma returened the masked tiger for scaring me it was ramy the young fisherman( al sayad al sa3'eer) about a kid that fishes (japanese enough yet ??) but it wasn't till highschool when I encountered Hellsing by mistake on the internet that I discovered hey those bad ass childhood cartoons of my childhood are called anime let's watch them and so the first ones I watched were hellsing and final fantasy unlimited (being a hardcore final fantasy fan by then). and it kicked off from then the anime craze from that night in a cyber cafe trying to download episodes of hellsing because they had dsl and I was on 56k modem and didnt have it running all the time (i ended up buying the anime from the cyber casfe because they had them downloaded and burnt to cds and i bought it from them). which led closley to the addition of manga, but i didnt read that much manga to think of it I only read two books of negima, then moved on to lone wolf and cub and ofcourse the masterpiece "DEATH NOTE" but the anime I've seen have defintely affected my influences (hey if miller was japanese inspired why can't i be).

In honourable mentions I'll never forget Kazaz bringing me 3 issues that had the story of tom judge and th rapture (about the judge of man and the end of the world a satire on relegion in an action comic with the devil being a stock broker that turns insane) that led me to later on buy the trade paperback of that to learn the full story, and ofcourse The amazing comic "Cairo" By G. Willow Wilson, whom I had the priveledge of meeting when she came to boulder last winter, her awesome book about my hometown while i was whisked away in foriegn lands brought me a touch of nostalgia mixed with awe to the extent of great writing in that book, a must read to anyone that doesn't even care about comics. and not to forget the vertigo titles highly advocated by prof. youssef as literary masterpieces due to their more mature nature than your average marvel or DC. I've dissed marvel and DC allot, but Stan Lee and guys at DC are highly respectable to me their work still amazes me and they thought of it before everyone did, and created the whole movement of comics through the 70s and 60s and also in dark horse mike mignola is an awesome writer himself. and just as maus was a human drama chronicling the escape of speigleman's dad from hitler's germany and the camps, "persopolis" chronicles Iran's suffering through the revolutions and wars against iraq as well as Marjane Satrapi's struggle to grow up in foriegn lands (Ironically enough read by my in similar conditions but at least I have contact with my family and I know I'm going back, she never did). i just couldn't end a ramble about comics without mentioning these. but hey thanks for sticking around through my analysis of myself through the ages and looking into my influences in terms of comics, and comic writing. this is one side of myself that was hidden for a while, but hey this ramble got me to peer into it, sorry for the text but hey a journal is a journal.