The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life and we’re taking a bit of a detour from our regular beat with “Qahera.” Elias found this one while reading Mel’s lovely review of “Shubeik Lubeik” (which you should all read too) and had some introspection to do. Also some talking about superheroics. It’s a fun time!
Qahera
‘Brainstorm’ – ‘On Basic Equality and Such’
Updates: Infrequently/Concluded
By Deena Mohamed
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
I find it hard to actually review the comic I chose this week. Drawn over the course of 6 years, though primarily from 2013-2015, “Qahera” from “Shubeik Lubeik” creator Deena Mohamed isn’t one thing. Its central figure is the titular Qahera, a female Muslim superhero living in Cairo. There’s no real cast of characters, though Qahera does gain a recurring friend in Layla/Laila, and each of the ten or so comics are self-contained and quite short, often three or four pages at most. Within each she fights again various forces, things like misogyny, patriarchal traditionalism AND modernity, sexual harassment, and so on, personified by various nameless residents of the city. It’s a good marriage of the superhero & the political cartoon without one being used to satirize the other.
Mohamed’s comics are powerful, though unrefined at first, filtered through sharpie drawings and muddy shading. As the title implies, ‘Brainstorm’ feels like it went from brain to fist, propelled by the rage of the comic’s heroine. With each subsequent comic that rage is no less present but it feels channeled, focused, as Mohamed improves and refines her style and linework. You can see this even in ‘On Femen,’ the second of the strips, as the linework tightens up and the paneling becomes more dynamic.
Take the midway point of ‘On Femen.’ Qahera’s eyes are on fire in a long, thin panel on top of two square ones showing the Femen grabbing at her Hijab from off panel, a sea of hands and arms like the grasping claws of a zombie horde. It being in black & white, like the rest of the comic, only adds to the horror of the moment, though one quickly replaced by superheroics, complete with a “dangling baddies from a lamppost” moment. It’s evocative and creates additional depth without adding additional length to the work, allowing it to have a greater impact on its readers.
I said at the top that I struggled to review this comic. I find it hard to judge because the comic is very brief. The sample size is too small to make sweeping generalizations and it’s not telling a long-term narrative that’s taking a long time to tell, although neither is it a sitcom-y gag-of-the-week style comic either. For example, while most of the comics are about being a woman in modern Egypt and using the power fantasy of the superhero to highlight & symbolically/literally punch back, some, like ‘On Flying,’ are more expressly about the character Qahera with some metaphor mixed in. They are one-offs, yes, but it feels like each comic IS its own thing rather than, say, an installment of “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal” or “Nancy.”
There’s a strange expectation from fiction, especially webcomics, that it reaches a specific level of saturation before it can cross over in my mind as “a thing.” It’s ridiculous, I know. But it is a perception others may share and may dismiss “Qahera” because of it.
Please do not.
“Qahera” is a powerful and meaningful work of art in part because it is as short as it is. It retains the feeling of being a raw, spontaneous expression of the artist through this character. It is a diary of Mohamed’s journey as an artist, in as much as we can see. It may not be a series to follow week by week, month by month, but it is something you should read at least once.
