T Campbell's Blog

Finished the P&A script "Second Looks" for May and June. Working now on a handful of new projects, including some work to commission for Clickwheel (massive outlining stage) and a handful of long-overdue roundtables. I'm also off to Kent this afternoon to meet up with Alan Dicey, longtime reader and Fans restoration specialist.

But what I really want to talk about this morning is the Islam project.

My favorite title for it at the moment is One Five, representing the 1.5 billion people in Islam, the "Oneness" at the heart of Allah, and "five" people whose vastly varying journeys may represent some of the consistency and variety of this religion.

I approach this project with no small amount of trepidation. I am doing my best to educate myself, reading the Koran/Quran and several books about the subject-- I recomment No god but God by Rezo Aslan for the insights and for Aslan's strong storytelling ability. Nevertheless, I feel my ignorance is only two or three degrees less abysmal than that of the average American, and that's pretty bad. (Do not get me started on the Bush Administration.)

A history of webcomics is gonna be controversial. A group of stories of Islam is likely to be more so.

(Especially considering the Islam tradition against the figural arts-- a tradition not observed by all sects but still quite important.)

Work permitting, I'm going to be spending some time at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies next week, bouncing off ideas and maybe making a new friend or two.

The project has no artist yet. Someone close to me says that the artist really should be a Muslim. I agree. I just submitted this ad to Digital Webbing:

MUSLIM CARTOONIST sought for graphic novel showing five different experiences with Islam. Ability to draw many small, simple images as well as larger ones a definite plus... I am interested in a true collaboration: I expect the script to change as a result of our conversations. Work will be published online and then in print; 60% of all revenues are yours.

Mostly I'm nervous because I know how I work-- speed is just a part of my makeup at this point, and I absolutely have to slow down long enough to ponder what needs pondering in this subject. To a lapsed Episcopalian like me, it represents an entirely different way of life where prayer is an everyday thing, a (usually) more intellectual sort of faith where the right and left brains are more closely aligned, and most fascinating to me, a religion whose future is being decided today. "The Islamic Reformation is already here," writes Aslan. "We are all living in it."

I would love for someone like Aslan to be writing a graphic novel like this. I would love to simply breathe and have such a graphic novel EXIST, even if I didn't get any credit for its conception. But-- as I end up saying about most of the projects I do-- I don't think anyone else is going to produce what I feel we need. What the community has produced so far is sometimes close, but no cigar.

I'm also working on an essay, "Toward Muslim Cartooning," which I'll release on-site later. It concerns not only my own efforts but the work of others like Joe Sacco, Marjane Satrapi, Mohammed Haque and Khalil Bendib.

Your thoughts? What else do I need to read? How can I best prepare to create this work?