Naif Al-Mutawa was born and raised in Kuwait City, one the busiest financial and trade centers in the Middle East which became worldwide known for being the field where Mr. Bush, the First, dropped his so-called precision-guided munitions (oil-guided actually). Mutawa became headline when, at the beggining of this year, he announced The 99 Project, a comic series with 99 superheroes, each personifying one of the 99 qualities that Muslims believe Allah embodies. The guy went to The NY Times, answered many interviews and, well, replied my e-mail with answers that are crucial to understand comics market when religion and the 'West vs. East culture' pops up in debate. And yes, Mutawa will be in Brazil next June, for the International Comics and Humor Festival of Pernambuco. So, clap your hands and say yeah to Mr. Mutawa:

Your name is now best known for The 99 project. And reading some of the others interviews made with you, I found lots of questions about how would the comic market react to an Islamic story with a superhero team. When you get into such a project, what's the importance of thinking about market and partnerships?

Great question! That is all I think about! There are many considerations-both for the Western audience as well as the Islamic one. For the Islamic audience it was very important that I get buy in from a handful of Islamic Scholars. I am currently preparing for a second round of financing for Teshkeel Media Group and have purposefully chosen to go through an Islamic Bank and not a conventional one. The 99 project has already been granted Sharia Board approval from a large and well respected Islamic Bank which I will be announcing in the coming month. This approval goes a long way with conservative readers who may be on the fence regarding my project.

Further, I was approached with support from government officials from various Western countries. I agreed to meet with these officials and thanked them for their support but asked that they only support they give me is moral, not financial. I was worried that getting open support from various Western governments would somehow backfire with half my market-that in the Islamic World. I have support from Western governments, from Islamic governments and Islamic Sharia boards.

Initially, I had a hard time initially in attracting Western talent for an Islamic project. It wasn’t until I bought Cracked magazine that the Western talent realized that I was a serious investor that did not take myself too seriously. That I was not out to preach Islam. Investing in Monty Sarhan’s, my best friend and lawyer’s, vision of the new Cracked opened new doors for Teshkeel Media Group. I had interest from Western writers and artists to work with me in developing my vision of The 99. Equally important, I hired Mike Hobson, the former publisher of Marvel as my advisor and Sven Larsen, the former director of marketing at Marvel as my COO. This translated into deals with Marvel and Archie and soon DC comics to Arabize their content. This meant that not only would The 99 be developed by top tier talent-it would be cross promoted with the best of the best.

When I raised my first round of financing 2 years ago I made sure that all the money I raised would come from even keeled liberal individuals who would leave my vision alone and not interfere. I disallowed conservative Islamic money into the company and I retained control as the largest shareholder to make sure my vision does not turn into someone else’s reality.

The western shapes and models of superheroes and the Islamic culture between the lines. How do they get together in The 99?

The 99 characters are from 99 countries. It is a myth that all Islamic women dress like nuns. In fact, there are as many liberal Islamic women as there are conservative. Walk through any mall in the Gulf and you will see what I mean. Arab culture and Islam are too often forced as one and the same. There are as many versions of Islam as there are people who want to identify themselves as Moslem. It is my firm belief that no one sect has a monopoly on the truth. They should all be allowed equal access to practice their versions of Islam without forcing it down everyone else’s throat. Roughly half of the 99 will be women. Of them, 9 will wear a hijab (head scarf) in 9 different ways!

One of them will cover half her hair, like they do in some parts of Iran and Pakistan, one of them will wear a wig like they do in Egypt, one will show her bangs from under the hijab like they do in the United Arab Emirates, one will wear a more Sunni hijab, one will wear a Shiite one. One will even wear a burqa-her name is Batina. One of the 99 attributes of Allah is Al-Baten “The hidden.” Batina is indeed hidden under her burqa! The irony here is that each sect believes that their way of wearing the hijab is the proper way and all the others are wrong. In The 99 everyone is respectful of every one else’s traditions, even of characters who wear Western styles as there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way millions of Muslim women choose to express their identity by showing heir hair and wearing Western cloths.

Each of the 99 heroes you'll be introducing in the comics have not only a different attribute of Allah, but different nationalities, so that it could raise the subject of multiculturalism. And people now say words such as tolerance to talk about conciliating differences. How does a comic book focused on the idea of people with superpowers (hence, different from common people) cope with the idea of a worldwide community instead of tolerating the difference?

Although the characters are superheroes there is a quite distinct feeling in “this could be any one of us” feeling in the stories. It is my intent for children all over the world - Muslim or otherwise - to identify with and emulate the 99 attributes of Allah...attributes like generosity, wisdom, compassion, mercy...attributes that any culture would be proud to have. The Western media is too focused on intolerance and violence as the attributes of Islam. And in fact, the linking of people from Al-Qaeda to Islam is akin to linking Nazism to Christianity. Every culture has its bad apples. It is my job to promote the goodness inherent in a civilization that has tabooed itself out of touch with the rest of humanity by listening to the thoughts of people who think that thinking is the work of the devil. The negative selection process that has given us this new breed of intolerant religious leaders can only be reversed by tapping into the same wealth that is available to all of us-the wealth in the Quran and to spin it in positive ways to compete with the hatred. This can not come from the outside- only from within.

There will be cross cultural considerations like the hijab example above- and there will be various “I do things this way...why do you do them that way” in the story lines. There will also be examples of characters who want to use their power instead of others and teamwork has to be beaten into them as an ethos. So the cross cultural-tolerance based message will come through in both the interaction of the characters with each other as well as with the common folk.

Name a few people who you think influenced your work as an artist.

My favorite living author-by a long shot- is Pat Conroy. His writing has a way of playing my emotions like a violin. He does to the heart what Dan Brown does to the mind. I recently bought a cookbook he put out just to read it! I am also a fan of Dan Brown.

Do you know any Brazilian comic artist?

I know Mike Deodato, but not personally.