The Identity in Comic Strips in Egypt

Abstract

AbstractComic strips are evidence of countries’ progression or even their opposition to the reality they live in and their desire for change. Here comes the role of the comic artist. Despite the wide range of comic strip genres, whether Caricatures, Romance, Action, Horror, Superheroes or even Drama, each of which is nothing but a mirror that reflects what happens in the artist’s life and the impacts affecting him where he lives. Society is only a part of the life existing inside one country, which has its Identity and the influences affecting it, whether political, economic or social influences. Identity should be mentioned here: did the Egyptian artist succeed in reflecting the Egyptian Identity on his works or not? What did the Western Schools do? How did they develop and reflect their Identity on comic strips? How did comic strips prove themselves worthy in human life, thus becoming indispensable in Western countries? Regan gave comic strips their right, when he said that each morning, he searched for Marvel comics before reading any other news. Spiderman became a symbol of Justice and Defense of Rights and has been used by Human Rights Organizations in campaigns making people aware of the children! And moving to Europe, where Asterix has become a French National Hero, as he was the symbol of the resistance against the Roman Occupation (and actually, he was the symbol of what was happening at the time of the World War and the Raiders on France). When McDonald’s used Asterix in their products’ promotion campaigns, the French got mad for using Asterix as an agent for the enemy—the Americans of course—while he was mainly defending them. Now back to Egypt, where there were strong attempts for founding an artistic school with Egyptian Identity, and there was a building criticism by Ellabad to make people well aware of what the cultural invasion was trying to do to us, but unfortunately, the school with the Egyptian Identity did not show up and all the attempts failed. Identity is a very homogenous digesting mould of what we are, and its appearance in the contemporary Egyptian comics was delayed due to the great differences among the Egyptian people at the time of the study, and it is very difficult for this harmony to occur now due to the political, social and even psychological conditions that exist. Thus, the researcher concludes that at the time of the research, Identity in the contemporary comics in Egypt will only be found in individual experiences. But it is possible that this harmony will happen again one day, and we might live in an age of group artistic geniality, due to the intensive competition among the Egyptian artists and the absorption of the global market to them, as what happened with the Franco-Belgian comics.