Fantom Comics Presents: Taiwanese Comics Showcase (audio and photos)
Feixue Mei (mod.), Monday Recover, A ee mi, Crystal Kung, Ding Pao-Yen, Rio and Fantom Comics
Washington, DC: Martin Luther King Jr. Library
Friday, September 11, 2026
Thursday, September 10, 2026
The Comics Archive in Sweden -- Cultural Heritage, Preservation and Promotion
The Comics Archive in Sweden --
Cultural Heritage, Preservation and Promotion
Fredrik Strömberg
As more academics, journalists, and historians wish to research and write about comics, there is an increasing need for source materials. However, because of cultural and societal forces not always having been altogether positive concerning the comics, much material has historically been lost. Official archives might not have been, or indeed, still may not be interested in safeguarding artifacts from comics history (Nilsson and Storn, 2003A: 24).
Starting a dedicated archive to facilitate the preservation of the cultural heritage of comics might be a solution, but also a road full of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, not the least concerning financing the enterprise, as well as the long-time safeguarding of the material collected. As an inspiration, this is the story of how the leading comics archive in Northern Europe dedicated to the comics came to be -- despite odds, in some ways, being stacked against it.
Why a Comics Archive?
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| The premium publication of the Comics Archive is Svensk Seriehistoria (Swedish Comics History), a series of high-quality hardcover volumes, each focusing on a specific era, with lengthy articles and interviews. This is the very first one. So far, four volumes have been published since the start in 2004, with a fifth planned for 2026. |
In 1997, when I became president of the Swedish Comics Association -- a non-profit organization started in 1968 to promote the comics, it soon became evident that the 30th anniversary of the association was just around the corner. I had also become one of the editors of the association’s journal, Bild & Bubbla, and we recognized there was a need to write an article on the history of the association. However, it turned out that gathering information for this was not as easy as it might have seemed. The responsibility of organizing the association had been passed between many different hands during almost three decades, and even though it seemed the people who had been working with the association often had kept documents produced within the organization, nothing had ever been centrally collected. The physical artifacts recording the history of the association was thus dispersed in various attics and cellars across Sweden (Strömberg, 2013: 7).
So, we decided to start an archive for the association, and archivist Thomas Storn started traveling around Sweden, collecting official documents, photographs, correspondence, news clippings, and catalogues (Didring Leksell, 2023: 25). A favorite place of retrieval was a (thankfully) abandoned henhouse, belonging to the parents of a person formerly active in the running of the association (Nordström, 2025).
All these activities led to discussions on what was preserved concerning comics history in Sweden in general. In 2001, we applied for and received a small private grant to do an inventory of how artifacts from comics history were being kept in the official Swedish archives. This entailed, among other things, having Storn, who by then was responsible for what was initially titled “Projekt Svensk Seriehistoria” (Project Swedish Comics History), take a trip around Sweden, visiting archives and interviewing their staffs about the preservation of comics history (Nilsson, 2002: 9). The results were not satisfying, to say the least. The official Swedish archives have been assigned to preserve everything ever printed in Sweden -- a system started already in 1661 -- and they mostly do. However, many of the older comic books seemed to have disappeared over the years, as they were presumably not deemed the most important cultural artifacts to preserve, or were commercially valuable enough to steal. Worse was that there seemed to be no institutions interested in preserving unique materials, e.g. manuscripts, originals, and correspondence (Nilsson and Storn, 2003b: 5).
This, combined with the fact that there were recurring reports on comics publishers throwing away crates upon crates of unique material when moving and/or just to save space, or relatives of deceased comics artists having to resort to selling or throwing things out, made us realize that something had to be done. We applied for and got a bigger, governmental grant to lay the groundwork for a proper archive, and even though we found no way of securing a continuous funding, we went ahead with the project based on a determination to do our best to preserve the Swedish comics cultures (Nilsson, 2004: 16). The archive was officially started in Autumn 2003, but a press conference about our intentions had been held already in June that year, at the National Archives in Stockholm, combined with the debut of an exhibition on Swedish comics history. This event gained a fair amount of attention in the media and helped kick start the project, initiating a steady flow of donations that has since built the entire archive (Nilsson and Storn, 2003a: 24).
Swedish Comics History
The archive was officially started as part of the Swedish Comics Association, led by Storn, and with a dedicated working group including Jakob Hallin, Peter Nilsson, and Claes Reimerthi (Nilsson, 2003: 12).
Initially, the effort was divided into two separate though interlinked projects. One was simply called Svenskt Seriearkiv (The Swedish Comics Archive), aimed at kick starting an archive and collecting all the physical material possible. The other was termed “Svensk Seriehistoria” (Swedish Comics History), a concentrated effort to interview as many people as possible from Swedish comics cultures, making sure that information that had not been written down was also preserved. As this effort was initiated in the early 2000s, it was decided to focus on people that had been part of the launch of comic books publishing in Sweden in the 1940s and 1950s, since they were still and available for interviews. The project group interviewed many people, focusing specifically on the less public editorial side of the business, as the artists had often already been interviewed multiple times (Nilsson and Storn, : 7). These interviews were lengthy, and sometimes performed at consecutive meetings, giving the interviewers time to digest the answers, research further, and prepare for more in-depth follow-up questions. At this point, these interviews were also producing so much original information about the history of comics in Sweden that repeat meetings were required as new lines of inquiry constantly arose. Within a few years, the project had produced more than 100 hours of interviews, and managed to transcribe most of them, making the material available for researchers, but also for the production of articles, books, and exhibitions.
The group also interviewed comics artists, especially the ones with long and influential careers, and in the case of artists no longer alive, remaining relatives were located and interviewed (Nilsson and Storn, 2003a: 7). During these interviews, the representatives of the archive were often given privy to unique materials, such as photos, manuscripts, and correspondence, which had frequently been donated and/or photographed, thus adding to the historical material concerning the themes of the interviews (Storn, 2013: 3).
These interviews were also used as the basis for a book series with the same name as the project, i.e. Svensk Seriehistoria, generous (300+ pages) hardcover volumes with lengthy articles and interviews focusing on different eras in Swedish comics history. So far, there has been four volumes, one each focusing on the 1950s and 1960s and two on the 1970s. A fifth, focusing on the important Northern Europe publisher Bonniers and its various comic publishing endeavors since the 19th Century, is forthcoming in 2026 (Strömberg, 2025: 17).
Even though it has since been decided that there was no need for a separately-titled project for the interviews, we have continued to do them, and, to date, we have more than 100 longer interviews made for the archive, and more added continuously.
From Lund to Malmö
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| Project manager and archivist Thomas Storn at the initial incarnation of the Comics Archive in the early aughts, when it was situated at Arkivcentrum Syd (Archival Centre South) in Lund and comprised between 20 and 30 shelf meters. |
When the archive was started, it was decided that the materials collected should be preserved in the best way possible, i.e. in a professional archival milieu. In 2004, we started hiring shelf space at Arkivcentrum Syd (Archival Centre South) in Lund, the largest archival compound in Northern Europe, situated near Lund University, one of the most prestigious universities in Sweden. This assured that the material was always kept in a locked and secure area, at 18 degrees Celsius and 40 percent humidity, perfect for long-term preservation (Zimmerman, 2013: 54).
We were able to do this as we became members of Skånes arkivförbund (The Archival Association of Scane), an organization for archives in southern Sweden that had an agreement with the Arkivcentrum Syd that meant that small archives could rent shelf space by the meter for a nominal fee. We started out with less than 30 shelf meters, and the rent for this was paid several years by a share of that initial governmental grant kept for this specific purpose.
However, after several years in Lund, the city archivist of Malmö contacted the Swedish Comics Association and offered not only shelf space within the City Archive, but also administrative rooms for sorting, registering, and digitizing. We accepted, and the archive, which, by then, encompassed more than 200 shelf meters, was moved, one van at a time, and installed in Malmö in 2014. The placement within the City Archive of Malmö means that the materials are still kept at the correct temperature and humidity, makes the archive officially part of the comics cluster labelled Seriestaden (The Comics City of Malmö), and moved the archive closer to the University of Malmö, which has been very interested in collaborations.
Collections and Archives
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| The Archive contains about 40 000 originals, with everything from rough sketches to painted covers. |
The archive has grown exponentially for more than two decades and, today, it encompasses about 1,200 shelf meters of material. Almost everything preserved in the archive has been donated, since it does not have funds to purchase. However, there has been a steady stream of private donations from collectors and artists, and from publishers, syndicates, and similar organizations, often in bulk. During the last few years, the Swedish subsidiary of Egmont -- the biggest publisher of comics in Northern Europe, completely overhauled its own archive, discarding several trucks load of materials that was subsequently donated to the Comics Archive (Strömberg, 2024: 13).
What does the Archive collect and preserve? We try to get two copies of everything comics-related ever published in Sweden: one to be used for research purposes and one simply for long-term archiving. We also collect foreign editions of comics, especially if they, in any way, relate to Swedish comics cultures. We, for instance, collect journals, books, academic dissertations, etc. about comics in any language for reference. Comics publications in other languages are not deemed our first priority, as they are presumably kept in other archives across the globe, and, thus, only one copy is kept. More on this later.
However, we collect so much more, and it is often these things that are the most interesting. From artists, we get sketches, manuscripts, and originals -- showcasing the artistic processes behind comics. From publishers and editors, we get production materials, such as proofs, reproduction and printing films, coloring instructions, physical cut-and-paste versions of comics pages, and so on, showcasing the production processes involved in communicating the comics. We also get correspondence, advertising, financial documents, and much, much more.
The archive is organized in the same way as most archives, i.e. into separate personal archives based on donations of unique materials from specific persons and/or organizations, but also as collections of specific publication formats, such as comic books, graphic novels, fanzines, books, and journals about comics.
Every time someone donates a comic book, magazine, journal, graphic novel, or any other comics-related printed matter, it is registered and added to the collections. If it’s in Swedish and the archive already has a copy, the second copy is kept in the secondary collection. If the archive already has two copies, all copies are compared and the two copies that are in the best shape are kept, with the third sent to storage to be sold to help finance the archive. We have today more than 70 percent of everything comics related ever published in Sweden and are constantly adding new items to the collections (Strömberg, 2025: 10).
If a professional person or organization in the comics business donates unique material from their comics-related profession, that will also be registered but will constitute a separate archive in the name of said person or organization. In the archive, we, at the moment, have 178 separate archives, ranging from script writers -- e.g. Janne Lundström and Claes Reimerthi; comics artist -- e.g. Ottilia Adelborg, Natalia Batista, Malin Biller, Bud Grace, and Johan Wanloo; editors -- e.g. Ulf Granberg (Fantomen), Kjell Ståhl (Svenska MAD), and Nisse Larsson (DN-serien); publishers -- e.g. Bonnier Carlsen, Egmont, and Ingemar Bengtsson (Optimal Press); syndicates -- Bulls Presstjänst and PIB; organizations -- e.g. Seriefrämjandet/The Swedish Comics Associations, Serieteket, and Serieskolan/The Comics Art School; and historians/scholars -- e.g. Olle Dahlöf and Sture Hegerfors (The Swedish Comics Academy). The donations range from artists donating a few originals, to publishers donating production material by the truckloads. In 2024 alone, we got the equivalent of 60 pallets of donated materials (Strömberg, 2025: 12).
The two different ways of organizing are based on the idea of the material being easy to access for those working with the archive, but also for visitors. If you want to read a year’s worth of a certain comic book title, the issues should all be collected in a dedicated box and not dispersed in the archive based on whomever donated the individual issues. On the same principle, materials concerning the work of a specific artist, editor, or publisher is most easily accessed as a separate entity within the archive, instead of, for instance, sorting this kind of materials thematically.
A major donation on a specific theme might start out as an archive but develop into a collection. This has, for instance, happened with a donation by Swedish comics historian Svante Kjellberg, who had what was probably the largest collection of American underground comics in Northern Europe. He donated his collection to the archive, and it was deemed both interesting and substantial enough to start a new collection specifically for underground material that has since been added to by further donations (Strömberg, 2023: 29). Another example of this is an expansive donation of material from Museum Kasper, a former museum for early 19th Century comics-related art and publications. This has also become a separate collection on the theme of caricature journals, with materials continually added to it.
These collections still retain the name of the original donor, and all the materials can still be traced back to whomever donated it through a paper with a code that is inserted into each of the objects when registered, signifying the donor and the date of the donation. At the same time, the materials get easier to access for everyone involved as it gets placed at one physical location.
Exhibitions and Events
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| At the tenth anniversary of the Swedish Comics Archive, a celebration was organized, with a conference and the debut of two exhibitions at Arkivcentrum Syd, the original venue for the Archive. |
We announced the start of the archive with an event and an exhibition and communicating the information contained in the materials has always been an important part of the assignment of the archive. The archival facilities in Lund where the archive started its existence had auxiliary, public spaces which were used for various activities, including a large conference to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the archive in 2013. This was done with, among other events, the debut of two major exhibitions, the publishing of a special issue of the journal Bild & Bubbla, and, not the least, a full day of lectures and on-stage discussions with artists, publishers, editors and researchers (Mani, 2014: 23).
To maximize the number of people reached, the exhibitions produced for the archive have mostly been made to be mobile, consisting of printed roll-ups that can easily be packaged, transported, and employed in more or less any kind of location. They have been shown throughout Sweden for the last decade or so, often combined with lectures from the curator and/or workshops with local comics artists. We have made an exhibition based on my book, Swedish Comics History (Strömberg, 2010), but also on the oft forgotten history of comic books geared towards female audiences. Recently, we made an exhibition about the history of comic book publishing in Sweden, which is on its third showing. These exhibitions are often showcased at public libraries and/or culture houses, which exist in most towns in Sweden.
We also partake in the recurring comics festivals in Sweden, with booths for showcasing our books and recruiting members, but also often with on-stage events, such as presentations of materials from the archive and interviews with editors and publishers.
Lately, we’ve also produced several events in collaboration with the earlier mentioned Malmö University: smaller symposiums and larger conferences discussing, from various viewpoints, the meetings of academic research and the materials in archives. These events have been international in scope, and have often had guest speakers, e.g. Karen Green, curator for comics and cartoons, Columbia University Libraries, US; Catherine Ferryerolle, the archives at La Cité Internationale de la Bande dessinée d’Angoulême, France; Philippe Capart, La Crypte Tonique, Belgium, and Richard Graham, The Comics and Visual Resources Collections at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, US (MUCH, 2022).
We often participate in an annual meeting of people working with comics archives, museums, and libraries, organized by the earlier mention Ferryerolle at the archival unit of La Cité in Angoulême, France. These meetings are important, to learn from one another on how to manage and build these collections and archives, and to know what materials are preserved and where to find them. The comics cultures of the world are interlinked in so many ways, and since no one archive can preserve everything, It is necessary to complement one another’s collections.
Books and Publications
Another way we try to make sure that the material in the archive is kept relevant is through publications in articles and books. Throughout the years, a number of visiting authors, journalists, and researchers have used material from the archive for their publications, and this is on the rise, with more requests for visits to the archive.
The publications produced as part of the running of the archive include the already-mentioned flagship book series, Svensk Seriehistoria, which is not the only publishing venue. In 2024, as part of the new organization, we introduced a yearbook, a publication containing articles based on material contained in the archive. The articles vary from analyses of a single cover to overviews of whole publishing ventures but also contain interviews with donors of materials to the archive, and a documentation of the year at the archive. These yearbooks are only available to members of the archive; so far; we’ve produced two, with a third in production.
There is the book series, Seriearkivet Presenterar (The Comics Archive Presents), monographs collecting classic Swedish comics, augmented with lengthy prefaces presenting the artists, the comics and the circumstances surrounding their original publications. These vary from facsimile editions of older comic collections to those of comics that had only been serialized in daily, weekly or monthly publications. Finally, we publish one-off books, such as a book about the Swedish comics script writer par excellence, Claes Reimerthi, who not only was part of starting the archive, but whose whole book collection and professional archive was donated by his daughters when he passed away a few years ago.
These endeavors, i.e. articles and books, but also exhibitions, seminars, and lectures, are done to preserve the materials in the archive, and made to come alive, being part of our society and culture again, which we deem an important part of curating the archive.
A Scandinavian Archive
The new logotype for the Archive, adopted after the name change to simply Seriearkivet, i.e. The Comics Archive.
The Comics Archive is situated in Sweden, but we do collect material from other countries if they connect to Swedish comics cultures. We have, for instance, an extensive collection of the French magazine, Journal de Spirou, back to the 1950s. The serialized comics in that magazine have often been translated and published in Sweden in various formats, and are, thus, interesting for translation research. On the same note, we also have a complete collection of the US MAD Magazine as a complement to the Swedish edition that was published between 1960 and 2002, as well as an archive donated by Kjell Ståhl, one of the last editors of the Swedish edition (Strömberg, 2023: 40).
From the earlier-mentioned donation with artifacts from Museum Kasper, the archive also has a sizeable collection of satirical journals from all over Europe, stemming from the heyday of this early publication platform for comics, i.e. mid-19th Century up until the mid-20th Century. Combining this international collection with an extensive collection of Swedish satirical journals from the same period invites historical comparative studies, as these journals seem to have been collaborating across geographical and cultural borders, not only translating and exchanging comics, but also presumably exchanging visual ideas back and forth, an under-researched area in comics history (see, Strömberg, 2023: 36).
The interconnectedness of Swedish comics cultures to the rest of the world, and especially to our region in Northern Europe, has always been something we’ve been aware of when curating the archive. The idea of a more collaborative effort for preserving the shared comics history led to a project where I traveled to our Nordic neighbors in the early 2020s, visiting their official, governmental archives, talking to the staff about the preservation of comics, but also talking to people interested in either running or starting up national archives for comics in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Norway. The conclusions were, 1. that the comics history and culture of Northern Europe is indeed intricately intertwined through publishers, syndicates, and artists, who have throughout the last two centuries often been working with Northern Europe as their market; and 2. that there were few other organizations doing what we do and, thus, a need for the archive to start accepting material from our neighbors, materials that otherwise risked being lost.
As a result of this, we decided to help work for the establishing of more comics archives in Northern Europe. Seeing that this will most likely take time, we also changed the name of the archive from The Swedish Comics Archive, to simply The Comics Archive in order to prepare for adding material from the other countries in Northern Europe (Strömberg 2025a: 8).
There is, at the moment, no active comics archive in Denmark, and the archive has thus been asked to help preserve Danish material. To do this, we started by changing the way we organize, catalogue, and persevere Danish comics, making them equal in our systems to comics from Sweden, i.e. we strive to archive two copies of all comics-related publications, but also to actively collect unique Danish material. We started by helping to retrieve all comics-related materials from the estate of legendary Danish publisher Jens Peder Agger, who was instrumental in introducing French and Belgian comics albums into Northern Europe, and among other things, acted as the international agent of Will Eisner. We also got the archive from the Danish syndicate PIB, which was kept in a cellar, risking being thrown away. After this, more donations came, and the Danish part of the archive is growing. We have also become more active in collecting material from Denmark, for instance taking part in the comics festival Copenhagen Comics, asking all participating publishers to donate copies of their books.
So, we are now officially a Scandinavian comics archive (Strömberg, 2025a: 8).
Its Own Organization
During the early 2020s, it became evident that the archive had outgrown its place as a “mere” project within the Swedish Comics Association, and, in 2022, we started a new, separate organization for the archive. I am its first president, and Jakob Hallin and Thomas Storn are members of the new board of directors; Hallin is the manager of the new organization. To depart from the Swedish Comics Association was not an easy decision, but the right one. The archive had grown exponentially and was now a major part of the association’s activities, at the same time as the new board of directors that had taken over after I’ve made my departure as president in order to finish my PhD, were more interested in organizing other activities in the name of the association (Strömberg, 2025a: 8).
Since then, the archive has grown, getting large donations almost weekly. We today rent 1,150 shelf meters in the City Archive of Malmö, but that space is not nearly enough to accept what we have received the last couple of years, which is in various stages of being sorted, registered, and digitized. As the shelf space in the Malmö Archive is rapidly running out, we are right now looking into once again renting additional shelf space at Arkivcentrum Syd in Lund. We are, at the same time, in talks with the city of Malmö for long-term expansions of the archival facilities.
The efficiency regarding registering and digitizing the material has been strengthened in the last couple of years. In 2024, we registered 27,490 donated publications, increasing the total of registered donated publications since the start to 151,872. An estimated 90,000 publications awaited being sorted and registered at end of the year. Of the 27,490 registered publications, 7,196 were new additions to the collections, moving us closer to owning a copy of everything comics-related ever published in Sweden. During the same year, we managed to digitize 13,138 covers and interior pages (Strömberg, 2025: 11–12).
This is all managed by the executive manager, who has five part-time assistants and about 15 additional people helping out. Together, they are manning six administrative rooms, as well as one major room for accepting and initial sorting of more expansive donations, as well as one storage room for discarded copies. A lot of the work done involves moving the materials between these rooms, depending on where in the process it is, before it ends up in the actual archival vaults. There are four, soon to be five, workspaces for digitization, focusing on different kinds of media, as well as ten workplaces for registering and eight more for sorting and handling of everything that is being donated.
Financing
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Every ten years, the journal Bild & Bubbla has had an issue dedicated to celebrating Swedish comics history, coinciding with the start of the archive in 2003, the tenth anniversary in 2013 and the 20th century in 2023. |
A lot of factors have been set against the existence of a dedicated comics archive in Sweden, not the least, the earlier-mentioned historical disregard for comics as something deserving to be preserved in archives and museums. More recently, the work to establish The Comics Archive has been met with a reluctance to finance a new archive, as these institutions are all competing for a shrinking amount of governmental financing in Sweden, at the same time as comics publishers are facing drops in sales, making them less likely to sponsor an archival endeavor.
However, a lot of factors have also worked for the establishing of the archive. First and foremost is that a lot of people have been willing to work tirelessly and without pay for years and years, decades in fact. The amount of time that people such as Jakob Hallin, Peter Nilsson, Claes Reimerthi, Thomas Storn, myself, and many more have put in on all levels of the building of the archive can’t be overestimated and has also often come at a cost of lost income for the people involved.
That Thomas Storn is a professional archivist has been extremely important, meaning that the archive from the start was organized professionally. It also meant that we had connections within the archival world. Without these facts, it would probably have been difficult to get our archive into the official archives that it has resided in.
Second, that the Swedish Comics Association already existed, since 1968, meant there was a safe harbor for the initial phase of the archive. The association had a solid reputation among potential financiers; an established system for handling day-to-day administrative tasks, such as applying for grants, sending reports, paying salaries, taxes and so on, and a large group of dedicated members from which to recruit people to work with the archive once it was founded. The association also had a journal, which throughout the years has worked as a publishing platform for disseminating information from the archive’s collections, including three thematic issues that have been produced every ten years, commemorating the start of the archive, as well as its 10th and 20th anniversaries.
The association was where people, such as Jakob Hallin and myself, cut our teeth at applying for grants, managing projects, producing books and exhibitions, and leading and organizing an NGO.
Third, even though it has sometimes been difficult, the archive was started in a country with a well-established system of governmental and private grants for supporting cultural endeavors. Throughout the years we have applied for and received different grants, from financing specific technologies used in, for instance, digitization, to funding the production of books and/or exhibitions. Since we became our own organization, we have also been able to get a substantial governmental grant every year for the digitization that we do as part of a national undertaking to digitize as much as possible of the Swedish national heritage.
We have a system in Sweden of supporting people who, for various reasons, have ended up outside of the traditional workforce, giving people often with physical and/or mental problems the opportunity to do what is labelled as “work training” with designated organizers. We have been doing this for well over a decade and usually have between four and 20 people organizing, registering, and digitizing the material in the archive. We get governmental money each day a person is work training at the archive, so this system both helps in the Sisyphean work of handling the material and finances the archive. Some of the people that have work trained have later been employed as assistants at the archive, and for this, the government pays a substantial part of their salaries, making it possible to have more assistants than we would otherwise be able to.
Finally, we have been able to get considerable donations from a comics artist and publisher who wants to support what we do. This has sometimes amounted to more than what we’ve gotten from governmental grants and has been indispensable, especially in the pivotal years after we broke free from the Swedish Comics Association. We are, at the moment, in talks with another potential patron and hope to extend this part of the financing of the archive.
Furthermore, we plan to start selling copies of comic books and graphic novels that are not in the better condition of the ones we’ve been given through donations. We’ve been sorting these by year and have a huge storage of them, but have not had the time to build a system for handling this more commercial part of the archive.
The Future
When we started the archive in 2003, a lot of people seemed skeptical as to the actual use of such an endeavor and/or were disinterested in it. That has changed, and today, there is a growing interest in the preservation of comics history.
Fredrik Strömberg is a Swedish researcher, journalist, and author. He is chief editor of Bild & Bubbla, the world’s second oldest magazine about comics, and president of The Comics Archive in Malmö Among the books he has written are Swedish Comics History, Black Images in the Comics, The Comics Go to Hell, Jewish Images in the Comics, and Comic Art Propaganda. Strömberg’s thesis, Comics and the Middle East -- Representation, Accommodation, Integration, was defended at Malmö University in 2022.
References
Didring Leksell, Karin. 2023. “Porträtt: Thomas Storn.” Bild & Bubbla. 55(3): 24–25.
Granberg, Ulf. 2016. “Förord.” In Svensk Seriehistoria -- andra boken från Svenskt Seriearkiv, edited by Ulf Granberg, pp. 6–8. Malmö: The Swedish Comics Association.
Mani, Jamil. ed. 2014. Seriefrämjandets verksamhetsberättelse 2013. Malmö: The Swedish Comics Association.
MUCH. 2022. “The Comics Archive Symposium 2022 – Abstracts.” https://comics.uni.mau.se/the-comics-archive-symposium-2022-abstracts. Accessed January 4, 2026.
Nilsson, Peter. 2002. Seriefrämjandets verksamhetsberättelse 2001. Malmö: The Swedish Comics Association.
Nilsson, Peter. 2003. Seriefrämjandets verksamhetsberättelse 2002. Malmö: The Swedish Comics Association.
Nilsson, Peter. 2004. Seriefrämjandets verksamhetsberättelse 2003. Malmö: The Swedish Comics Association.
Nilsson, Peter and Thomas Storn. 2003a. “Svensk seriehistoria.” Bild & Bubbla. 35(3): 24–25.
Nilsson, Peter and Thomas Storn. 2003b. “Vita fläckar och svarta hål -- Nu lägger vi pussel med svensk seriehistoria.” Bild & Bubbla. 35(3): 5–13.
Nordström, Nicklas. 2025. “Seriearkivet digitaliserar svensk seriehistoira.” Magasin K. magasink.se/2025/08/seriearkivet-digitaliserar-svensk-seriehistoria. Accessed January 2, 2026.
Storn, Thomas. 2005. “Svenskt Seriearkiv -- Svensk Seriehistoria 2003–2004”. In Svensk Seriehistoria -- första boken om Svenskt Seriearkiv, edited by Thomas Storn, pp. 188–201. Malmö: The Swedish Comics Association.
Storn, Thomas 2013a. “Förord.” In Svenskt Seriearkiv -- trycksaker, original och mer, edited by Fredrik Strömberg, p. 3. Malmö: The Swedish Comics Association.
Storn, Thomas. 2013b. “Svenskt Seriearkiv -- serieoriginal, trycksaker och mer.” Bild & Bubbla. 45(3): 63–86.
Storn, Thomas. 2020. “Om Svenskt Seriarkiv.” In Svensk Seriehistoria -- fjärde boken från Svenskt Seriearkiv, edited by Ulf Granberg, pp. 293–294. Malmö: The Swedish Comics Association.
Strömberg, Fredrik. 2010. Swedish Comics History. Malmö: The Swedish Comics Association.
Strömberg, Fredrik. 2013. “Seriearkivet 10 år!” Bild & Bubbla. 45(3): 7.
Strömberg, Fredrik. 2023. “Seriearkivet 20 år! -- ny organisation, ny framtid.” Bild & Bubbla. 55(3): 26–41.
Strömberg, Fredrik. 2025a. “Ett omvälvande år -- verksamhetsberättelse för Seriearkivet 2023.” In Seriearkivets årsbok 2023, edited by Fredrik Strömberg, pp. 8–15. Malmö: Seriearkivet.
Strömberg, Fredrik. 2025B. “Expansion och konsolidering -- verksamhetsberättelse för Seriearkivet 2024”. In Seriearkivets årsbok 2024, edited by Strömberg Fredrik, pp. 8–17. Malmö: Seriearkivet.
Zimmerman, Jesper. 2013. “Svenskt Seriearkiv 10 år -- var vi står idag och vart vi är på väg.” Bild & Bubbla. 45(3): 52–61.
Editor's note - this essay was accepted for IJOCA 27-2, and edited by John A. Lent (JAL) and Mu Lin.
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
Happy birthday, John Lent
Today would have been John A. Lent's 90th birthday.
His wife Ying spread flowers on a river in China in his memory.
Work on John's projects continue, as you've seen here with articles published on IJOCA's blog. A new one will appear this week.
For the Lent Comics Classification, Lizzy Walker has been adding birth and death years to the cartoonists names as you can see below.
Anderson, Murphy (1926-2015)
Andru, Ross (1927-1993)
Annable, Graham (1970-)
Aparo, Jim (1932-2005)
Aragonés, Sergio (1937-)
Adkins, Dan (1937-2013)
Austen, Chuck
Austin, Terry (1952-)
Ayers, Dick (1924-2014)
Ayuyang, Rina
Azzarello, Brian (1962-)
The Comics Research Bibliography continues to be updated daily on Facebook and the ComicsDC blog, and our annual compilation will be out in January 2027.
Some more print memorials are in the work including in Inks and Studies In Comics.
Sunday, September 6, 2026
Thursday, August 27, 2026
Kickstarter comics data updated on IJOCA blog
It turns out our methodology for scraping the data was flawed due to the reasons added to the end of this blogpost: https://ijoca.blogspot.com/2026/08/research-prompt-kickstarters-comics-data.html Thanks to Adam Fotos for telling us that his 2017 project had been missed.
The combined result is now:
33,047 unique Kickstarter Comics projects
compared with 8,452 in the August 2026 snapshot alone
The dataset is at https://archive.org/details/kickstarter-comics-projects-260810 for anyone who just wants to download it and kick the tires.
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Decoding the Underlying Narrative in Metro: A Story of Cairo
Decoding the Underlying Narrative in Metro: A Story of Cairo
Amr Abbas
Introduction
On a surface level, the graphic novel Metro -- and its English translation Metro: A Story of Cairo -- presents little more than a secondary critique of the socio-political and economic status quo of the late Hosni Mubarak (1928 – 2020) era. Yet, with some knowledge of the period’s socio-political context, it becomes more than a passing critique. The graphic novel borrows from Western tradition when it comes to character design and the narrative course of the graphic narrative. However, despite the Westernization of the narrative and how it easily translates to a more Western style, particularly American, it is, first and foremost, made for an Egyptian audience. Metro takes place during the final years of Mubarak’s regime [he ruled from 1981-2011] and shortly before the beginning of the Arab Spring and the 25th of January Revolution [2011] in Egypt. This paper investigates and decodes the underlying socio-political layer of the translated narrative through a close reading of the graphic novel with knowledge of the cultural context. It thereby aims to contextualize this layer of narration in both El Shafee’s Arabic original of Metro (El Shafee, 2008) and the English-language translation by Chip Rossetti -- Metro: A Story of Cairo (El Shafee, 2012), arguing how familiarity with the socio-political and cultural context in which the graphic novel is rooted is essential for a more fundamental understanding of it.
Background
Metro has received acclaim from Egyptian and Arab critics and has been translated into Italian and English. However, ahead of that, the comic was ironically banned from publication in 2008. The published copies were suppressed for the inclusion of “inappropriate statements and pictures,” and the publication was considered “harmful to public ethics.” (Hanafy, 2016: 421). The comic itself follows the straightforward trajectory of an Americanized style of the action genre, where Shehab, a young computer engineer, is chased after by a loan shark, pushing him to decide to rob a bank using his advanced software. The narrative is structurally divided by landscape markers, particularly in the form of Metro stations. However, the simple and rather straightforward narrative is not the most intriguing aspect of the graphic novel for a close reading; it is the implied villain that forced censorship upon the work: corruption. Corruption in the graphic novel involves itself heavily with the context of the late-Mubarak era, particularly during the peak of police and government corruption. However, the interweaving of the cultural background within the narrative is not clear-cut to the casual reader, since many elements carry additional weight that capture the socio-political anxieties of the late-Mubarak era.
Social Layer and Class Critique
The cultural understanding of the graphic novel is implied early on with the appearance of visions of material Egyptian culture, such as the ringing of mobile phones with different songs as ringtones (El Shafee, 2012: 5). While on the surface level, the ringtones only present the different norms of Egyptian society and Egyptian culture, through a close reading, they present different social and age classes of the individual, something which is almost all but missing in translation in the English version. In Fig. 1, the first panel to the left presents a middle-aged man who is likely a government employee,1 portrayed through the way he holds his phone at a distance and the fashion style with the suspenders, the high-up trousers, and the tucked-in half-sleeve shirt. The choice of ringtone here is a traditional one, playing with the idea that a man of that lifestyle is technologically challenged. The second and third panels present younger generations, with the second panel playing a very popular 2006 romantic song by Mohammed Hamaky and the third likely playing a 2004 rap boyband song by MTM that was most popular among young men. The fourth panel plays more with the stereotype of the working class or unemployed strugglers, often referred to as tramps in colloquial Egyptian. The final panel portrays an older woman who visually resembles the stereotypical female government employee or a housewife,2 with the stereotypical ringtone “Enta Omry”3 from 1965 by Umm Kalthoum. This decoding of the visuo-textual messages within the graphic novel is re-coded through the translation, and that is where some of the messages are lost in translation. Hall refers to the misunderstanding of coded messages and points out the need to understand the contextual socio-political situations, and even then, he refers to the “dominant” and the “preferred” code, which can be lost through the “selective perception” of the audience within the same language, let alone in a translated version (Hall, 1980: 512–515). Similarly, Dittmar refers to the symbolic language in comics and the role of signs in relating and expressing the idea or the concept to the reader (Dittmar, 2020: 31). As Hall’s argument relates to audio-visual communication, Dittmar’s focuses on the textual and the visual sequential language of comics, which can be interpreted through the visual and lingual codes layered within the narrative (Dittmar, 2020: 40–41). While the concept of multiple signifieds on one signifier was originally developed for landmarks (Dittmar, 2016: 209–210), Dittmar has since used the same concept -- which describes a condition where a single visual and/or textual signifier simultaneously carries several meanings depending on the reader/viewer -- in relation to comics (Dittmar, 2020: 31–32).
While the cultural context and understanding are much easier to grasp for an Arabic-speaking reader from anywhere in the Middle East -- thanks to the high popularity of Egyptian cultural output in film, song, and art in general -- the context becomes harder to decipher for a non-Middle Eastern audience, and practically impossible without aid for a non-Arabic-speaking audience. What is lost in translation, in this case, becomes crucial to the overall tone of the graphic novel and the underlying narrative within the folds of the chapters. For example, the hardest part to decipher within the five panels is the third, which reads “Ba-bump-a-bump-bump” in the English translation, yet, in the original Arabic, it reads “Terrren terrelem terrelem-lem,” which could be a reference to the music in MTM’s song “My phone is ringing.”4 The interweaving of the cultural expressions and practices of different individuals and groups in the narrative demonstrates the multidimensional fabric of Egyptian society. The contrast between the younger characters in panels two and three and one and five is demonstrated both visually, textually, and contextually. However, situating the cultural context within those panels requires a certain level of familiarity with the socio-political and socio-economic dynamics of the period.
Fig. 1. Ringtones depicting different social and age classes of Egyptian society. (Metro, p. 5).
Music has always been a symbol of culture, class, and lifestyle. Mobile ringtones during the mid-2000s have also played a role in cultural expression, individuality, and mood (Gopinath, 2013: xx–xxi). In addition to the inaudible lyrical (and musical) signs, there are also the visual signs clearly present within the five panels in both the way the characters dress and the way they stand (with their mobile phones). For instance, the first panel signals the age of the character through his bald pattern and the way he dresses, with suspenders and trousers lifted a little too high. In the second, the pattern of the tight trousers and the veil present a common critique of the way young women dressed during the late 2000s, with the contradictory fashion of the hijab (veil) to conceal the female, accompanied by tight trousers and tops and high heels, which are often pointed out socially as pretentious. The third panel presents a younger generation with rolled-up sleeves and a patterned shirt that is left untucked. The fourth, as previously mentioned, refers to a particular layer of society, often referred to as the unemployed, which ironically presents the most working-class group in the city. The final panel presents a quizzical mixture of upper-middle-class and nostalgic expression in the form of the woman’s skirt, hairdo, and the ringtone in itself. The ringtone song in the fifth panel refers to what was once considered high culture (Hammond, 2004: 144–146), but it is now regarded as nostalgic.
The translator’s introduction refers to some of the songs that are mentioned in these panels (El Shafee, 2012: ix–x). However, even with these notes, the cultural context can be misread and misidentified without the relevant cultural knowledge. Additionally, there is a locational layer that plays a part in the definition of the socio-economic classes of the characters within the graphic novel.
Other signs that are only recognized within sufficient cultural knowledge, understanding, and background take shape in the visual form that El Shafee focused on in some panels, particularly in relation to the more important secondary characters. Mustafa, for instance, is signaled to be of a lower class, particularly by the t-shirt he wears throughout the narrative. It reads “Nile” with the Nike checkmark-like “Swoosh” [Fig. 2]. And, the distinction of the climbing social class of the villain “Hagg Ghareeb” as seen through the Mercedes-Benz he rides. The German automobile has been a strong social identifier of class in Egyptian culture, often shown in TV dramas and films [Fig. 3]. Contextually, the Mercedes-Benz has long been used to signal a stereotypical status symbol of a particular social class and is often used to pinpoint the rich villain, such as is the case with the iconic Noor Al Sharif film, “The Shame” (1982), where Al Sharif’s character drove the same (but older model) vehicle.
Fig. 2. The Nike ripoff t-shirt with the “Swoosh” logo as seen throughout the graphic novel. Page 5.
Fig. 3. The Mercedes car. Page 7.
Cultural knowledge is therefore essential to closely examine the different layers of the graphic novel, aside from the work as a culturally independent work. The snippet of cultural understanding that Rossetti shares with the reader in his introduction, particularly in the references to the secondary character, Wannas, is sufficient for the base level of understanding of the comic. Wannas presents a crucial strand of Egyptians in many dimensions, which will be further discussed in the following part of this paper. Rossetti writes, “Wannas is a Sa’idi from Sa’id, or Upper Egypt, whose people are considered hicks and are often the target of Egyptian jokes,” which explains the segment on page 19 -- that the translator refers to in his note (El Shafee, 2012: ix) -- but only minimally expresses the interlinking of the social class to the socio-political layer of the comic.
The interweaving of social and age norms of the late 2000s in Egypt is not only portrayed in the way those characters are designed, it is played with much more in a socio-political context as a means of critique against the Egyptian government and the stale Egyptian politics and political scene before the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. The political interplay becomes much more evident during the penultimate section (El Shafee, 2012: 65–80), particularly with the use of the protest as a cataclysmic event in the narrative. Whereas the speculation of a revolution was hard to imagine at that point, the comic depicts a much smaller idea, referring indirectly to the numerous protests against the government that occurred from the beginning of 2006 until the downfall of the Mubarak regime on Feb. 11, 2011.
Interlying Socio-political Critique in Narration
After the opening segment of the un-chaptered graphic novel, the first “station” appears in the text, signifying a temporal and spatial shift. The stations, following the title of “metro,” signal the different “chapters” of the graphic novel. They also signal shifts of time and space and, more importantly, a succession of events, which is not only crucial to understanding the underlying political narrative but also refers to a speculation of a then future that already came to be. The use of trains as a metaphor for arriving at a different stage in space and time has been coded into the visual memory (Kilbourn, 2013: 317–318) through other works from film and TV.
However, the metro stations also convey a different narrative of the story, particularly, regarding socio-economic classes and different levels of political or apolitical engagement during the stale period of the Mubarak regime. Class-critique in relation to particular areas of Cairo is harder to define without the cultural context and the intertextual coding based on various works of different media. The differentiation of class in the graphic novel serves as one of the many interweaving layers of the political value of the work. The two secondary characters, Wannas and Wael, present two sides of one coin in Metro: the silent majority and the alignment to support or protest when forced to take a side. Both characters take on unethical and illegal gigs: Wannas dislodges himself from his shoe-cleaning work and opts for begging instead, which in turn provides him with much more money, whereas Wael takes on a job as a National Democratic Party thug5 to attack protestors during a demonstration instead of his work as a wedding singer. Both characters, who represent the poor and apolitical, return near the end of the graphic novel in the protest section on opposite sides. Whereas Wannas finds his true calling in leading the protest with his voice, Wael finds himself on the same side as before: a thug. The concluding moments of their lives come in stark opposites despite dying at the same protest. Wannas says, “In my life, death is the best thing to happen to me. I’m a free man.” Whereas Wael’s last words are “I wanted to make a video clip […].” (El Shafee, 2012: 76–77). And then, both characters face entirely different endings: Wannas is redeemed, whereas Wael is forsaken by the very party that caused his death. The significance and futility of the two characters’ demise and the aftermath of their deaths show the precariousness and the value of life; while one is celebrated for his moment of redemption, the other is forgotten.
The demise of Wael and his dissociation from the National Party is an act of betrayal and scapegoating that was a common tactic used by the ruling regime and party. While the events of the Camel Incident or Battle of the Camel (BBC News, 2012; Wikimedia Foundation, 2024)6 occurred several years after the release (and censorship) of the original version of Metro, the same tactic has been repeated by high-up party members. While the signals are clear in both the original language and the translation that the villainous party members deny Wael’s involvement and recruitment, socio-political and cultural understanding are crucial to connect it to previous encounters between thugs and protestors in Egypt, as well as ones that happened after the writing of the graphic novel. While readers who are unfamiliar with the relevant socio-political and cultural context are likely to interpret this segment as speculative or fully fictional, those who possess the necessary contextual knowledge are allowed deeper insights by drawing a connection with factual incidents.
Fig. 4. Thugs of the National Democratic Party. Page 76.
The levels of political engagement are also shown to be based on class and lifestyle. For instance, villains such as Ghareeb and the most corrupt, like the bank director, are at the top of the economic class and have the most power, and at the bottom of the economic class are characters such as Wannas and Wael. In the middle class are Dina and Shehab. The levels of political engagement are almost dependent on class as well, where those who belong to the higher class are the ones in power, the middle class represents the protestors, and the lower class includes the apolitical and marginalized. The signs that are used throughout the graphic novel pinpoint those classes and their relationship to politics and power, where the most powerful are the wealthiest, and the most marginalized are the poorest.
The political engagement and awareness of the middle-class characters of the narrative are shown through different aspects. For instance, in Shehab’s case, his awareness of the political corruption that ruled over the economics of the late-Mubarak period is seen through his understanding of the underlying reasons behind the bank’s rejection of his loan request; however, at the same time, he is part of the passive silent majority, unmotivated by his awareness. On page 65, the contrast between Dina’s engagement in the political scene and her entanglement in politics and protest culture in comparison to Shehab’s silence is clear when he points out that she should “let that stuff go.”
Fig. 5. Shehab and Dina on protesting. Page 65.
Fear of the government in Egypt has drawn many people away from politics. That fear was mainly fear of persecution, deeply rooted in police brutality against civilians and unjust treatment (Doss and Kingsley, 2013; Ismail, 2014). A common phrase among the silent majority when it comes to politics (any politics, from workplace politics to governmental and institutional ones) was to “let it go.” Among the most infamous phrases leading up to the 25th of January Revolution was one by then-president Mubarak, “Let it go, man,”7 when publicly asked a question8 by one of the party members during a National Democratic Party conference (Al-Hajjar, 2017). The critique then becomes one of society as a whole rather than only a critique against the political status quo. Knowledge of the socio-political situation at the time is crucial to understanding the characters and their behaviors from the visual and/or textual signs embedded in the graphic novel. Many of those signs linked to class -- as discussed in the previous section relating to identifying them through ringtones and visual signs -- are difficult, if not impossible, to interpret correctly for those who do not speak Arabic and do not possess the necessary cultural knowledge. The political critique is, to a great extent, easier to interpret and identify for those who do not possess the cultural and societal knowledge in comparison to the societal critique.
The societal critique in Metro comes in doubles through contrast between two characters. Much like the comparison between Wannas and Wael, Wannas is also a contrast to Shehab in the fact that they are both originally from Upper Egypt. As explained by the translator, the Upper Egyptian is often the subject of mockery; however, Shehab also recalls his time with his father in Upper Egypt, where he learned Tahtib.9 Shehab is likely a descendant of an Upper Egyptian father/family. Upper Egyptian men are either subject to mockery or referred to as heroic (and in some popular cultural outputs, both)10. Upper Egyptian heroism is one that is understood from the cultural context and the old traditions of showing the Upper Egyptian man as a valiant type who is kind and generous but strong and unyielding. While this is not expressed in the comic in any way except for the showcasing of both Wannas’ last actions and Shehab’s heroism throughout the narrative, it is encoded through cinematic and television series traditions. The juxtaposition of heroism and mockery presented in the graphic novel plays with the idea that the hero (Shehab) could have easily been similar to the shoe-shiner-turned-beggar (Wannas) under different circumstances, particularly educational and economic ones. The cultural background and awareness of the stereotypes and archetypes of characters used in a broader sense provide a more nuanced understanding of this double meaning. The novel plays with doubles in many ways, such as the doubles of the same social class in Wael and Mustafa; the doubles with the same background, such as Wannas and Shehab; and doubles within the same economic class, such as Wael and Wannas. This form of duality that is used throughout the graphic novel is not always explained, and it is much harder to decode through reading the translation without having the relevant cultural background and the understanding of the intended double meaning in the original Arabic version. In that, an Arabic-speaker with the cultural knowledge of Egypt would also make sense of the translation to a great extent. However, as mentioned earlier in this paper, without a grasp of the cultural background, meaning is often lost to the very base level of the narrative, which stands quite well independently.
Train Stations and the Political Status Quo
As previously mentioned, train stations serve as a marker for both place and time in the narrative, as borrowed from older Hollywood traditions. They also serve as a divider in “chapters” in the graphic novel. Where the first station/chapter is Mohamed Naguib Station (Fig. 6), as it is shown after the prologue, the final station/chapter is Mubarak Station11 (Fig. 7). Through the graphic novel, the chapters/stations are mostly named after former Egyptian presidents -- Naguib, Sadat, Nasser, and Mubarak -- with a few exceptions that signal a more socio-economic context, particularly relating to the wealth/poverty of a particular area, to showcase the wealth/poverty of a character. On page 18, the mention of Ezbet al-Batt in reference to Wannas and the “nice” side of Maadi serve as complete opposites, presenting extreme poverty and extreme power and wealth, respectively.
Fig. 6. Mohamed Naguib station. Page 3
Aside from the social and class aspect of the locations, the significance of the stations’ names and their strategic placement carries weight to the text. The first station that is mentioned is Mohamed Naguib Station, coinciding with the first president of the Republic of Egypt. The underlying and coded narrative tells a different story; it tells the story of post-monarchy Egypt, beginning with Naguib and ending with Mubarak. The locationality and locality of the narrative play with the social, political, and economic states of Egypt and Egyptians. The different stations and locations represent different classes and corresponding levels of political engagement. Mubarak Station then becomes the merger of all social classes, as seen in Fig. 7, and the station becomes the place for the final act.
Fig. 7. Mubarak Station. Page 83.
The final station represents Mubarak and the late-Mubarak regime in several ways: first up is the namesake; secondly, it quotes Mubarak in reference to the ever-increasing population of Egypt; and lastly, it presents the finality of the period, where Mubarak was the present and the foreseeable future of Egypt. The final page of the comic is a standstill between Shehab and Dina, where the first says, “Let’s get out of this tunnel…” as the final line of the graphic novel (El Shafee, 2012: 91). The reference to the tunnel has many meanings: it refers to the literal tunnel, but it also refers to the idea of being stuck, which persists throughout the narrative, for instance, as Shehab says, “I have to get out of this whole lousy cage,” early on (El Shafee, 2012: 21). The reference to the tunnel is also persistent with the period, when many young people attempted to flee Egypt through legal and illegal means, but many found it difficult to escape, which further explains the reference to the tunnel and the cage.12 Finally, the tunnel also refers to the tunnel of Mubarak and the corrupt late-Mubarak regime. The idea of immigration is not one that is easy to decipher from an outside perspective. “Getting out” and “escaping,” as communicated through several ways, is a message coded with the cultural and contextual understanding of the work and can be addressed only with prior knowledge. Decoding the embedded messages is less straining in Arabic, as many of the signs are easier to comprehend in their original and intended language. The encoded messages in the English translation, therefore, become less accessible, even to a bilingual reader, due to the different possible interpretations, as is the case with the final speech bubble of the graphic novel.
Conclusion
The oscillation between poor and rich, educated and illiterate, political and apolitical is visible through the diversity of the cast and the action within the story (Hanafy, 2016: 422), but through the landmarks and minute markers. That temporal shift also occurs in the dividing stations of the comic, representing the past, the present, and a speculative image of a future that was later realized during the Arab Spring. The split between different socio-economic classes is merged and silhouetted in the protest sequence on pages 65 to 69, where the silhouettes become black and white, signaling only the difference between oppressor and oppressed. The focus on the late-Mubarak regime situates Metro as a work of speculative fiction and protest culture.
Metro and its translated version, Metro: A Story of Cairo, and the reproductions of the graphic novel, carry a plethora of meanings hidden behind culturally, contextually, and temporally coded references and signs. While the graphic novel remains an independent work that functions freely without the constraints of close reading and deep analysis of its socio-political context, knowledge of the cultural context and socio-political realities that Metro is rooted in is crucial to decode these additional layers of meaning and dimensions of a people’s reality.
Endnotes
1 Government employee is an Egyptian stereotype, referring to men with nine-to-three jobs who lead conventional and arguably boring lifestyles.
2 The female government employee is often one of the most despicable stereotypes in Egyptian culture, thriving on bureaucracy. Many satirical works depict the stereotype “Madam Affaf” as a way to make fun of Egyptian bureaucracy.
3 “Enta Omry” is one of the most popular Egyptian songs that has continued its prominence until today. The song is often heard in television and film to depict an aspect of traditional Egyptian life. It is also often used in cafes, restaurants, and airports, particularly the ones that aim to be touristic attractions.
4 The 2004 song, “Telephony Bey-ren” (transl. My Phone Is Ringing) samples and remixes a standard mobile ringtone of the time and interweaves it into the song.
5 National Democratic Party (commonly referred to as the National Party) thugs were the brutal and illegal hand of the National Democratic Party government, which Sadat and Mubarak headed before it was dissolved in April 2011. There are many instances of National Party-paid thugs that attacked protestors, perhaps none more infamous than Mawqiat al-Gamal (The Camel Incident or Battle of the Camel) that occurred Feb. 2, 2011 (Wikimedia Foundation, 2024).
6 Many of the online newspaper records for the infamous incident have been redacted and deleted, including archival references. Some of the articles appear to have been locked behind special access at the time of writing this paper.
7 “Let it go” is the contextual translation of the phrase “Kabbar Mokhak,” which literally translates to “Enlarge your brain.” The phrase is colloquially used in daily life in Egypt.
8 The (very inaudible) question asked to Mubarak was regarding the state, where Mubarak’s response was, “Do you think that I will go through everything that occurs in the country? Let it go, man” (loosely translated for context).
9 Tahtib is the term for the traditional Egyptian stick-fighting, mainly practiced in Upper Egypt.
10 Films such as “Saidi fil Gama’a al Amerikeya” (1998; transl. Upper Egyptian Is the American University in Cairo) and “Hammam fi Amesterdam” (1999; transl. Hammam in Amsterdam), among a plethora of others, use the upper Egyptian as both a subject of mockery and a hero simultaneously that it has created a sub-genre of its own.
11 Mubarak Station has been renamed to Al-Shohadaa (translation: The Martyrs) Station after the Egyptian Revolution to honor the martyrs of the revolution.
12 The cage, tunnel, or maze are all terms that were used to refer to Egypt during the late 2000s period. Many street jokes and sayings remain undocumented.
References
Abdel Khalek, Ali. 1982. “The Shame.” Film. Egypt.
Al-Hajjar, Abeer. 2017. “Kabbar Mokhak and the Dead Are Sons of the Dead” [WWW Document]. Bold News. (Accessed Dec. 8, 2025).
BBC News. 2012. “Egyptian ‘Battle of the Camels’ Officials Acquitted” [WWW Document]. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-19905435. Accessed Dec. 8, 2025.
Dittmar, Jakob F. 2020. “Narrative Strategies: African Types and Stereotypes in Comics.” In Kaboom! Of Stereotypes and Superheroes: African Comics and Comics on Africa, edited by C. Lüthy, et al. Basler Afrika Bibliographien.
Dittmar, Jakob F. 2016. “Reinforcing Local Identities through Landmarks and Their Representation in En-passant-media. The Special Case of the Angel of the North.” In English Topographies in Literature and Culture: Space, Place, and Identity, edited by I. Habermann and D. Keller. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004322271.
Doss, Layla and Patrick Kingsley. 2013. “Egyptian Police ‘Killed Almost 900 Protesters in 2011 in Cairo.” [WWW Document]. The Guardian. URL Egyptian Police ‘Killed Almost 900 Protesters in 2011 in Cairo. Accessed Dec. 8, 2025.
El Shafee, Magdy. 2008. Metro. Cairo: Malameh.
El Shafee, Magdy. 2012. Metro: A Story of Cairo. Metropolitan Books.
Gopinath, Sumanth. 2013. The Ringtone Dialectic: Economy and Cultural Form. Boston: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262019156.001.0001
Hall, Stuart. 1980. “Encoding/Decoding.” In Culture, Media, Language, edited by Stuart Hall, et al., pp. 128-138. New York, Routledge.
Hammond, Andrew. 2004. Pop Culture Arab World!: Media, Arts, and Lifestyle. ABC-CLIO.
Hanafy, Iman. 2016. “Revolutionizing the Graphic Novel: A Study of El-Shafee’s Metro.” Symplokē. 24: 421. https://doi.org/10.5250/symploke.24.1-2.0421
Ismail, Salwa. 2014. “The Resurgence of Police Government in Egypt” [WWW Document]. Project Middle East Political Science. https://pomeps.org/the-resurgence-of-police-government-in-egypt. Accessed Dec. 8, 2025.
Kilbourn, Russell. 2013. “Camera Arriving at the Station: Cinematic Memory as Cultural Memory.” Societies. 3:316–331. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc3030316
Wikimedia Foundation. 2024. “Mawqiʿat al-Jamal (Egypt).” [WWW Document]. Wikipedia Free Encycopedia. ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/موقعة_الجمل_(مصر)
Amr Abbas is an independent Swedish-Egyptian researcher collaborating with Malmö University Comics Hub, the editor of Cálice Magazine, a writer and comics artist. He holds an MA in cultural studies from Malmö University and a BA in English literature from Alexandria University. His research interests include comics, creative writing, identity, metafiction, metamodernism, and transmedia studies.
.Editor's note - this essay was accepted for IJOCA 27-2, and edited by John A. Lent (JAL) and Mu Lin.
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