Meet a Middle Eastern Cartoonist

“I just wanted to do what I love to do in my way,” says Saadany, a 28-year-old Egyptian cartoonist with Koshk Comics in Cairo. The world of comics had always appealed to him because “creatively all you need is your paper and pencil. You can express very complicated topics and ideas into very simple things, so people just get it.

“The first comics I made were during the first year in my art school. Then I found there are not any benefits from this, so I went into advertising. And this is not only my story. It’s the story of a lot of cartoonists in Egypt. So we saw the whole problems that the comic artists here faced.”

After 9 years, on December 31, 2011, Saadany left his his career in advertising, branding and illustrating to follow his passion of comics, with two quotes in mind: “Life is what you make it,” and “Your risks reveal your values.” Now, along with partner Amr at Koshk Comics, he was free to develop a Facebook page called Super Sayem, based on riddles popular during Ramadan.

The riddles began being shown on television in the 1980’s and then disappeared from the airwaves about 20 years later. They consisted of four components – comics and games; nostalgia like old television shows; Khousa, which was a game played with dates and dried peaches; and finally a riddle involving a murder scene where people would attempt to find the weapon. Many people missed seeing the riddles on TV, so Saadany and Amr were successful in resurrecting them on Facebook. Of the four riddles, they found that people enjoyed the comics the most, so they changed Super Sayem to the self-publishing platform of Koshk Comics. This application has become quite popular throughout both the Middle East and the West.

“I was completely crazy,” Egyptian cartoonist Saadany says his family and friends thought when he quit his job to pursue his passion. Now with Koshk Comics these same people think of him as successful. “But for me, I don’t consider myself a successful man yet. I have a lot to do.”