The comic book, in its present day form, is regarded as an imported medium to the Arab world. Samandal (Salamander in Arabic), a quarterly tri-lingual magazine based in Lebanon, collects and publishes comics from the region and abroad with the aim of providing a platform for the alternative expression of cultural and social issues for youths and adults.
Text from article on ArteEast, edited by Hatem Imam (Samandal Comics)
Text from the official Samandal Magazine website
Samandal is the Arabic word for 'salamander'. Much like the dual habitats of amphibious creatures, Samadal Magazine thrives between two world; the image and the word, entertainment and substance, the low brow and raised brow, the experimental and the traditional. Samandal Magazine promises a regular peek into the minds of a few individuals most adept at expressing themselves through sequences of words and pictures and hopes to reach out past borders and language to everyone with a bit of comic on their mind.
Whilst our contributors hail from various reaches of the globe, the founders of Samandal Magazine come from Beirut, Lebanon. Comics in Lebanon, much like in the rest of the world, still struggle for validation as a mature medium of expression and suffer the post-pubescent scorn associated with all things 'childish'. Samandal Magazine hopes to negotiate a middle ground between snot-nosed pretentiousness and runny-nosed retardedness to find a slippery slope where readers of all ages can comic together.
Send us your work! A greater variety of contributors from Lebanon, the Middle East and the rest of the world will continually strengthen and diversify the growing body of work that constitutes this salamander.
To have fun, enjoy, show off, draw, write, share, meet, travel despite visa restrictions and expensive airfare, all through the magic of comics and the imagination of our arists. If along the way we succeed in learning from each other and reducing some prejudices we may have it would make the whole thing only so much better. Samandal Magazine aims to be the first of its kind in the Middle East and, eventually, the rest of the world. By reading it, contributing to it, keeping up with it and supporting it you may be participating in the genetic experiment that will lead to the creation of the first multilingual amphibious magazine.
It may be worth the shot ...
Founders/Editors:
The Fdz, Hatem Imam, Omar Khouri, Lena Merhej, Tarek Nabaa.
For more information on how to contribute, click here to visit the official site of Samandal Magazine
