What does it mean to be a superhero? “I may have flaws, but I can still be a superhero,” says John Maher, writer and co-founder of Egypt’s number one superhero comic, ‘El3osba’. He tells his story to Mostafa Adel.

Long before Marvel’s cinematic universe and DC’s hit shows took the world by storm, there were a few people who built entire worlds and characters in their minds. Their imagination gave birth to comics, inspiring countless others to innovate and create.

Despite their immense global popularity, comic books were seldom a subject of interest in the Arab world, and very few read, let alone wrote, them.  John Maher, however, has been a fan of comics and their magical worlds since he can remember.

“I always wondered why the comics I grew up reading had to be stories about aliens and monsters. It felt too fictional, while, in our communities, there was so much pain and corruption that were not. This reality needed superheroes to stand up against it,” he says. “We should have our own superheroes, who need to be more grounded and involved in our own problems and tragedies.”

He started writing ‘El3osba – the Story of Horus,’ posting the pieces on his Facebook page at first. Later on, a very close friend of his, Maged Raafat, began providing commentary and ideas. “He really liked Horus, and he kept suggesting great ideas for the characters,” Maher says.

He invited Raafat to co-write, but they still needed to put their stories in comic book format, which meant they required a character designer. Enter Ahmed Raafat, another avid comic reader who shared their passion. The trio created six characters (Horus, El-Walhan, Mariam, Microbusgy, Kaf, and Alpha), each with a different backstory.

A surprising fan base

The journey wasn’t easy, though. Between publishers doubting that a comic book could make it in Egypt and others worrying about the underlying social commentary in ‘El3osba’, the creators faced repeated rejection. Nevertheless, they carried on, and three years after Maher started writing, they heard Egypt would host its first comic book festival, CairoComix.

“We’d already been drawing the origin stories of three characters, so we decided to put them together into issue #1,” Maher says. At that time, they didn’t know much about printing but rented a booth at the event and somehow printed 3,000 copies.

“After CairoComix, a fan reached out to us through social media with brilliant fan art of Horus,” Maher says. The fan in question was Youssef Shabana, who co-designed the characters in the second issue. Other fans started providing critical input, and they asked for more. People were actually invested in El3osba. For the next three years, the team published three issues, and in 2018,  they also brought out three spinoffs alongside the fourth issue.

“Seeing ‘El3osba’ in major bookstores like Diwan, Virgin Megastores, and Alef Bookstores was just incredible!” Maher says.

Entrepreneurship and comics

After entering an Injaz competition and attending RiseUp Summit, Maher started taking a more entrepreneurial approach to the comics.

“Some investors suggested we put ‘El3osba’ on platforms like Souq, which we did. We also translated the first issue and put it up on Kindle. We really believed it had the potential to go viral,” he explains.

The team next decided to produce a paperback issue and put it on Amazon. It was approved and even started selling, but the best was yet to come.

“An agent from a renowned talent agency reached out to us, and we’ve just signed a contract with him. He now has rights to market our characters to channels in different countries. He wants to make ‘El3osba’ an international series on a network like ABC or Netflix!” Maher reveals.

With a possible series on the horizon, plans to translate and upload the rest of their work to Amazon, and two more spinoffs under way, ‘El3osba’ is shaping up to become something huge. Maher believes the project could go big, even as big as DC, and he wants to include as many Egyptian artists and character designers as possible. However, he knows how bumpy the ride is.

“I believe anyone who wants to write should read a lot and practice all the time,” he notes. “It’s easy to have a dream, but it’s really hard to fight to make it happen. You need to get your hands dirty and do the ugly work if you want to make it.”