Style combination · Contrasts

Arab Independent Comics × Story Manga

Manga is one codified visual language read right to left. The new wave of Arab comics counts it among its sources, beside European comics and American cartoons, and some artists build a style on it (Hanan al-Kararji, who drew the Cairo graphic novel 18 Days, calls hers 'a blend of manga and Arabness'), but these anthologies set it beside brush caricature and fine-art pages, and may run both reading directions in one issue.

From the research on Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef)

Mix them and make something Arab Independent Comics Story Manga

A cream-and-black comic-style poster with a large red Arabic heading follows a backpack-wearing young person through a densely built seaside city. Panels show them vaulting a wall beside a cat, running down steps, reading an illustrated book, and sitting with the cat overlooking ships and a yellow setting sun. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Arab Independent Comics, the form from Story Manga, the composition from Arab Independent Comics. Not a real or historical work.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef) Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics)

Type from Arab Independent Comics: Hand-lettering
Eclectic mixing
Colour from Story Manga: Monochrome
Light ground
Form from Story Manga: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Arab Independent Comics: Framed panels
Sequential narrative
Surface from Story Manga: Halftone & Ben-Day dots

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Arab Independent Comics

Ours

Rakkas, standing in for Hand-lettered colloquial Arabic balloons (Egyptian ʿāmmiyya in TokTok and Garage, Tunisian in Lab619, Moroccan darija, with Amazigh, in Skefkef)

Text · Story Manga

The black-and-white narrative comic of postwar Japan, from Tezuka Osamu's Shin Takarajima (1947) to the weekly boys' magazines of 1959 and 1968 and the paperbacks that collect them. Pages read right to left; panels change size and slant, bleed off the page and are broken by figures, cutting like film. Grey comes from dot screentone; motion and feeling from speed lines, focus lines and a codified set of symbols. Dialogue runs vertically in tall balloons, sound effects are drawn into the picture, and big-eyed, simplified characters act against detailed backgrounds.

Shippori Mincho; Story Manga used Anchi-goshi balloon setting and Fine Mincho balloon setting

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Story Manga, with a counter-accent from Arab Independent Comics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef) Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics)

#f6f3ea ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#d32f2f accent · 18%
#f0c419 accent · 14%
#cfcfcf accent · 10%
#8c8c8c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f6f3ea;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #d32f2f;
  --accent-2: #f0c419;
  --accent-3: #cfcfcf;
  --accent-4: #8c8c8c;
  --font-display: "Rakkas", cursive;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef): These are living, named artists working under real censorship: Samandal's editors were prosecuted and fined over two comics, and an Egyptian cartoonist was arrested in January 2016, so never attribute invented political or religious satire to a real artist or collective, and never ask an image model for their work by name. Draw the contemporary city life these artists draw, not Orientalist shorthand: no camels, veiled women, sheikhs or gunmen as stand-ins for 'Arab', and no pseudo-Arabic squiggles. Have every line of dialect Arabic, Darija or Amazigh written or checked by a fluent speaker; if no fluent reader can check it, leave the balloons empty or letter them in Latin script only. Do not borrow the religious and sectarian jokes as edgy decoration outside the communities that made them.

Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics): Manga characters and series, from Astro Boy to Dragon Ball and One Piece, are in copyright and belong to their creators and publishers, and manga is the living work of professional artists and assistants: draw original characters in the shared idiom, never ask an image model for a named series, character or artist's hand, and label generated pages as AI-made rather than presenting them as a manga artist's work. Some of Tezuka's own books drew foreigners, including Black Africans and Asians, in exaggerated caricature; after protests from September 1990 by the Osaka-based Association to Stop Racism Against Blacks, Tezuka Productions put a disclaimer slip into his books. Give every character the same drawing care, and never use skin, lips or dress as ethnic shorthand.