Pictorial & machine age · 1956–present · Middle East & North Africa

Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)

Also known as Samir magazine, Majid magazine, Majallat Majid, Arab children's magazines

Arabic children's comics weeklies, from Dar al-Hilal's Samir in Cairo (1956) to Abu Dhabi's Majid (1979), mixing translated Western strips with house characters by Egyptian, Lebanese, Armenian and European artists. Pages read right to left: flat bright full-colour panels, rounded cartoon children in local dress, hand-lettered Arabic balloons and drawn sound effects, shared with quizzes, puzzles, contests, letters and lessons, under a boy mascot who names the magazine. The look is that of the colour weeklies of the 1950s to 1990s; Majid went monthly in 2020, redesigned by Studio Safar.

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A colourful Arabic comic poster shows children discovering litter on a beach, collecting it with gloves and bags, sorting waste into coloured bins, and celebrating together. In the bottom panel, four children sit facing the sea and a sunset, with sailboats and a coastal town in the distance. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

Use it with care

Samir, Majid, Kaslan Jiddan, Fudooli, Ammouna and the magazines' mastheads belong to their publishers (Dar al-Hilal, Abu Dhabi Media) and artists, and the Arabic Disney and Tintin pages to Disney and Hergé's estate: draw your own mascot, characters and masthead, never ask an image model for these characters or a named artist's hand, and never present a generated page as a vintage issue. The tradition's artists also drew caricature, such as 'Ib Goha and Sambo' by Samir co-founder Haroon, about an Arab boy and his Black Nubian sidekick Sambo: give every character, Black, Nubian, foreign or villain, the same drawing care, and never make skin colour or features the joke. Draw everyday Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf children in the dress they actually wear (gallabiya, kandura and ghutra, shayla, school uniforms), not Orientalist shorthand (camels, harem veils, oil-sheikh caricatures, pseudo-Arabic squiggles), and do not copy Hergé's stereotyped Arabs of the invented Khemed, who are 'always the punchline' (Nadim Damluji). Leave religious pages to writers and readers of the faith, and have all Arabic lettering written or checked by a fluent reader, joined and running right to left.

How it works

Run pages, panels and balloons from right to left, and letter the Arabic by hand, in colloquial speech where the story allows.
Draw rounded, readable cartoon children in local dress and local streets with a clean black keyline, and fill them with flat, bright full colour.
Print translated foreign strips beside house characters by local artists, and give the imports Arabic names and a local accent.
Make the issue a magazine, not an album: interleave gag strips and serials with quizzes, puzzles, hidden-character contests, readers' letters and educational pages.
Give the magazine a face: a named boy mascot on the masthead and cover who stars in its strips and speaks to the readers.
Teach while you entertain: carry national, moral and religious lessons inside gags and serials, and keep the satire gentle enough for an eight-year-old.

Cairo, where Dar al-Hilal, then still the Zaidan family's publishing house (nationalised in 1960–61), launched Samir on 15 April 1956 on the model of the Belgian Tintin and Spirou weeklies; then Beirut, with Bisat al-Rih (1962), and Abu Dhabi, where Majid first appeared on Wednesday 28 February 1979 as a supplement to the newspaper Al-Ittihad

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition: Framed panels defining
Modular grid characteristic
Isolated object occasional
Full bleed occasional
Space & hierarchy: Sequential narrative defining
Layered information defining
Measured density characteristic
Single focal point occasional
Horror vacui occasional
Typography: Hand-lettering defining
Ornamented display characteristic
Eclectic mixing occasional
Brush & pen calligraphy occasional
Type as image occasional
Colour: Full polychrome defining
Flat fields defining
Light ground characteristic
Primary triad occasional
Form & shape: Stylised figuration defining
Distortion & exaggeration characteristic
Rounded & pill occasional
Naturalistic depiction occasional
Surface & texture: Flat characteristic
Halftone & Ben-Day dots occasional
Misregistration & overprint occasional
Ornament: Restrained accents characteristic
Emblems & badges occasional
Borders & frames occasional
Imagery: Comic & cartoon defining
Line illustration defining
Diagram & data occasional
Straight photography occasional
Medium & production: Offset printing defining
Pen, brush & ink defining
Tone & intent: Playful & witty defining
Warm & approachable defining
Communal & popular characteristic
Authoritative & institutional characteristic
Agitational & persuasive occasional
Spiritual & sacred occasional
Avoids: Rebellious & subversive, Romantic & sensual, Monochrome, Dark ground, Experimental & distorted, Photocopy & distress, Non-representational

Palette

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Typefaces

Hand-lettered Arabic balloon text, read right to left
in colloquial Egyptian Arabic in most of Samir's stories, in literary Arabic in Bisat al-Rih
Drawn Arabic onomatopoeia and expressive balloon lettering
Samir introduced sound effects, sweat drops and stars, thought balloons and lettering games for soft or thundering voices
Hand-drawn Arabic magazine mastheads
the titles سمير and ماجد drawn as logos at the head of every cover
Typeset Arabic Naskh text for editorial pages, quizzes, puzzles and readers' letters

Known for

Samir (Dar al-Hilal, Cairo, first issue 15 April 1956)
16 large colour pages for two piasters, 'for ages 8 to 88', echoing the Tintin weekly's '7 to 77'; editors Nadia Nash'at (1956–1966), granddaughter of Dar al-Hilal's founder, and Notaila Rashed, 'Mama Lubna' (1966–2002)
Bernie Aalmeon's mascot gag strip Samir (1956) and Haroon's (Herant) scouting serial Basel, whose adventures began on the front cover and continued inside
Kiko (Roger Camille), covers and adventure serials such as 'Isam' for Samir from the late 1950s, before he moved to Belgium and Spirou
Loutfi Wassfi's Antar and Ibn Jarjoun and Farid Heart of Steel, and his 'Lessons in popular resistance' in Samir in 1967
Nassim's (also spelled Wassim) Samir and Tahta, whose heroes became commandos after the June 1967 war
Samir no. 592 cover: 'All for popular resistance'
Ahmad Hegazi's Tanabilat al-Subyan (The Lazy Boys) in Samir in the mid-1960s, later Dar al-Fata al-Arabi's first children's comic book, Tambul the First (Beirut)
Mickey, Dar al-Hilal's Arabised Disney magazine (from about 1959, edited and translated by Nadia Nash'at), with Goofy as Bunduq and Donald as Battout
Bisat al-Rih (Beirut, 1962, publisher Zouheir Baalbaki), in literary Arabic
Bahija's (Gigea Tomassian) Zouzou, Tarek Assli's Alaeddine and Mahmoud Kahil's gags beside Lucky Luke and Tintin

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Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.