It’s officially a man’s world in comic book land. Female superheroes make up only around 29.3 percent of the DC character list and 24.7 percent of the Marvel roster. Additionally, those who are represented are usually made to wear skin-tight bodysuits and high heels - a female superhero made for the male reader.
For Fatma Almheiri, this needed to change.
“I wanted to create a character that resembled us, something to give a sense of identity to children who could not relate to traditional superheroes, something to culturally identify with,” she says.
Almheiri is the driving force behind Emara, a superhero alter ego of a young Emirati girl called Moza. Dressed in the colours of the UAE flag - green dress, red cape, black trousers, and white gloves and boots - hijabi Emara fights crime.
“Emara wears her headscarf religiously whereas her mother is depicted wearing it culturally [where you can see a lot of her hair showing],” says the creative director. “There’s no crazy backstory to why either one of the characters presents themselves the way they do culturally. They wear what they feel like wearing, the way they want to wear it, if that makes any sense.”
FROM ZERO TO HERO
For Almheiri, it all began when the animation artist decided to quit college to enrol in Abu Dhabi’s Cartoon Network Animation Academy (CNAA). The aspiring artist learnt almost everything she knows about animation production by practise and self-teaching. She later joined Eating Stars Studio, the multicultural studio behind the cartoon series, and continued her professional journey to success. At the age of 19, Almheiri won the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation Comic Art award for her 4-page comic, ‘Mary & Me’, about the strong relationship between a young girl and her nanny.
The award-winning comic artist didn’t stop there, though.
“I grew up around a lot of artists and writers, including my mother [Salha Al Ghurair], who luvs to paint, but I didn’t really start to polish my craft until my later years in high school and then at CNAA. I worked on Emara with a team of thirteen full-time staff and several freelance creatives,” she says. “We wanted to create something that looked like the cartoons we used to watch, growing up; that old-school anime retro feel but with trendy, regional & cultural fashion.”
Emara’s first episode, which amassed over 400,000 views on YouTube, has been received with “arms wide open”, according to the artist.
“I think a lot of people are just happy to see anything animated come from our side of the world, so the fan support has been overwhelmingly positive. Launching on YouTube in two languages helped Emara reach girls all over the world. We’ve had requests for Spanish subtitles because apparently, we grew a South American fanbase.”
Sadly, a full miniseries, that was planned to be released over a year ago, is now on hiatus due to lack of funds to support the creative process. But Almheiri refuses to give up.
The artist thinks there’s a lot more that can be done to improve the cartoon industry in the region.
“Resources need to be more accessible to creators, [and] I think local TV and some government entities need to make more of an effort to host opportunities that allow creators to pitch their projects to them,” she concludes. “The struggle is real and I think a lot of local animation creators will agree.”