The 2016 & 2021 Drawings

I am the quintessential global kid, having lived in 7 different countries by age 14 and whose first love was cartoon drawing. When my family and I moved from the Middle East to the UK and then Singapore in the 1990s, I threw myself into my comic creations. Here are some of my first sketches I did of a few familiar characters when I was around 10-13 years old:

Over two decades later, I returned to my first love, thanks to a cartooning class at New York City's Educational Alliance. It inspired me to make my own comic book about politics – a topic which I focus on in my regular work as a professor (NYU), consultant (Wikistrat) and blogger (WorldPost). I then launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds (over $10,000!) for this project. Check out a few familiar characters I recreated as a gift to my Indiegogo investors:

And here are sample pages of The Global Kid (2016)! Stylistically, it is unusual, borrowing an element of the traditional comic (e.g. Batman) with the superhero (The Global Kid) fighting his enemy (Dr Extremo), and elements from many contemporary graphic novels with political content and a simpler drawing style (e.g. Persepolis). This is the cover as well as pages from the Introduction and the Myanmar section:

For the 2021 VR/AR political comic book, I designed and roughly sketched out each page, but it was truly brought to life by Rome-based freelance artist Mara Angelilli. Check out her beautiful artwork!