 Last summer, I received an email that was the comic creator's equivalent of a letter from Hogwarts – Marvel Comics wanted me to pitch a story for their huge 'Edge of Spider-verse' comic series. My pitch was eventually approved and I got to co-create the new Spider-UK, a British national Spider-Man who is a young Black Muslim woman, swinging through the streets solving paranormal mysteries. The previous Spider-UK was Brian Braddock – an English aristocrat – but with this character, I wanted to create an inner-city, working-class hero that showed a different side of the British experience and one where I can share my perspective as a Black British Muslim. It was so much fun to write. This was all a far cry from where my life began as a child refugee. My family and I travelled to the UK from Somalia in 1989 to escape the civil war that was raging there. I was only two years old so I don't remember much about home beyond snapshot images, the confusion and constantly being on the move. I was thrilled to co-create a young Black Muslim woman Spider-Man (Picture: Marvel Comics) Arriving in the UK in the middle of winter felt like entering another planet. The snow was something I'd only seen in cartoons and the mix of stony, ancient and tall glass new buildings were just as wondrous. A double decker bus blew my toddler mind. I remember the kids from school being welcoming and a Turkish neighbour who had lent us kitchenware. It wasn't a total lovefest though, there were a few cankerous old geezers in our building who made rude comments about the 'smells' of my mum's cooking and white van men who yelled horribly racist slurs at me out their window as they drove off. Fortunately, for me, those incidents were few and far between. I fell in love with comics before I could read English. I used to borrow TinTin books from the school library, which really hel){kind=link}
NEWS… BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
Last summer, I received an email that was the comic creator’s equivalent of a letter from Hogwarts – Marvel Comics wanted me to pitch a story for their huge ‘Edge of Spider-verse’ comic series.
My pitch was eventually approved and I got to co-create the new Spider-UK, a British national Spider-Man who is a young Black Muslim woman, swinging through the streets solving paranormal mysteries.
The previous Spider-UK was Brian Braddock – an English aristocrat – but with this character, I wanted to create an inner-city, working-class hero that showed a different side of the British experience and one where I can share my perspective as a Black British Muslim. It was so much fun to write.
This was all a far cry from where my life began as a child refugee.