Rostam: Tales From the Shahnameh

In 2000, childhood friends, Bruce, Jamie, and Cameron; worked on the “Truth” anti-smoking campaign and created a customized comic book targeting Asian American teenagers who smoke. This project proved very successful with over a million issues being printed and distributed. Their collective experience on this project inspired them to express the action-adventure stories they had grown up with from the Shahnameh, into this art form. And so, the Shahnameh Comic Book was created. The Shahnameh’s main hero warrior, Rostam (Rustam) is perfectly suited to this art form. Hence Bruce, Jamie, and Cameron launched the world’s first adaptation of The Shahnameh (Shaname) stories into this genre. They achieved this by blending rich folklore from the Persian Epic: The Shahnameh, into the American Comic Book medium. After a few years of research, translation, and adaptation, the 1st series of stories was assembled. The creators intended to create books that would stand alone and have a logical continuation with one another. This task was made all the more challenging because of Ferdowsi’s double entendres technique. This usually takes form in the main story being overlain, with a deeper message of wisdom or advice. This project utilizes the graphic novel medium to introduce an important Iranian/Persian literary work to many different and important audiences: (1) English-speaking comic book readers of the world. (2) Fantasy and Mythology book readers. (3) The youth of Afghanis, Iranians, Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Georgians, who want to connect with their culture, while growing up in the diaspora. So far 4 books have been produced.