To shock investors into action, [Al-Mutawa] would pull from his pocket an article about a Hamas supporter in the Palestinian territories who was making millions selling a children's album with stick-on pictures of suicide bombers and other bloody scenes from the intifada. Something more positive was needed, Al-Mutawa argued in his sales pitch, to save the children from embracing a culture of violence and death.

"My idea was to mine Islamic culture for appropriate concepts for children for that part of the world," he said. The result is "The 99," a comic series with stories woven around 99 characters who each personify one of Islam's attributes of God. One is wise -- Hakim. Another is farsighted -- Basir. Yet another is powerful -- Jabbar. "We are creating a pop culture that has an Islamic underpinning or archetype. It is really global, or universal, an amalgam of everything that's out there," Al-Mutawa said. None of the characters carries weapons, and they are split evenly between men and women, only a handful of whom cover their hair, he said.

Al-Mutawa describes himself as a "junkie" who grew up on Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys adventure novels, in the absence of appealing Arab alternatives. Now his enthusiasm for his own pan-Islamic brand name, "The 99," knows no bounds. Al-Mutawa, chief executive of Teshkeel Comics, also became the distributor of Marvel Comics in the Arab world. A father of four sons younger than 9, he said he wanted to preserve what was precious in his culture for his own children.