Zahra's Paradise: The Revolution Will Be Bookmarked

One thing the comics medium does very well is posit the kind of wildly imaginative fictive universe in which a guy can decide to name himself The Elongated Man and everyone thinks that's a perfectly reasonable idea. (See also: Matter-Eater Lad, Paste-Pot Pete, Orca the Whale-Woman.)

Another, wholly separate, thing that comics do well is explore historical events in ways that make them freshly available to the senses.

The stylized art and deeply personal narratives of books like Maus, Persepolis, Palestine and Stuck Rubber Baby, for example, invite us to reexamine the harrowing realities of the Holocaust, the Iranian Revolution, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the civil rights movement.

The often surprising interplay of words and images ("Why are all the kitties wearing swastikas?") lends a new immediacy to the history we know from news reports or textbooks. Suddenly we're able to look past the immense, dreadful, unimaginable fact of an event like the Holocaust and into the lives of those who were touched by it.

Like those books, the recently launched webcomic Zahra's Paradise puts a human face on a time of grief and unrest. Unlike those books, the time in question is now: The comic's set in the aftermath of the mass protests and violent reprisals that last year's elections touched off in the streets of Iran.

Those events are fresh in our minds, and the situation in Iran continues to unfold in a volatile and unpredictable way that prevents the dust of history from settling over it. So it seems only fitting that the story of Zahra's Paradise — that of a mother searching the streets, hospitals and prisons for her missing son — is still unfolding, too: The first page appeared only last month, and a new page appears every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The comic's Iranian-American creators are writing and drawing it under pseudonyms, to protect their families back in Iran.

Presented in eight languages (nine, if you count the Polish translation that sometimes shows up in the comments), Zahra's Paradise's online serialization comes courtesy of First Second Books, who will publish it as a graphic novel in Fall of 2011. (The creators say they plan to conclude the series somewhere around 160 pages, but have left themselves some wiggle room to go over.)

We're just 16 or so pages in, and it's already compelling, quietly powerful stuff. I'm sure the book, when it's eventually published, will be an affecting read. But there's something about following the comic as it slowly unfolds, sharing the characters' growing sense of dread and helplessness. You can't skip to the back page to see how it all turns out, which only serves to deepen the affinity you feel for them.

Read about it. Then read it. It's good.