I’ve never been much of a comics fan, but I was much impressed with Broken Mystic’s two-part blog series, “Female, Muslim, and Mutant: A Critique of Muslim Women in Comic Books.”

The first entry talks about the portrayal of the X-Men’s “Dust” character, an Afghan heroine introduced to the series in 2002. The second contrasts this with the portrayal of Muslim women in two comics by Muslim writers, especially “The 99,” a series based on a fascinating time period in Islamic history, the attack on Baghdad’s Bait al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) in the mid-13th century. I haven’t read either series, but it looks like “The 99″ has a compelling plot with a much more diverse cast of female characters.

(Incidentally, there is a wonderful children’s book called House of Wisdom, by Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland and illustrated by Mary GrandPre, that also deals with this time period. It appears to be out of print, but it’s worth hunting down if you are interested in the role Baghdad played in dragging Europe out of the Dark Ages and kick-starting the Renaissance.)