black titanic 95Mkasa wa mapenzi ndani Titanic (A romantic tragedy on the Titanic).
Tanzania has a very lively tradition of comic art in Swahili, its national
language. W hile early productions date back to the 1950s (Beez 2009), the
genre continued to develop mainly as short comic strips in newspapers
after independence and throughout Tanzania’s socialist era. Following
the liberalization of the economy and the introduction of the multiparty
system in 1986, katuni, as comics are called in Swahili, began to prolifer-
ate considerably (Packalén 2009). The 1990s witnessed a huge number of
new publications, and comics were no longer limited to cartoon pages of
newspapers but filled the pages of humorous magazines and funny tab-
loids launched at the beginning and the end of the decade, respectively.
In addition, comic artists began to publish their work independently as
small booklets (Packalén 2009).
Mtani, born in 1973, belongs to Tanzania’s third generation of comic
artists. W hen he began working on his graphic novel Mkasa wa mapenzi in
1998, he was a political science student at the University of Dar es Salaam
and earned his living as a part-time cartoonist for a number of Kiswahili
newspapers. At first, he adapted the movie to the format of a comic strip
that was printed in Alasiri, one of the daily papers he was working for.
However, he stopped the strip after only ten episodes and—encouraged
by readers—developed a book-length project instead. It took him about
eight months to finish the drawings and turn Cameron’s movie into a
graphic novel. His initial plan was to divide it into a series of sixteen book-
lets, each with a color cover (see, e.g., figure 3.2) and about thirty-two
pages of black-and-white drawings. The first volume of his series appeared
in the year 2000, with a circulation of 3,000. It was sold in Tanzania’s main
cities—Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Arusha, and Moshi. At that time, the
supply of new comic publications was higher than the demand, and many
of those initially planned as a series never made it to a second volume.
Despite the fact that he was able to make a moderate profit from his first
volume, Mtani had expected much higher returns and dreamed of laying
the foundation for his own publishing company. Needless to say, he was
disappointed and postponed the publication of the remaining volumes—a
decision he was later to regret after gaining more experience in the media
industry (Beez 2007). It was not until August 2006 that he recommenced
publication of Mkasa wa mapenzi, not in the form of booklets, however,