Saladin Ahmed

Saladin Ahmed (born October 4, 1975) is an American comic book writer and a science fiction/fantasy poetry and prose writer. His 2012 book Throne of the Crescent Moon was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Ahmed's fiction has been published in anthologies and magazines including Strange Horizons, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, Clockwork Phoenix 2 and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. He is currently writing Daredevil and has previously written other series for Marvel Comics such as Black Bolt, Exiles, Miles Morales: Spider-Man, The Magnificent Ms. Marvel, Quicksilver, and Wolverine. He is also the co-creator of the comic series Abbott and its sequels Abbott: 1973 and Abbott: 1979.

Early life

Ahmed was born in 1975 in Detroit, Michigan, to parents of Lebanese, Egyptian, Irish, and Polish descent. His father, Ismael Ahmed, formerly in the merchant marine, worked both in a factory and as a community organizer. His mother was a political activist. Ahmed is Muslim.

After graduating from high school, Ahmed attended Henry Ford Community College before transferring to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After receiving a BA in American Studies, Ahmed earned an MFA at Brooklyn College and an MA in English from Rutgers University.

Career

Poetry and prose

Ahmed's poetry has been published in various literary journals and books and has been awarded fellowships from the University of Michigan, Brooklyn College, and the Bronx Council on the Arts. Ahmed's science fiction and fantasy stories have been published in magazines and anthologies including Strange Horizons, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, Clockwork Phoenix 2, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. In 2010, he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Ahmed's story "Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela", originally published in Clockwork Phoenix 2, was a finalist for the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Short Story.

In February 2012, Ahmed's debut novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon, was published by DAW Books. It was announced as the first of a trilogy. The novels are fantasies inspired by One Thousand and One Nights. In 2021, The Washington Post commented that "though Saladin Ahmed may be best known for his comic book work, 'Throne of the Crescent Moon,' a Middle Eastern-inspired fantasy novel, garnered him a Locus Award in 2013".

In October 2017, Ahmed gained media attention for a Twitter post addressed to the cereal company Kellogg's: "why is literally the only brown corn pop on the whole cereal box the janitor? this is teaching kids racism." Kellogg's indicated they would change the artwork on future Corn Pops shipments.

Comics

In 2016, Ahmed was approached by Marvel Comics editor Wil Moss to write a series focusing on the character Black Bolt due to Ahmed's background in fantasy and science fiction. Ahmed, with artist Christian Ward, began writing an ongoing series titled Black Bolt in May 2017. Ahmed and Ward won the 2018 Eisner Award for Best New Series for Black Bolt while the trade paperback collection of the comic, Black Bolt, Volume 1: Hard Time, was a finalist for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. The series was cancelled in 2018 after twelve issues.

In 2018, Ahmed relaunched two new ongoing series for Marvel Comics – Miles Morales: Spider-Man with artist Javier Garron and Exiles with artist Javier Rodriguez. Zack Quaintance, for The Beat, called Ahmed "a rising star at Marvel, having written the critically-acclaimed Black Bolt and currently writing Miles Morales: Spider-Man and Exiles". Also in 2018, Ahmed wrote the creator-owned limited series Abbott with artist Sami Kivela; it was published by Boom! Studios. Sequels, titled Abbott: 1973 and Abbott: 1979, were released in 2021 and 2024, respectively.

In 2019, Ahmed and artist Minkyu Jung became the creative team for the Ms. Marvel relaunch titled The Magnificent Ms. Marvel. IGN highlighted The Magnificent Ms. Marvel on its list for "Best Comic Book Series of 2019". The series was cancelled in February 2021 after eighteen issues. Charlie Ridgely, for ComicBook.com, highlighted that The Magnificent Ms. Marvel was "an incredible challenge" for Ahmed since he had to follow the character's original creator G. Willow Wilson. Ridgely commented that "Ahmed has leaned hard into the issues that plague our current lives while still making the comic uplifting" and that "every revelation that Kamala comes to is thoroughly earned and formed based on the specific experiences we see her confront. It's a master class in evolving a character while keeping them grounded in their own identity".

Ahmed was #10 on CBR's "10 Best Marvel Comics Writers of the Last Decade" list. Ahmed was nominated for "Best Comic Book Writer of 2020" by IGN — the article states that Miles Morales and Kamala Khan are "characters closely intertwined with their respective creators. It says a great deal that Saladin Ahmed has managed to take the reins of both Miles and Kamala's solo books and truly make these characters his own. Plus, he delivered a rollicking good Conan tale in Battle for the Serpent Crown".

In July 2020, Ahmed and Dave Acosta successively funded an original graphic novel, titled Dragon, through Kickstarter. SyFy Wire highlighted that the Kickstarter "blew past its initial $40,000 goal and surpassed $100,000 just 10 days into the campaign". In August 2021, Ahmed was one of the announced creators included in Substack's "major investment in the comics market in the form of new agreements with some of the biggest names in the medium at the moment". The New York Times highlighted that "the creators will be paid by Substack while keeping ownership of their work. The company will take most of the subscription revenue in the first year; after that, it will take a 10 percent cut". Ahmed stated that Substack would be the home of Copper Bottle, a "subscription-based pop-up imprint publishing original comics" written by him and featuring various illustrators.