Mike Spring
At New York ComicCon 2025, it was the second year in the row. That I saw a massive booth right at the front of Artists’ Alley. They had a huge sign right across the front of the booth — and booth doesn’t really describe the size of this set up! — that said: SANDSTORM COMICS.
Now, I’ve been reading comics for decades, and I know a little bit about them. Who are Sandstorm Comics? I needed to know more. So I set on a mission to find out. It turns out, Sandstorm Comics is the biggest comic book studio in the United Arab Emirates, dedicated to sharing local, unique Abu Dhabi/Middle Eastern stories with global audiences. This was their second year sponsoring the Artist Alley at NY Comic Con, where they showcased their most compelling stories and characters through five new books (including a children’s book) and six additional ones that were being sold in the US for the first time.
I had the chance to speak with Sandstorm Editor-In-Chief Mo Abedin about Sandstorm Comics, their products, their approach to comic books, and much more!
QUESTION: So tell us a little bit about Sandstorm comics.
MO: So Sandstorm is a comic book studio that’s based in Abu Dhabi. And what we’re doing right now is we’re creating a new generation of content from local creators while they’re working with international creative teams, some of the best talents in the world. So what we do is we help them collaborate, and then we produce products like what you see right now in front of you.
QUESTION: And I know that your books have been very successful on that side of the world, and now you’re making a push to bring them to this side of the world. What are some of the challenges in doing that?
MO: So I think it would be either the same challenges a lot of publishers would have trying to enter a new market. There’s nothing really different. I mean, the quality of the books is extremely high. They’re super premium books. They’re an A4 format. Obviously, the art, you know, we spend a lot of time selecting the artists and the talent that we work with and the art direction of the books as well, to really have a premium package, right? A premium product that we put into the market. It’s only a matter of time until we basically find a great partner or partners that will help us carry these books in the market. But it’s nothing out of the ordinary for what you would expect entering a new market. If anything, I believe that our entry to this market is at an accelerated pace because of the quality of the books that we’re doing, and the other thing that we have going for us, like our unique selling point is that we are bringing stories into this market from a region that nobody has ever exported stories out before. So it’s kind of like the same thing that Korea did and Japan did, but now it’s for people to get more exposure to stories that are coming out of the Arab world, specifically from Abu Dhabi.
QUESTION: And, you know, this is your second year at New York ComiCon. You guys have a huge presence. It’s very impressive. What’s the fan reaction been?
MO: Yeah, so basically what we did last year was we had previous issues that we gave out for free. Those previous issues are now full books and graphic novels that you can purchase. And some of the fans who come back are the ones who had the previous issues. And I believe the previous issues were about 24 to 30 pages. We do long form content, graphic novels, so our graphic novels range from 80 pages to 300. So we have one beautiful 300 pager called Wrath of the Feral. That’s the biggest book we have right now. But the others average between 80 to 150. The fans who got the previews last year are coming back now to buy the whole book. So it’s great. They come and get it signed, you see a lot of familiar faces from last year. It’s really, really fun.
QUESTION: I love the graphic novel format versus single issues. I think that’s really a great way to go, especially getting these new readers, right? Because I like that people who can just buy the whole story, not have to wait for other issues. Is that Is that going to be kind of your future model or are you going to branch out into other types of like single issues and things?
MO: Yeah, so it’s funny that you ask that question because right now we also have an imprint, a children’s book imprint, called Little Storm. And it’s super cute, hardcovers, beautiful stories that have values behind them. We obviously want to entertain and educate. But those books are around 20 to 24 pages. And sometimes it’s like 20 pages, but it’s like double page spread. So it’s double the amount of pages. But that’s our short form content And we are now launching in 2026 sandstorm more short form content. So that short content is going to be like one shots or origin stories. The reason that we’re doing graphic novels is because of bingeability. Everybody right now likes to binge. And the biggest problem that we saw, even for me, growing up, was finding consecutive issues. Either, like, let’s say issue one is sold out. I can’t do anything about that. Everybody wants to buy issue one. So then, let’s say they like, “oh, there’s something else happens in issue four. So I can’t read that.” So it’s like, the most important thing for me is not selling covers. It’s selling the experience. It’s selling the brand, Sandstorm. So when you pick it up, they know they’re going on an adventure and they can trust that the book is going to give them the entire story. We don’t want to complicate things. We want to make sure you have that full experience. Next year we’ll have the short form content that we will then branch into anthologies. So these will be origin stories. This will be single contained short stories. We do research and speak to a lot of people. They’re asking for recommendations and they’re like, can somebody please recommend a comic book that actually just finishes? Like, I just want to just read something for like, you know, it’s one issue and I’m done, you know? So that’s what we’re trying to bring to the market. Something fun, something engaging, and something interesting.
QUESTION: Finally, if you had to recommend one book to a new sandstorm reader, which is the first one you’re pointing them to, and why?
MO: I always ask you the same question. I would ask anybody else. What are you into? Okay, that’s fair. There are 11 books right now. Five have been released in our market. The six we’re releasing here and at home. So it really depends what you enjoy. We have something for everybody. And the cool thing about Sandstorm is that we we’re not only fixed on making American comics or manga. We produce everything on our format. So you’ve got manga, you’ve got European style comics, you’ve got American style comics, some experimental stuff as well. So it really depends on what you want to read, what kind of genre you into, what kind of art style you like, and then it’s much easier for me to recommend based on what you read.
