Superheroes have long served as symbols of social progress, with figures like Wonder Woman emerging during the rise of second-wave feminism and Black Panther debuting the same year as the Black Power political organization by the same name.
Today, author Bijhan Agha pushes the boundaries of representation with her creation of a trans Muslim superhero in “Time Wars: The Adventures of Kobra Olympus.” Her comic features a heroine who not only navigates her gender identity but also uses her powers for good in a unique way.
“I wanted to tell a superhero story that didn't involve fighting crime,” Agha said. “Because crime is such a social issue that I didn't want to see her trying to be a band-aid for a deeper issue. I wanted to see her do fun and exciting things that were more science fiction and fantasy, so I made her enemies monsters instead.”
The story opens with the protagonist going on a date with a cisgender lesbian, which hits a snag due to a misunderstanding rooted in common trans experiences — something Agha says she has personally dealt with.
“She gets called away by a mysterious message from the future and is asked to spend the rest of the comic fighting a monster and at the very end, it buttons up where she resolves what was going on at the date, and it ends on a nice clean note,” she said. “Just in case we didn't get a chance to do a number two, I wanted to make sure that it was a whole story from top to bottom.”
Parts of the comic draw directly from Agha’s life, as both she and her character are Muslim trans women from Seattle. This semi-autobiographical element makes the comic particularly poignant for readers, especially in a genre often dominated by more mainstream narratives.
Samah Choudhury, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Chicago focusing on humor, subjecthood, religion, and race in the 21st-century United States, sees the comic as part of a larger story on how marginalized voices contribute to pop culture.
“The kind of advent of American Muslims, not only creating comics, and participating in American pop culture, that's been around for hundreds of years,” Choudhury said. “But this comic in particular is so interesting to me, because it's a take from a trans Muslim woman, also about a trans Muslim superhero. And what a fascinating way to get at questions of difference, to get at questions of power and justice, in a genre such as this.”
Ahmed Akbar, a culture writer and audio journalist, points out that independent comics like “Time Wars” serve as both a critique and a necessary expansion of the superhero genre.
“A superhero should be a universal thing. Anybody should be able to be a superhero,” Akbar said. “When an independent creator is writing a comic book, what they’re really saying is: the big two [Marvel and DC] don’t own the definition of what a superhero is. It’s a reclamation of power and representation.”
Mainstream comics have had a complicated relationship with Muslim representation, often reinforcing Orientalist tropes. Akbar notes that early Muslim superheroes, like Marvel’s Arabian Knight, leaned into stereotypes.
“They were flying on carpets, had turbans, and talked about sacrificing their life for Allah,” he said. “Muslims were not given full humanization until much later. It took time for comic book publishers to actually invest in a character like Kamala Khan, who became a massive success because she was written as a whole person.”
For Agha, reclaiming that space was critical. She is not only creating a Muslim superhero but doing so in a way that resists conventional narratives of crime-fighting and trauma-centered storytelling.
Ali A. Olami, a historian of the Islamic world and Assistant Professor of History at Loyola Marymount University, sees “Time Wars” as part of a much longer history of gender diversity in Muslim societies.
“From the moment of Muhammad’s life all through the 18th and 19th centuries, we have had individuals in Islamic societies who don’t fit within the contemporary gender binary,” Olami said. “They were not persecuted or marginalized in the way that we see today. In fact, they were often important political or cultural figures.”
He points to the mukhannathun, a recognized category of gender-nonconforming people in early Islamic societies who moved between masculine and feminine spaces.
“Pre-modern Muslim societies had a more flexible understanding of gender than many contemporary interpretations allow for,” Olami said. “The anxiety around gender today is a very modern construct, influenced by colonial-era binaries rather than older Islamic thought.”
The backlash against queer and trans people in both Islamic societies and the U.S. today, he argues, is often less about religion itself and more about how power structures exploit social fears.
“What’s happening in places like Florida, where queer rights are under attack, and what’s happening in authoritarian Muslim states are not that different,” Olami said. “They are about governments weaponizing moral panic to exert control. Historically, Islam was far more open and accommodating than many realize.”
For Agha, that history, and the opportunity to write her own future, is why she created “Time Wars.”
“Kobra Olympus is definitely more of what I aspire to be. And because she's younger than me, she's kind of who I wish I had been,” she said. “She’s me as I wish I was.”
