There are movies, TV shows and even videogames based on musicals. But have you ever heard of a comic book based on a musical? For years, even before joining the Deviantart community, I've worked on musical comic books. I started with short illustrated songs like Barry Manilow's Copacabana and a set of classic songs by the 19th Century American composer Stephen Foster. Then, I moved on to full-blown Broadway  and London West-end productions like Jesus Christ Superstar, The Pirates of Penzance and Sweeney Todd.

And now, I'm working on a favorite of the Nelson Eddy-Jeannette MacDonald crowd, The Desert Song. But, if you're expecting swooning, love-struck maids and exotic sheiks, you're in for a shock. This version is not set in some far-off romantic time but the present. The romance and the songs are still there but so are events and situations more befitting the headlines of today  than the musical stage of the 1920s, including suicide bombings and the threat of radical Islam. But then, the original was also inspired by current events of the time, namely, the Berber uprising against the French colonial government  in Morocco.

Though I've maintained the basic plot element, the libretto is almost totally  original. I've changed the location from Morocco to the fictional country of Elkhobar And Anglicized the names of the French characters (e.g. Margot Bonvalet has been renamed Margo Barrett).  But the lyrics to the songs (they're marked with asterisks) remain unaltered from the original 1920s version and are pretty old-fashioned. So, if you see the word "gay" in a speech balloon that has an asterisk, you'll know what it means.

I know some readers will likely read through the songs as if they were plain speech, so there's a link on the sidebar to a playlist  of the songs that I gathered from Youtube.

One advice: don't hold your breath