At the 2010 TED Global conference, an annual event that brings together innovators and entrepreneurs in the fields of technology, entertainment and design, Dr. Naif al-Mutawa gave a 20-minute presentation on The 99, his global superhero franchise inspired by Islamic archetypes. Published first as a comic book by al-Mutawa’s Kuwaiti-based Teshkeel Media Group beginning in 2006, by 2010 The 99 was well on its way to becoming a global cross-media brand designed to reach Muslims around world through theme parks, social media, merchandizing and a television series co-produced with Endemol Entertainment.

Toward the end of his talk, al-Mutawa explained his motivations and aspirations for the project while expressing frustration with a popular trend amongst some Muslim families to dress their children up as suicide bombers as a form of protest, which he linked to the absence of positive contemporary Islamic heroes for kids to emulate. Choking up slightly, al-Mutawa argued that by linking enough positive things to the Koran, Muslim children would begin to take pride in a different set of representations and embrace the shared universal values that Islam already advocates, like kindness and generosity, rather than being taught to revere its more fanatical and fringe elements. Or, as al-Mutawa explained, “an entire generation of young Muslims is growing up believing that Islam is a bad thing. They are put in a situation to defend the indefensible. My thinking was, how can I expand the boundaries of what Islam is, talk about stuff that all human beings share together, and not allow people to sabotage and hijack Islam.”

To prove his point, al-Mutawa juxtaposed two photos: one of a young girl dressed up in a white robe, a green headband bearing Hamas’ Shahada emblem, and a mock bomb belt holding a Koran in one hand and gesturing to the sky with the other. The other was photo-shopped image of the same little girl, with her headband now branded with The 99 logo and her bomb belt replaced by a t-shirt featuring a selection of The 99 superheroes. Tellingly, she is still depicted holding the Koran – as opposed to a copy of The 99 comic book – while gesturing skyward.

In al-Mutawa’s vision, The 99 is a transformative brand that normalizes Muslim youth by inaugurating them into the realm of consumer capitalism. As such, it is part of an effort to repair and redefine Islam’s reputation through branding and marketing, but also through the marketization of Islam. Or, to quote Al-Mutawa, “someone had tarnished the name of Islam, and I wanted to go in and help rebrand it.” While The 99 are marketed as new role models for children to emulate, al-Mutawa is repeatedly positioned as the ultimate prototype for the new Muslim superhero, whose entrepreneurial powers inspire new forms of investment in Islamic identity.

In some ways, al-Mutawa’s approach to repackaging and repositioning Islam for Muslims seems very much in the spirit of development paradigms that the West has been promoting for decades. He seems to be a cross between a modern-day version of Daniel Lerner’s (1958) “grocer,” enthralled with consumer capitalism and eager to spread the gospel of Western entrepreneurialism, and a proponent of Everett Rogers and Arvind Singhal’s (1999) entertainment-education thesis, which argues that modernity is best taught through popular rather than didactic means. Indeed, al-Mutawa is a self-professed social entrepreneur who wants to build a better world through capitalism. He has gone on record that he believes “Entrepreneurship is based in the United States… in Kuwait, education is free and food is subsidized. The State takes care of the population, but by doing that they don’t force the population to take care of itself. That becomes the biggest impediment to entrepreneurship.” His efforts to rebrand Islam through The 99 have earned him numerous awards and recognitions, including the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Marketplace of Ideas Award and the 2009 Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Award. President Obama gave al-Mutawa and The 99 a special shout out at the 2011 Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington DC for their super heroic work promoting tolerance. Meanwhile, Forbes Magazine recognized The 99 as one of the top twenty hot trends of 2010.

With such positive credentialing, one would think that al-Mutawa’s efforts to build The 99 into a global cross-media franchise would be welcomed as evidence that Western values are being positively inculcated in the Middle East. Yet, attempts to bring The 99 animated TV series to US audiences have been met with accusations that al-Mutawa is attempting to indoctrinate non-Muslims into Shari’a law. In 2010, The Hub acquired the US rights to The 99 animated series, which offered the brand potential access to 60 million households. Almost immediately, conservative organizations began a campaign to have the series removed, accusing it of foisting “sinister Muslim values” on non-Muslim children in an attempt to “Islamify youth.” One critic asked, “Will children learn about democracy, modernity, tolerance, Enlightenment, women’s and gay rights from these ‘Islamic’ figures?” while ignoring how US cartoons rarely offer children much insight into these issues either. Ultimately, al-Mutawa’s efforts to rebrand Islam by emphasizing the positive and pro-Western attributes of the religion were dismissed as forms of “Dawah proselytizing” by critics who insisted that The 99 should have been critical of Islam, rather than celebrating its archetypes. According to this logic, the only good Muslims are the self-hating kind. The pressure critics placed on the Hub was sufficient to cause the cable network to indefinitely postpone the series’ debut.

American resistance to The 99 reveals both the limits of consumer capitalism as a great equalizer and some of the incompatibilities of brand marketing with correcting misconceptions about Islam.

First, a confession: I’m addicted to Diet Pepsi. The vending machine down the hall from my office has taken thousands of dollars from me over the past four years. Perhaps that is why when I first heard about Pepsi’s new social media campaign, The Pepsi Refresh Project, in which Pepsi brand loyalists get to both propose and vote for the philanthropic/entrepreneurial projects the company should support, I became instantly hooked on the concept. I mean, what’s not to like about a billion dollar corporation funding up to 32 new cause-based projects per month to the tune of $1.3 million based entirely on the recommendations of people like me who know the brand so intimately?

Officially, the Pepsi Refresh Project rewards “great ideas” that will have a “positive impact” on communities around the world as determined by an “online democratic voting process”. Participants submit project ideas organized according to the dollar amounts they are seeking ($250K, $50K, $25K, or $5K) and then proceed to mobilize voters to support their endeavors. The top vote getters each month in each dollar category then become eligible for funding. Voters can search for projects that interest them based on six thematic categories, which include Health, Arts & Culture, Food & Shelter, The Planet, Neighborhoods and Education. Since January, Pepsi has funded 96 ideas, including research for curing Spinal Muscular Atrophy, revamping science classrooms, and preserving a local movie theater in Rosendale, NY.

It is pretty easy to find the Pepsi Refresh Project refreshing. Where previously corporate giving was a top down process, it now seems to be driven by the Pepsi brand community’s valuation of what ideas are worth funding and what meanings the Pepsi brand ought to be associated with. Pepsi appears to be redefining the relationship between consumerism and (corporate) citizenship together with the emerging Pepsi generation. If Pepsi’s ultimate aim is to get its brand community to buzz its praises and spread the viral gospel, well I guess it’s working, ‘cuz here I am.

Of course, the project isn’t above reproach. Though you don’t need to be a Pepsi drinker to either submit an idea or vote for one, participation is limited to US residents  — Pepsi’s global development initiatives are still dictated to the rest of the world’s inhabitants from on high – who are uploading English-only project ideas and are willing to abide by Pepsi’s self-proclaimed “common sense” rules, which amongst other things preclude submissions that “suggest boycotts or negative action against any business or enterprise”.

Moreover, while Pepsi pitches the Refresh Project as exemplifying democratic decision-making, participants with the largest email databases and established online social networks dominate the contest. Winning is less dependent on convincing voters of the value of your idea than it is on mobilizing repeat voting from a support network already on board with your project. As the Pepsi Refresh toolkit explains, the real work is in “[using] your creativity to keep your supporters engaged and updated throughout the entire month of voting. They’ll be able to vote for you once a day”. Contest rules reward those that have mastered reputation-enhancing web tools like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and have garnered a significant online following.  Less digitally-savvy-or-inclined organizations are inevitably at a disadvantage no matter how great their ideas might be. This is especially true of projects emerging out of economically disadvantaged communities, which often lack the technological resources and time-requirements needed to spread their message virally or get supporters to vote consistently.

The socialist-wannabe in me recognizes that these asymmetries, coupled with the project’s neoliberal conceit that private corporations are viable sources of funding for social programs, pose significant problems. Many social programs are as necessary as they are necessarily unpopular, and should therefore never be subject to market whims and consumer taste preferences. Still, I’ll admit that there is also something intriguing about this opportunity that makes it seem like a war of position worth engaging in, especially for progressive-minded academics.

In spite of its skewed democratic principles, can the Pepsi Refresh Project be tactically useful for scholars? What if Antenna’s editors successfully mobilized their contributors, readers, Facebook friends, and Twitter followers (not to mention their contributors and readers’ Facebook friends and Twitter followers) to vote repeatedly for a project that say, developed a local variant of the current website that engaged Madisonians more directly on media-related issues vital to their community? Wouldn’t the outcome outweigh the fraught income source? Then again, perhaps this is all just caffeine-and-Splenda induced folly… Can someone please loan me a dollar?

I am, however, referring to the chain of ongoing narrative events taking place on Buffy: Season 8 in comic book form. Debuting in March 2007 and currently 33 issues in, the Season 8 moniker is, on the one hand, a gimmick intended to convey to readers that as overseen by Joss Whedon, the comic book is officially in continuity with the TV series, picking up where season 7 ended. On the other hand, labeling this series as somehow “televisual” is also perfectly in tune with the ongoing cross-fertilization between the comic book and TV worlds, with talent like Whedon, Mark Millar, and Damon Lindelof moving between both media, adaptations and spin-offs on both sides of the pond, from Smallville to Battlestar Galactica, and genre/style comparisons abounding, whether we’re talking short-lived praise for Heroes or references to Alan Moore’s Top Ten as the Hill Street Blues of superhero procedurals.

Amongst all of this blurring and borrowing, however, the one television concept that simply does not work for comic books is “the season”. Seasons imply definite temporal boundaries. There is always an end in sight and part of the pleasure as well as the pain of viewing a season’s worth of TV is knowing that it will wrap itself up, well or poorly, within a finite number of episodes. Yes, serialized TV may leave viewers sweating through a season-ending cliffhanger or eight, but viewers still know that at a certain point the season will end, whether things are resolved or not, and that anticipatory foreknowledge is essential to the TV viewing experience.

And herein lies the problem with Buffy: Season 8. As a comic book, it does not follow the same narrative rhythm as prime time network television. There is no end in sight, just an infinite succession of story arcs, whose relation to the overall series is designed to be expansive, opening up future storytelling possibilities. This is perfectly in line with the economics of comic book retail sales that increasingly rely on trade compilations available at chains like Barnes & Noble and Wal-Mart to hook new readers by offering self-contained mini-book-length stories that form part of an on-going franchise.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I like reading the Buffy comic. It is well written, capturing the clever dialogue and pathos that made the television series so appealing. The artwork is compelling, with snippets of manga-esque imagery interspersed with some near dead-on recreations of the original actors’ likenesses. The opportunities it provides for exploring parts of the Buffy universe impossible to capture on TV without radically blowing up the budget, like Dawn’s years-long transformation first into a giant and then into a Centaur, add texture and spectacle that enrich the franchise. But as a television season told in comic book form, it has really sucked precisely because it insists on adopting the organizational schema of “the season,” leading to expectations that all of this is somehow driving toward a climactic confrontation between Buffy and Angel rather than exploring multiple facts of the Buffyverse that chart its expanding boundaries.