JAKARTA - AN APPARENT explosion has levelled high-rise buildings in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, triggering a security alert - it is the work of Jabbar the Powerful, an Islamic superhero who sneezed.

Jabbar the Powerful is the first of 99 superhero characters in an Islamic culture-based comic book series called The 99, just launched in Indonesia.

The colourful, action-packed comic seeks to act as a metaphor for what's happening in the Islamic world, its creator, Kuwaiti-born Naif Al-Mutawa, said during a recent visit to Jakarta for the launch.

'Islam or the Quran can be used for good or for bad,' Mr Al-Mutawa said, adding that when either is misused, people blame the Quran 'when in fact they should be blaming the person interpreting the Quran'.

Mr Yudha Kartohadiprodjo, general manager of The 99's Indonesian licence holder Femina Group, said he believed the comics would find a receptive audience in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

The 68-page, full-colour first issue with a print run of 25,000 copies is selling for 18,000 rupiah (S$3) at Indonesian bookstores.

'In the market today, there are no contemporary comics based on Islamic values,' he said, adding that a few national newspapers were considering printing extracts.

Each of the 99 heroes, who are scattered throughout the world, holds one of the 99 attributes Muslims assign to Allah.

Jabbar, for instance, has extraordinary strength that gives him 'near-invulnerability and durability'.

But while the comic is based on Islamic archetypes and culture, there is nothing overtly Islamic in them, Mr Al-Mutawa said.

'They are as religious as Spiderman,' he said. 'There's no mention of prayers or prophets, none of that.'

Mr Al-Mutawa launched The 99 in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait last summer and has plans to take it to the United States and Malaysia later this year.

He is also in talks with publishers in Turkey and France.

The father of four believes that if young Muslims are not given an alternative, they will gravitate towards the glorification of fundamentalist violence.

'Kids and adults alike need heroes,' he told Newsweek magazine earlier this year.

He worked as a clinical psychologist for more than a decade before he started his own media company. He treated former prisoners of war in Kuwait and worked with survivors of political torture while in New York.

'The Iraqis that I treated were tortured by Saddam or his people. These are people who grew up with Saddam as their hero and yet they were tortured by (his people),' he said. 'Is this what heroes do?'

This disillusionment drove him to write several successful children's books and then to create and co-write The 99.