Artwork courtesy of CCX Comics / Tino Makoni.
Nine years after its first page was drawn, Mhare, Zimbabwe's answer to the superhero team book, finally has a real shot at an audience. The series landed on GlobalComix this month, putting Harare artist Tino Makoni's homegrown superhero universe in the same digital storefront as Batman, Spider-Man and the rest of the mainstream comics world for the first time.
From convention tables to a global storefront
Mhare's story starts long before this launch. Makoni first put out a Prologue issue back in 2017 through Comexposed, the Zimbabwean digital arts collective he co-founded with Eugene Mapondera in 2013. Distribution back then was, by Comexposed's own description, "very grass roots, guerilla style", copies handed out at the group's own conventions rather than sold through any proper storefront.
The pitch has stayed consistent the whole way through. Mhare centres on Gambanyika, described on the new GlobalComix listing as Zimbabwe's champion, who has protected the country for years but now faces a threat he cannot handle alone, forcing him to assemble Zimbabwe's first super team. Other characters in the wider Mhare universe include Hungwe, billed as the Warrior Queen.
Makoni isn't a newcomer chasing a trend. He also created The Gift and GUNDOG, the latter often cited as Zimbabwe's first nationally distributed action comic book, and he has spent over a decade mentoring other local artists through Comexposed's annual Converge convention. In a 2022 interview with the World Intellectual Property Organization, he put the motivation for Mhare plainly: "I need to not just make cool stuff, but make stuff that puts other people in there who aren't being recognized at this point in time." He's also been candid that the idea of a respected Zimbabwean superhero used to get him laughed at.
Why the platform matters as much as the comic
Landing on GlobalComix is a meaningfully different proposition to selling at a convention table. The platform recently took fresh investment from leAD, whose stated reason for backing it was that it can place smaller and indie titles "next to IPs such as Spider-Man and Batman, creating the kind of accidental discovery that no amount of corporate marketing spend could manufacture independently." For a comic that has spent most of its life being handed out at Comexposed events, that's a genuine upgrade in who might actually stumble across it.
It's worth adding some balance here, though. GlobalComix's own relationship with major publishers has been uneven this year. Image Comics quietly stopped putting new titles on the platform around April 2026, and BOOM! Studios and Oni Press have also pulled back from its day and date release programme, according to reporting from Bleeding Fool. GlobalComix still carries a deep back catalogue and continues to court indie creators directly, but it's not an unambiguous story of platform momentum, more a mixed one that indie titles like Mhare happen to be well positioned for right now.
The timing also lines up with a strategic shift on the Comexposed side. In February 2026, the organisation announced what it called its "most significant strategic decision since 2019", pausing scale in favour of what it described as "ownership, IP, and sustainable creative enterprise over spectacle." Putting Mhare on a real distribution platform, rather than continuing to run it purely as a convention product, reads like the concrete follow through on that pivot.
A crowded, mostly overlooked moment for African comics
Mhare's relaunch also lands inside a much bigger story about African comics right now, one where Zimbabwe is still a small player. Nigeria's Comic Republic recently signed a licensing deal with Universal Studios for its Guardian Prime universe, and Iyanu, a property that began life as a comic from YouNeek Studios, has become one of Nigeria's flagship animation exports. Industry voices there are candid that even Nigeria's much larger comics scene still struggles with funding, distribution and basic public awareness that local comics exist at all.
Zimbabwe's own comic scene is smaller again, but not empty. Beyond Mhare, characters like RazorMan and Umzingeli have carried a modest but real local superhero tradition for close to a decade. There's also an odd bit of overlap worth flagging: a separate outfit called Dzemabwe Comic Universe Zimbabwe has, since March 2025, been building its own superhero also named Hungwe, drawn from the same African Fish Eagle totem, entirely independently of Makoni's version. Two different creative teams landing on the same national symbol for a hero says something about how much untapped mythology is sitting there for whoever gets to it with the most staying power.
Whether Mhare turns into anything more than a well made comic on a bigger shelf will depend on the same things it always has, consistent output and readers actually finding it. But for the first time, it's at least sitting somewhere they might.
Sources
- Mhare, CCX Comics, GlobalComix
- Zimbabwean Comic Artist Tino Makoni, Creator of African Superheroes, WIPO
- This is Comexposed's most significant strategic decision since 2019, Tino Makoni on LinkedIn
- Why leAD Invested in GlobalComix, Harold Primat
- Image Comics Quietly Drops GlobalComix in Surprise Digital Shift, Bleeding Fool
- Makoni & Mapondera are creating a whole world of comics and animation, BellaNaija
- Comic Republic wants to be Africa's Marvel, Read Communiqué
- The Creative Economy's Missing Link, TheACE
- How Zimbabwe Became a Great Comic Book Incubator, UN Dispatch
