Iranians choose a new president next month, and one thing Iran's leaders are intent on avoiding is a repeat of the massive street protests that followed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial re-election in 2009.
The sponsors of those protests, known as the Green Movement, have been effectively silenced inside Iran, but not online. The heroine of a graphic novel about the violent suppression of dissent in 2009 is now launching a virtual campaign of her own.
Her name is Zahra, a wife and mother in Tehran who starred in the 2010 online graphic novel Zahra's Paradise. Zahra's Paradise happens to be the name of a vast cemetery in the Iranian capital, Tehran, where Iranians from ayatollahs to war veterans to student dissidents are buried.
Readers were riveted by Zahra's struggle to find her son Mehdi, who had disappeared during a street protest. As with many real-life Tehran mothers, Zahra's search ended at a graveside in Zahra's Paradise.
The Web comic became a global phenomenon and was translated into 15 languages. Now, Zahra's creators and the human rights group United for Iran have launched a new storyline in which she runs for president.
In the panel below, Zahra's best friend, Miriam, a caustic critic of the government who calls Iran's clerical leaders "clowns" presiding over a circus, urges Zahra to enter the campaign, despite Zahra's sighs that it won't bring her dead son back: