Indie and Mainstream: Mini Reviews

The Bloodline Chronicles: Nice Crime-Family Noir, some great art and tight writing.

Planetary Brigade: Another fun alternative-superhero book from Boom, written by Keith Giffen, has a sarcastic, spoofy vibe all through, reminiscent of Kirkman’s Invincible universe. 

Cover Girl: A nice pulpy mash-up in the B-movie/action genre, pokes fun at itself, and cleverly written and drawn book from Boom.

Deathblow: And Then You Live! was a nice action-packed read, not Azzarello at his best but still good in places and some great art too..

Death Valley: A fun campus-zombie comic, falls pretty short to make an impact. The book has few more small stories in line with the genre.

Newuniversal: Had never heard of this title before but saw Ellis' name and picked it, turned out great sci-fi with a political backdrop...

X- Men Endangered Species: Starts off nice with Beast going on a quest, and poses some interesting questions to existence of mutants, but pretty weak in the second half, couldn't understand why Dr. Strange had to jump in with all his magic vs. science shenanigans....Not sure if I should pick up Messiah Complex now.


20th Century Boys: Enjoyed this manga a lot. I like the fact that the pace doesn't gone down even with the barrage of characters and time/decade-jumping of events. Nice sci-fi elements mixed with action and some monster love make this one a must read book.

Comix India Vol 1 : Book Review

I am horribly late in checking out Comix India, but I am glad I did. This looks like the platform we need to showcase Indian creators on a regular basis. To my knowledge, there have been six volumes of the anthology and I checked out the first volume which has 14 short stories.

Comix India starts with a funny 2-pager self-referential strip where Charkha (Dutt) reviews the editor of the magazine, a Mantis, no less! 

The Halahala Observer - Appupen

Appupen’s comics are always rather dark and trippy. There are no clear messages but overriding themes of ennui, surrealism, and a Kafka-esque working class angst. The Light of The Prophet, The Cameraman and 1300 also explores these themes. Although the first two are shorts, 1300 tends to drag and goes too far in its theme of everyone chasing time.

Visioncarnation – Orijit Sen

Having read Sen’s works in anthologies before, I was familiar with his style, satire on intellectuals and urban fads(much like what Whit Stillman does in films). This one too is a nice short surreal take on a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals running after Bombay Baba, an old school camera talks to a chair and soon we launch into claustrophobic frames echoing bare emotions all ending happily in an urn in Banaras? Another of those wish it was longer pieces. 

Just Another Job – Sudeep Menon

A story of a Bombay nightbar, a gun for hire, and a job well done. You get the idea.

The piece looks pretty amateur and does not total up to much, the end seems pretty rushed too. May be this again needed some more pages. 

Adventures of a Comic Book Artist- Gokul Gopalakrishnan

Hilarious and autobiographical account of Gokul’s becoming a comic book creator. The writing is cathartic yet entertaining, all panels beautifully drawn and narrated. I chuckled at the bit where he spends days trying to put together his comic and his wife brushes it off in seconds. This hard reality has hit almost everyone in life some point or the other. 

Ear Rings- Dr L. Prakash

This felt like a sob story with a happy ending to me, I tried but couldn’t finish it. 

A Form of Writing – Bharath Murthy

Murthy creates a comic on the art itself. Not my favorite genre, but each frame shows the effort and knowledge behind it. May be this would look better in a standalone book.

Press Snooze for Freelancer - Vidyun Sabhaney & Pia Alize Hazarika

Nice funny story about the perils of freelancing. I could relate to how one delays sleep and then when you wait for it, morning never comes. The main character talks to the alarm clock, and the conversation doesn’t go down well… I liked the experiments with panel size and fonts.

The Replacements - Shirish Deshpande

I quite liked this mystery-horror kind of story. The theme is heard of before but the panels are drawn nicely, and the story moves fast.

A Remembrance of Loss- Somesh Kumar

A nostalgic, melancholic story of a man tracing back his routes on way to his home town, and going through passages of memory, guilt and emotions. The story moves through personal moments, that anyone who has grown up in a small town would relate to. Very nice art, although I am little wary of reading emotional pieces like this.

Throwing off the Bowlines- Pratap Aditya

Very good little political piece of extremist groups, reminded me of Joe Sacco, although it could use some satire to lighten the tone.

Last Defences of Mankind- Aditya Bidikar & Nitin Veturkar

I struggled with the font in this one, but liked the noirish urban frames…

Kinnari - Meenakshi

Really enjoyed this one, I went and read quite a few pages of the web comic too, this is how mythology should be used as a medium, not an end seen so often in Indian comics. No preachy panels, or overlong dialogs, just a fun, fantasy ride. Reminded me of Delilah Dirk.

Comix India

An Interview with Kailash Iyer

An Interview with Bharath Murthy

Vol 4 review by Sumit Ray

Kinnari webcomic

Pulp Quarterly : A Journal of Indian Comics

Pulp Quarterly is a journal of Indian comics, and a welcome addition to the growing community of Indian comic creators. I got the first issue thanks to a friend, and loved the cover art instantly(drawn by Abhishek Singh). It was a mythological monster I hadn't seen before, and there was something about the green background that went with the Pulp theme. I have been following the Indian comics off and on and have been pretty critical of it, to be honest. But this magazine puts an effort in the right direction and can be quite effective if it continues with the same energy and spirit of collaboration.

The journal showcases comic book strips, interviews and articles. Not too fond of few existing books that were profiled, I went straight to the interviews and loved them a lot. Here are my thoughts on some of the pieces in the first issue:

Review of Mumbai Confidential : I agreed with the reviewer even though I haven’t read the book apart from few pages. The concept felt too Bollywood to me, although I liked the noir-ish art. 

A Post Modern Double Talk- The now famous secret identity for real guy Gokul Gopalakrishnan writes an intellectual piece on Manjula ‘Suki’ Padmanabhan’s Double Talk strip. Though the genre does liken to a self-referentiality characteristic of some great indie writers, the strip could not hold my interest and I gave up after a few panels. The writing felt unfunny and forced to me.

Terror with a tail: A small comic strip with overall nice, kinetic work on all departments. The strip captures the surreal adventures of the working class. Although I could do without the random Salman Khan reference, but definitely, give me more of this!

The Last of its Kind: Drawn well(Abhijeet Kini), but pretty random writing, and what was the point?! The 2 page comic felt more like a creator's in-joke to me. 

One Man Show: Captures a day in the life of a writer/creator, and the mundane-ness of it all, reminded me of both Harvey Pekar and south Asian cinema.

The Sage & The Settler: Headless imbeciles! Who writes like that?! Sounds like a News reporter reviewing a Bollywood movie.Though the comic tried to elicit a funny response, the Sadhu cliche kept me away. 

The House my Grandfather Built: A melancholic account of a house, family tree and stuff. Yawn. Nice art though, with pleasing blue, green hues and confidently drawn panels. May be enter a murder mystery in the nostalgia?

Article- Defining Comics: Sumit Ray writes a nice piece on the age old debate over comics vs graphic novels. There are some interesting insights into the genesis of the Graphic Novel, and one can recall the famous examples fitting in with the topic very well.  

Indie Spotlight: This was my favourite section, showcasing the tough process of how two Indian creators have come to write their books so far, what’s in the pipeline, how do they collaborate etc. And it gives a general good sense about future of Indian comics. I had not heard of Akshay Dhar before, so that was quite an eye opener. It was nice seeing that Indian creators are going all out in supporting the scene and pulling in resources to produce better and better comics. And I had loved Vidyun Sabhaney’s work on Mice will be Mice(and had reviewed it earlier) so was great reading a well detailed and in-depth interview of her. 

I feel the biggest success of the book was it made me Google all the profiles mentioned in it and read up few Indian comics online. I will soon be sharing my views on some. 
Also very excited for the next space-themed anthology-Antariksh Yatra!

Links:
Comix India
Level 10
Graphic India
Abhishek Singh's Art

Meta Desi
The Pulpocracy
Bhanu Pratap
Kailash Iyer
Do NOT Open This Comic!

Action Figure-ing: Batman, Robin & Snikt!

There is no such thing as too many burgers.

Burgers are good for health, except for the occasional wounds. 

Pao: The Anthology of Comics 1

I had been wanting to get to Pao ever since I heard about the initiative and the people behind it, which is basically the whole modern Indian comic-generating intelligentsia/janta, except the superhero-variety.

Reading through the 12 stories, I was surprised with some while some left me rather cold. I would say it is certainly an effort worth spending an odd Rs 700 for, as the stage it offers to independent creators gives  us hope for these individual stories turning into full-fledged books/graphic novels of their own.

Here are my thoughts about the stories:

Tattoo: More of a small installation project, this is a good starting point for the compilation. A tattoo parlor that becomes an extrapolation of structures, is a smart satire on pop culture itself.

Plasmoids: This tongue-in-cheek personal take on sci-fi lightens the heavy uncleji mood that most of the stories suffer from, but gets over a little too soon. A few more pages and a longer finale would certainly benefit the pulp reader.

The Pink: A good idea(corporate satire on businessman types) stretched too far.

RSVP: Oversmart in a good way, bourgeois satire that has an oft conflicting tone. Could do with more humor, but a fine distinctive piece nonetheless.

Print Screen: Great slice of life work, something you don't often see in Indian comics. The story, much like the self-doubting protagonist, doesn't really take off anywhere, but it's a good thing at times.

Hindus & Offal: This is a wildly drawn theoretical gyaan session on Offal food and its etymological and sociological connections. Gets a bit too... theoretical at times but has some great art for keeps.

Sleepscapes: Reminded me of the Bizarroworld comic strip. I liked Parismita's book The hotel at the end of the world, and this one is good stuff too, with a single recurring image of a man carrying a dead body amidst paranoid visions of war in Delhi suburbia, a giant TV screen and indifference, by the gallons.

The Afterlife of Ammi's Betelnut Box: This is a highly nostalgic take on old havelis, and how a central female character forms the spine of the rather confusing and global family tree. It does have some laughs in the beginning but gets rather meloncholic as it progresses. Some great art here, the story and the narration reminded me of Sardari Beghum and a play I saw long back(Khatijabai of Karmali Terrace).

Helmetman in Zamzamabad: This is a reprinting of the project known as 'Raj Comics for the Hard headed'. Having enjoyed the pulpy Raj Comics through the ages, I wouldn't really bargain it for any other version, but this is good stuff. A fast read, well drawn and some interesting concepts that come and go. Left me asking for more.

Tito Years: Sarnath Bannerjee as his usual cheap-thrillery. Low on the sexual references than his previous works though.

Hair Burns like Grass: A philosophy-heavy piece on Kabir.

Chilka: I was rather disappointed with this one, having enjoyed the same team's Mice will be Mice. May be they will do better without a mythological connection.



An image I bumped into while searching for Pao. Long live, Google!

Comic Book Men Season 2

The Boys are back. After a little self-doubting first season, CBM returns with its set of comic book pawn deals, doses of trivia and general geek-gasms.

I liked a first episode (Stash Bashes) but it had way too many kids to spoil my fun. I don't particularly enjoy the sight of a bunch of unruly kids having a go at racks of vintage comic books. The good parts of the episode were a deal of Megos and everyone losing their shit on a Legion of Super Heroes geektalk. Any attention that the LOSH get is good, I feel they deserve all that and more.
And then there was the giant Darth Vader helmet. You couldn't possibly not like that.

Coming to Episode 2, My Big Fat Geek Wedding, this was pure fun! Lots of fun tales, a smooth flow of deals, and a hilarious finale. These guys are getting better at their game. The jokes flow freely now, the deals look neat and swift and the comic book portions are satisfying. Though there was no specific geek-out this time on a classic comic book per se except for a little Punisher talk, the nod to FF at the end was more than a twinkle in the eye moment, and the details(X Men #1 turned into wedding flowers, Legion flight ring etc) was the stuff only these guys could manage. And yeah, Don't Mix Cigars & Comic Books!

I already can't wait enough for the Stan Lee appearance. Great going, Stash!

Mike's Blog
CBM Tumblr

Kari by Amruta Patil

I was pulled to this 2008 graphic novel from Amruta Patil after reading her story Atlantis in The Blaft Obliterary Journal. I liked the honesty of Patil's narration and her strong characterization. I was not disappointed as Kari is quite satisfying on multiple levels. It works as a strongly woven tale of a fish in an ocean of urban milieu.
The sexually-pronounced and assertive protagonist can be paralleled against any contemporary artists or writers. Few that came to my mind were Alison Bechdel, Erika Moen, Marjane Satrapi, Kuzhali Manickavel and Sharanya Manivannan. Patil's style is distinctive in its tonal confidence and ability to say the same thing in a loop with remarkable grip. She maintains an equal balance between Kari's mundane life as an advertising copyhead as well as her sexual adventures in realms of magic realism, and switches between the parallel worlds with utmost ease of a seasoned hand.

Kari boasts of strong, realistic characters, every mannerism detailed and conflicts exploited to create a story and world which is rich, almost TV soap-like in its interactions, yet poignant and provocative in its abstract excursions(allusions to an underground sewer and Kari's life as a boatman learning to "row clean through the darkest water").The book goes through portions great, average and repetitive, but told with a consistent honesty.

Patil uses diverse medium/art to evoke feelings of imagination, confrontation and oblique satire of the civilized society.  The sections at Kari's workplace give way to some hilarious situations which are told in a solemn, deadpan style. Few sequences that come to my mind are when Kari pulls out thoughts from her sub-conscious to advertising pitches which surprisingly win her deal over deal and recognition from all and sundry.

Great book which tells a sometime depressing if black tale of urban life with its share of sexual existence issues, isolation, angst, guilt and threads from memories that just wouldn't go. Kari is a solid debut by Patil, and though I am criminally late in this review, I hope to make up for it by catching up on her future release, Adi Parva on time. 

Interview with Paul Gravett
Artist Profile