Back to U.S.S.R and Baba Yaga

It was a Friday twenty years ago. Moscow woke to the sound of tanks in the streets. The television channels went off. Troops were deployed in all major cities of Soviet Russia. President Mikhail Gorbachev, vacationing in Crimea, was taken under house arrest. There was a military coup in the USSR. And it failed within 72 hours. But, this changed the world as we knew forever. Four months later, on Christmas Day, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. The breakup of the Soviet Union led to a complete reformulation of political, economic and military alliances all over the globe. The United States of America celebrated as its most formidable enemy was brought to its knees. The Cold War between the two superpowers finally ended. The newly formed Russian countries faced an overwhelming task to develop their economies, reorganize their political systems, and, in many cases, settle bitter territorial disputes.
But, none of these really had any effect on the little girl in Kolkata who was sitting by her window waiting for her latest copy of Misha—a Russian children’s magazine translated in English. Named upon Misha, the bear mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, the magazine within its colourful glossy papers had a world of stories, news of sports, discoveries, science and technology, cartoons, pictures, fun games and craft ideas, ’How and Why’ s, poems, riddles, and what not!
The big black and white television was saying something about Russia—the snow-covered hand-painted land where the wise Elena, the witty Alyonushka, the dashing Ivan and the wicked Baba Yaga (in her hut on chicken legs) live. She runs to get a glimpse of the wonderland and all that flickers are heavy boots, blood, canons and chaos on streets—this was certainly not the Soviet Russia she knew. But then she was just ten and fairy tales were more real than reality.
I had grown up on Roosh Desher Upokotha (The folklores of Russia). My very first memories on this planet are of my dida telling me the story of the cunning ‘Chhotto Gol Ruti’ (The Doughnut) that escapes from the window of the old lady who bakes it and as it starts rolling through the streets it meets many hungry animals who lust at it but it escapes all by singing:
‘I am a doughnut round.
I was fried and browned.
From a flour bin scraped.
From a corn bin swept,
I have sour cream inside,
In butter I am fried.
They left me to cool,
But I am not fool,
Grandpa didn’t get me,
Gandma didn’t get me,
And, you Hare, won’t get me either! (Adapted by Aleksei Tolstoy)
After a rather adventurous journey the bread meets a fox who tricks it into sitting on his tongue and eats it up as soon as it lands there and with that dida would trick me into having one more morsel of food. Eventually, the black and white sketch of the haughty, cute, round bread became what the bell was to Mr. Pavlov’s dog!
However, this beautifully illustrated book with fascinating stories of Ojani desher najani ki (Go i know not where, bring I know not what), Jholmoley Baaj Finist (Fenist the falcon), Alyonoushka bon ar Ivanushka bhai (Sister Alyonushka and brother Ivanushka), Borof Buro (Father Frost), Byang Rajkumari (The Tale of Frog Tsarevna) managed to keep me under their magic spell for the first few years of my life. I would listen to the same stories each day and at times the same one twice or thrice in a single day and knew almost all the rhymes by heart!
The stories were all translated in Bengali and translated so well that for many years I had this notion that Russians are actually fur-coat clad bongs with weird names who lived north in a big blob of land of snow-capped fern forests throbbing with all kinds of weird but friendly animals. Russia on the small tin globe didn’t seem too far from India—the tiny triangle where I was told we lived. I would dream of going to Russia and talk Baba Yaga into letting me take a peek inside her ‘bone-fenced hut spinning on a chicken leg’. I was mesmerised by this creepy witch with iron teeth who rode a large mortar with her knees almost touching her chin, used a pestle to push the vehicle across the forest floor and swept away her tracks with a broom as she moved. Although she was notorious for kidnapping and even eating children, I was never scared of her. I was simply in awe of her sheer wisdom and I was convinced that there was a reindeer-drawn sledge car service from Calcutta to Russia and I was sure if searched properly one such car can be found amid the rows of horse-drawn cars that stay lined in front of Victoria Memorial—after all reindeers were nothing but horses with long-branched horns!
It is important to be literate and it is even more important to have a chhotomashi and I realised this pretty early in life. I was in upper nursery when chhotomashi got me a copy of Anari (Dunno) and after that there was no looking back! With each book I realised that there was more to Russia than snow, sledge-cars, magicians, witches and Ivans. In the colourfully illustrated (by Boris Kalaushin) pages I discovered Dunno and his clever antithesis Doono and their friends Blob, Gunky, Swifty, Rolly-Polly; Flower City—an Utopian land located by the Cucumber River where Dunno and his friends live; the tech savvy world of Sun City where Dunno goes on a road trip; Greenville¬¬, inhabited only by ‘girl-Mites’ where Dunno’d balloon crash-lands; and the spirit of adventure. These Nikolai Nosov books were a unique mix of fairytales, adventure stories, school stories and science fictions.
Slowly, stories from around the world started making their way into my life. But none could measure up to the Russian genius for storytelling coupled with quirky and intricate art and design. Published largely by Progress, Mir or Raduga, these included a variety of topics ranging from fables of Leo Tolstoy, fairytales of Alexandar Pushkin, folktales of Alexandar Afanasiev, adventures of Two toreadors from Vasukovka Village by Vsevolod Nestaiko, adventures of the curious little curious Pochemuchka by Boris Zhitkov, short stories written in verse by Samuil Marshak, story of Legging the robber by Leonid Yakhnin, Hello, I am robot by Stanislav Zigunenko (with wonderfully detailed illustrations by Eric Benyaminsona that elucidated the Soviet view in the late 80′s of the future of robotics) to stories of Lenin, Revolution, Communism and the Red Stars of Kremlin. Illustrated by stalwarts like Yuri Cherepanov, Ivan Bilibin, Vladimir Lebedev, Evgeny Rachev, Igor Yershov, the books were translated in Bengali mostly by Nani Bhowmik, Supriya Ghosh and among the English translators were Irina Zheleznova, Fainna Glagoleva, Benard Isaacs, Olga Shartse, Miriam Morton and others.
The Bolshevik regime regarded children’s books as major vehicles for transmitting Soviet ideology and propaganda among the future ‘soldiers’ of Russia and by 1924, two years after the Soviet Union was formed, the Central Committee of the Party rejected the pre-Revolutionary era, children’s literature that primarily consisted fairytales, legends, and fantasy stories. Children were the great red hope for the Marxist-Leninist and as early as 1918 Pravda affirmed: “the children’s book as a major weapon for education must receive the widest possible distribution.” And Soviet educator believed: “Even if the child cannot read . . . [pictures] will stimulate an interest in study and the child will to learn to read.” However, it was not until 1934 that the new regime granted folktales, fairytales and magic was a new lease of life.
My heart always remained loyal to Vasilisa the Beautiful and Baba Yaga. These folktales, fairytales and fables of Chukchi, Nanian, Nenet, Caucasian, Belorussian, Moldovian, Ukranian, Turkmenian,Yakut origin seemed more interesting and multidimensional than Hans Christian Andersen’s and Disney’s. The stories exuded an earthly charm and it somehow seemed as if these were stories about ‘real’ people. Each story reflected the culture, customs and costumes of the region it was set in. Unlike its Western counterparts these characters had variety in their wardrobe and not all wore tuxedos, leggings and long gowns. These were not typical stories of a hero rescuing his damsel in distress-- the stories were mostly centred on a girl who wins battles and hearts through her kindness and wit. Magic and sorcery could be triumphed through intelligence. And even the evil usually had a kinder side and can become quite lovable creatures at times! The vivid description of the locations and the hand-painted pictures would often transport me to the snowy Tundra,’ a barren realm of fierce frosts and howling blizzards’ and I would dream of living in a ‘choom’ (tent made of animal skin), wear deer-skin boots and have a gold-feathered ‘finist’(Falcon) as my pet.
But, it all changed after that Friday. Soviet Union seized to exist and the publishing houses that churned out ingredients for my dreams slowly pulled down their shutters. ‘The next issue of Misha’ never arrived, what happened to Dunno when he finally landed on the Moon remained a mystery, nobody ever knocked on Baba Yaga’s ‘spinning hut-on-chicken-legs’ again and frost accumulated on the memory of Tundra. And the man, who once eked out a living by selling these books on the trains of a small far-off city called Calcutta, lost his only source of income (only to be found 20 years later begging on the platform of a railway station).
Today, Russia is still trying hard to stand back on its feet and according to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century and even Boris Nemtsov who participated in the opposition to the coup attempt and later became deputy Russian prime minister admits: “We were very naive -- not only me, but Yeltsin and all of our team. ... Unfortunately, reality looks much more serious and much more complicated than we believed at that time.” The coup had many casualties and among them was the thriving children’s book industry. There has been much debate on the deep impact of the collapse of USSR on world politics and economics and diplomatic relations between countries, but, one of the best kept secrets of the fall was perhaps the expunged legacy of its innovative children's book industry that had revolutionized art and design and captured the hearts of young readers all over the world. And it was a sheer delight to discover a few reprints of these nostalgia-laden treasures on the streets of College Street after two decades!

A Graphic Makeover!

A dark blue night, a perfect moon, and a werewolf on the roof about to Howl--sharp-edged ghostly creatures in a gothic background-- if we are to go by the axiom, ‘always judge a book from its cover’, this certainly looks like an interesting ‘read’! And indeed! The first and the most interesting part was the name of the author...Allen Ginsberg...can this possibly be THE HOWL? Considered to be one of the defining works of the Beat Generation? Indeed it was! But why would anyone turn such an epic poem into a picture book? In Ginsberg’s words : “I thought that with today's lowered attention span TV consciousness, this would be a kind of updating of the presentation of my work.”
Hence, “Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!” finds a new home on the dark, dimly-lit pages of Eric Drooker who takes small but complete units from the poem and places it alongside the illustrations which sometimes refer directly to the words and sometimes reflect a psychological or philosophic interpretation of them. The impact is powerful and an effective attempt to tempt a twittering generation to Howl!
But, while in Howl, Drooker stays true to the text, Nick Hayes in his recently released The Rime of the Modern Mariner -a graphic novel based on the Coleridge classic Rime of the Ancient Mariner – turns the 1798 poem into a modern day fable set in today’s world. Apart from being a visual treat, Modern Marine raises some serious contemporary concerns. However, this is not the Mariner’s first brush with the form. Way back in 1989, the same poem was done into a comic book by veteran British comics artist Hunt Emerson, whose Lady Chatterley’s Lover published in 1986, is another brilliant example of a classic novel being turned into a comic book.

Turning existing texts into comic books or graphic novels is not a new trend. It has its predecessor in the Classics Illustrated –a 1941 comic book series featuring adaptations of literary classics such as Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Iliad created by Albert Kanter. In 2007, Marvel under the banner of ‘Illustrated Classics’, published its first comic book version of Last of the Mohicans and since then there has been no looking back. From Oscar Wilde to Charles Dickens, from Lewis Carol to Paulo Coelho, from Kafka to Dostoevsky, from Agatha Christie to Victor Hugo, almost everyone has been getting a visual makeover alibi making the classics more ’accessible ’ to the younger lot. And not only the classics, even best sellers like of Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman: The Road of Trials, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, James Patterson's Maximum Ride, Janet Evanovich’s Troublemaker and teen sensations like Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Twilight series and Vampire Academy have made it to the of graphic novel sections of the bookstores.
Last year, The Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, published a graphic novel version of the diary of a 13-year old Holocaust victim which till date remains one of the most widely read books across the globe. The year also saw a grotesquely gothic graphic novel version of very Victorian Austen in the form of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies-A Graphic Novel (imagine You’ve Got Mail’s Kathleen waiting for Joe Fox in the cafe holding the Zombies version...even Meg Ryan couldn’t have saved the shot!).
In the last few years this subgenre has become exceedingly adventurous and varied with its choice of subjects and visual styles. Some are more of picture books drenched in colour suited for the 4-year-olds, some use cubism to create mindboggling visuals, some dig deep and bring out the complex psychological interpretation, while some are just plain waste of money. The speech-bubbled soliloquies of a Manga Macbeth or the Classical Comics’s version of it may have become an instant hit with the young lot, but when Lady Macbeth places a tight slap on her husband’s face as she says: “Why did you bring these daggers from the place?” (replete with the action sound “slaaap!!!), the critics cringe at the fate of the bard.

But, what is the reason behind the soaring popularity of these as the great Art Spiegelman, creator of the special Pulitzer winning graphic novel Maus calls them: “strange doppelganger of the original book”s? Can the speech-bubbled Shakespeare possibly depict the complexities and various layers of the great masterpieces? The critics may opine that simplifying works like Hamlet and Macbeth for the sake of making them ‘accessible’ to the mass is the death of the tragedies, but it seems end justifies the means here-as long as the bubbles don’t burst!
Moving closer to home, following the footsteps of Amar Chitra Katha’s comic books based on Jatka, Ramayan, Mahabharata and other mythologies and folktales, emerging companies like Virgin Comics (now Liquid comics) Level 10, Vimanika, Campfire and old favorites like Raj Comics coming into the market with a new slew of exciting works.
According to Campfire, a Delhi based publishing house that focuses on turning existing classics into graphic novels, “With the rising popularity of digital media like iPads/iPhones, e-book readers, etc people are losing interest in physical format, so in order to turn their attention from ‘softcopies’ we aim at producing informative and interesting graphic novels. Also, as originals, these titles are of a few hundred pages and it is difficult to get children to read these books. Classics as graphic novels are a good way of introducing children or reluctant readers to the habit of reading and to Classic literature.”
And hence, bookstores are overflowing with such graphic novels. But the quality of the work remains an area of serious concern. As city-based author Rimi B Chatterjee, who apart from working on her mega project Kalpa: Shadowfalls, is also working on Abinindranath Tagore’s Buro Angla with Scholastic, points out: “Turning existing texts into graphic novels is a challenging job. In deft hand this can lead to beautiful art. However, one has to be sensitive to each medium and imaginative to ‘transcreate’ one into the other. It is like making a film, only more difficult.”

According to Amruta Patil, the 'writer and artist' of the much-appreciated graphic novel Kari, who is all set for her next release Parva (a multiple-viewpoint rendition of the Mahabharata), the problem lies with the publishers as well: “The most significant difference between India and the West is in the editorial process. Most publishers here are still gingerly about it. The text is scrutinized, but the visual style, treatment, use of space and tempo - these are seldom up for discussion, because editors don't feel qualified to comment. The medium is just too new here.” However, she is quick to add: “One of the positive aspects of the unfamiliarity is that we are delightfully free of template.”
But not all are enthused by the idea of turning existing texts into graphic novels. As Shamik Dasgupta, known for his work for Virgin Comics, specifically for his work in Deepak Chopra and Shekhar Kapur collaboration Ramayan 3392 AD, reasons, “I feel there is not much prospect in it, because the story is already known to people hence all they get to appreciate is the art, which is just half of the deal. Comics is just the launching pad, if a character gets popular then there can be a number of major off-shooting businesses like games, animation and even movies.
Unfortunately just turning novels into graphic novel will miss such opportunities and limit the scope of creativity. ” But when it comes to turning the epics and stories from Indian mythology into graphic novels, which is increasingly catching the fascination of the graphic novelists of India and is doing great business abroad, he reasons: “The familiarity of the core story always helps in garnering more interest. To us Ramayan and Mahabharat are like Star Wars and Indiana Jones-it is the basis of our popular culture.”

But, be it the epics, the classics or the best-sellers, the world of words seem to be facing a competition from the illustrated world. Even the highbrow city of Kolkata seems to be slowly opening its bookshelves to these ‘doppelgangers’ and even existing Bengali books have started making it to the ‘panels’.
The first to fall victim was one of the most loved characters of the city- Prodosh C Mitter, aka Feluda and next came the comic book version of Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s Gosain Baganer Bhoot. But, most publishers are still to loosen up to the idea. As Sayan Mukherjee, a visualiser with Ogilvy, who is currently working on a graphic novel based on one of the cult classics of Bengali literature, says: “English graphic novels priced as high as Rs 800-1000 sell off the racks here but when it comes to a Bengali book, people are reluctant to shell out more than 200 bucks. Hence the publishers are ok till it is a 120-page comic book. But, when it comes to a full-length coloured graphic novel in Bengali, they shrug away. Even if they agree to publish there are constraints laid down on the use of space-every page has to be a busy page and that kills the very essence of a graphic novel.” But why venture into this market with a translated work? “If it is a well-known book, it creates the initial interest in people.”
So, while publishers like Ananda and Starmark work on their new projects, and literary giant fall prey to graphic novelists mushrooming on every nook and corner, it is yet to be seen how Tagore’s city reacts to a speech-bubbled Shesher Kobita!
Some of the most critically acclaimed works (in random order):

1. City of Glass by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli (Spiegelman calls the graphic novel "a breakthrough work.")
2. Crime and Punishment by David Zane Mairowitz and Alain Korkos
3. Fahrenheit 451 by Tim Hamilton
4. Macbeth by John McDonald’s Artists Jon Howard, Gary Erskine, and Nigel Dobbyn
5. The Trial by Chantal Montellier
6. On The Origin Of Species by Michael Keller
7. The Jungle by Peter Kuper
8. The Stories Of Oscar Wilde by Antonella Caputo and Rich Rainey
9. The Divine Comedy by Seymour Chwast
10. Gravity's Rainbow by Zak Smith

The curious case of Indian superheroes

Disney’s recently released superhero Zokkomon has yielded a lukewarm response and Anurag Kashyap’s mega budget spectacle Doga (Based on Nagraj comics) and Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Talisman (India’s answer to Lord of the Rings) have already been shelved. The 30-second- teaser of Shahrukh Khan’s most ambitious project Ra One leaves you in a state of déjà vu with its eerie resemblance to Endhiran (The Robot) ...and Krrish and Matrix. Yet it seems that Indian market is suddenly being invaded by a legion of superheroes and not all are spandex-clad B-grade versions of Superman. Even if Toonpur ka Superhero’s super powers did not work too well in Bollywood, spoofs of superheroes like the Tamil vegetarian cowboy Quick Gun Murugun won the audience’s heart with his over-the-top histrionics. Endhiran-The Robot wowed the audience with its superlative special effects and after its stupendous success, Rajnikanth has already started working on his next animated superhero avatar Rana. Saif Ali Khan is almost ready with his superhero venture-Agent Vinod. Salman Khan, a self-proclaimed non-believer in the genre, has also fallen prey to the latest craze and signed a superhero movie -and that too in 3D! Another movie to watch out for would be Prince Vaali-arguably the costliest film under production in the new superhero/sci-fi genre.
It is no denying the fact that Krrish (touted as the first Indian superhero movie) started the trend of mega budget superhero movies; but it is indeed Mr India that till date remains a cult favourite. Unlike RaOne, Mr India didn’t have the luxury to don a 1-crore suit; dressed in a simple jacket over a simple shirt and trouser, and a cricket hat, this common man became the most loved superhero of the country. Another unusual superhero duo is Satyajit Ray’s immortal characters (based on Upendra Kishore Roychowdhury’s book)-Goopi Gayen and Bagha Bayen.
However, as far as apna Bollywood is concerned it was the asli angry young man Amitabh Bachchan who had donned the cape and the spandex way back in the 80s when he subjected the audience to not one but three B-grade superhero movies-Ajooba, Toofan and Jaadugar (some might even prefer Drona over these...or maybe not!) along with a comic book avatar Supremo- a superman-like alter ego of Amitabh Bachchan clad in pink latex body suit and a lungi wrapped over it. This rather popular comic series had Gulzar as the script consultant! And Big B was not the only one to have a comic book superhero version! Sunil Gavaskar also battled cricketers from Bandookstan and England on the field and, between games, took on evil magicians in Sunny the Super sleuth.
Right from the half-forgotten to the super-hit Nagraj (each Nagraj comic used to print at least 3 lakh copies in the 90s) and Chacha Chudhary and his friend from Jupiter-Sabu, there was never a dearth of comic book superheroes. But, most of the comics were in Hindi and was hence not accessible to a large portion of Indian population. Even Doordarshan had its own superheroes in the form of the droolicious Captain Vyom and the ‘Indian Superman trained in Kundalini yoga’ Shaktiman (which apparently had children falling of buildings/ busses/ beds trying to imitate ‘the spin’). However, as India opened its windows to the virtual world, and terraces to dish antennas, most of these superheroes died a slow and painful death.
Meanwhile, in the West, superheroes inspired by Indian mythological characters or with an Indian ancestry began to crop up. However, most of these were no better than ‘American superheroes’ created in India barring the likes of Chandi Gupta, better known as "Maya,” of Justice League and Neal Shara aka Thunderbird in X-men.
In 2006 Virgin Group’s Sir Richard Branson, author Deepak Chopra, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and Gotham Entertainment Group collaborated and formed Virgin Comics LLC(which became Liquid Comics in 2008) with the aim to create content based on Indian mythology and reach a global audience as well as start a creative renaissance in India. Virgin Comics gave the much needed push to revive Indian comic industry and came up with three superheroes: Devi, The Sadhu and Snake Woman.
With the comic industry getting a complete makeover, the superhero culture slowly started rising from its ashes in India. While old players like Raj comic tied up with Planet41 to deliver animated films starring Nagraj, Dhruv and Doga to 3G handsets and started contemporising the content(with Nagraj battling 26/11 terrorists), and new superheroes are also making their presence felt. And these new breed of superheroes are as different form each other as chalk and cheese. While Saurav Mohapatra’s Jimmy Zhinchak is “a spoof and homage to the Disco zeitgeist in 80's Bollywood (which made Mithun da + Bhappi Lahiri "world phemos" in India),” Rimi B Chatterjee’s (yet to be pulished) Kalpa: Shadowfalls has an unusual super hero who can inhabit the memory traces of the dead. But, Chatterjee is reluctant to call Kalpa a superhero: “I don't think Kalpa qualifies as a superhero. She doesn't have a costume or a secret identity”.
Level 10 comics’ Shaurya is a superhero story based on the Mumbai train blast. “Currently in its 7th issue, Shaurya is a team of five “gifted” teenagers from across India. We wanted to truly capture what it lifestyle of today’s college going crowd,” explains Suhas Sundar, the creative head of Level10comics. The publishing house is also working on San anti-hero title and their dark hero is set for an August re-debut.
The recent Comic Con India saw the launch of - Uud Bilaw Manus (Uud Bilaw Manus: Back with a Vengeance) aka UbiMa. The half-otter, half human superhero is the protector of the city of ‘Beehar’. With characters like Kitty, Kala Kutta, Bhade ke tattuu, Kung Fu Girgit , Kan Khajura and the language a hilarious mishmash of English, Hindi, Bhojpuri, UbiMa promises to take you on a laughter riot. According to Adhiraj Singh, the creator of the character, “This is a spoof on the superheroes and draws its inspiration from the quintessential action movies of the 80s.”
Jatin Varma, the director of Twenty Onwards Media, theUbiMa’s publisher has high expectations from the otterman: “I do see a long term investment in UbiMa, with more volumes of the comic series and maybe animated shorts in the future.”
However, he lives in no Utopian world and is quick to add: “Building a superhero character takes a very long time and huge investments. It is not something that can be done overnight with just a few volumes. The superheroes that are brand names have been around since our great-grandparents times.” Suhas points towards the lack of adaptations across different media and platforms as one of the main reasons behind the lack of a superhero brand in India. But, according to Mohapatra there is still a lack of original ideas. Not all have managed to come out of the western mould: “Frankly, you can't take Batman and make him wear a “mukut” and make him an "Indian" superhero.”
However, Shamik Dasgupta of Ramayana 3392 AD fame is optimistic: “The appeal of superheroes has been steadily growing from the last decade; all we need is a well done superhero befitting the modern youth of India.”
Though there is no doubt that the new breed of superhero breeders are increasingly concentrating on original content, a parallel trend of taking up characters and theme from Indian mythologies is also emerging. Adhiraj explains this phenomenon: “Indian mythology already has a rich bank of archetypes and themes to draw from. It takes less of a 'leap' from a reader (or a writer for that matter) for that story.” But, what is heartening to see is that the comics writers are becoming increasingly experimental with these age-old stories and giving them their own spin. Apart from the most common preys like Hanuman, Ganesh, Krishna, Raam, the superhero-hunters are looking out for unsuspecting victims in the half-yellow pages of Indian mythologies. Shamik’s Daksh- a story of a Gothic superhero inspired from the epic poem Meghadutam by Kalidasa. “I wanted Daksh to be dark and scary- a complete badass. He is the son of Yama and the gatekeeper of hell. Because of his negligence a hundred sinners escape from hell and as a punishment he is sent to earth to bring back all the escapees (and the hit-list includes the likes of General Hideki Tojo, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Elizabeth Bathory, Idi Amin, Ghengis Khan, Caligula!),” explains Shamik.
Another interesting project in this genre is Vimanica comics’s The Sixth-Karan Vir (KV), the protagonist of the series is the reincarnation of Mahabharat’s Karna. He is a businessman who meets Ved Vyas, the author f the epic, and learns about the tumultuous life of the sixth son of Kunti. “As KV delves deep into the legend of Karna, he acquires certain super powers and as Ved Vyas finishes his narration, KV turns into a true superhero,” explains Karan Vir Arora, Ceo/founder, Vimanika comics. “Through this series we are not only telling a story of a superhero but also presenting an authentic, much-researched piece of history in a much entertaining way,” says Karan. The series also sees the first Sardar superhero Dev Daljit Singh who is KV’s side-kick.
Well, be it educative, gothic, serious, dark, funny- it seems this new generation of superheroes are finally breaking the shackles of the stereotypical underwear-on-leotard mould (and becoming hip if not anything else!). But, as the Indian superhero industry flexes its muscle to take on the likes of Superman, Batman and Sandman, let’s not forget that the baap of all super heroes is an unassuming Indian and he lives in no comic book but in Chennai, and Grady Hendrix of Slate magazine introduces him as: “A force of nature. If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to an earthquake, their offspring would be something like this.” Indeed he is talking about our very own Rajinikanth. He can kill the Spiderman with mere bug spray. Yanna rascal, Mind it!