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Indian Comics

Campfire Graphic Novels: A must try for book lovers

December 5, 2010
Me & my love for comics…ahhhhh just so difficult to put it in words (pssst: oh yes, I do read comic books till date 🙂)! Now how do I justify my comic book buying or reading habit till this age is a different story all together but the joy of reading a visually rich and graphically interesting book is something totally unparalleled. So, when I got a chance to have a look at this new series of graphical books by a relatively new Indian publication Campfire, my first reaction was a ‘yayyy’ of excitement.
Read three books by them recently – ‘Conquering Everest’, ‘The Dusk Society’ & ‘The Three Musketeers’; and loved all the three. First of all I must say that quality of presentation was just so good that for a moment I could not believe that these are from some Indian publication. I mean I have been reading Indian as well as international comics, novels & graphical books for long now, though always loved the Indian characters like Billoo, Pinky, Chacha Chowdhary or the stories of Champak, Nandan, Balhans etc. but book presentation wise somehow they could never match up to say a Tintin or Asterix or Calvin and Hobbes. Next thing which I find lacking in Indian graphical-book segment is the content, since they are targeted towards mainly kids in India, so most of the books revolve around kiddie themes unlike say a matured audience targeted Persepolis or Embroideries or a teenager targeted Archie. And both these issues get perfectly addressed by Camfire’s books now. Not only the content is great but the illustration of content is also equally interesting. Though the books are targeted towards mainly kids and teenagers but they offer variety of other options in form of graphical novels which can tantalize the reading appetite of adults as well. Their graphical books are categorized in four segments – Classics, Biography, Mythology, and Originals. Each of these categories covers a unique dimension of literature and offers exciting and educational stories to its audience. I was so impressed with their books that I took special effort to know about the team behind it, their whole catalogue and availability in different book stores.

A little bit more about the books which I read – 1.) Conquering Everest (Written by Lewis Helfand; Illustrated by: Amit Tayal) is a book on the lives of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norway and their adventure of conquering Everest. You know, the visual representation of the book is so just so breathtaking that at times when they have demonstrated the mountaineers slipping down the steep slopes of Everest, you can actually feel it as if you are watching some motion movie. And guess what, next day on KBC one of the questions was related to Everest and I was able to guess the correct answer, thanks to the minute details which this book has covered in an interesting story format. 2.) The Dusk Society (Written by: Sidney Wiliams and Mark Jones; Illustrated by: Naresh Kumar) is a story of Dracula, Doctor Frankenstein and the whole thrill around whether The Dusk Society will be able to stop Pierceblood’s evil plan? A totally engrossing thriller from start to end; just loved it! 3.) The Three Musketeers (Written by: Alexander Dumas; Illustrated by: Amit Tayal) is the same good old story which we had read in schools earlier but presented though appealing graphics.

As per me these books are must try for all those who like reading books and get specially excited by illustrated ones. Do check out their website for more details about them or their complete catalogue. What else, apart from printed versions, they also offer digital content which can be downloaded for PC/Mac, Blackberry, Android, iPod/iPads, etc. I loved their collection and definitely looking forward to reading more by them.

Long live Indian comic characters

February 8, 2010
Was off on a trip to different places up north in January & what a deadly weather it was this time! Chilling cold with dense fog leading to almost zero visibility on roads, did not see sunlight for the whole of 18 days during my trip and traveling to different cities was just so painful. Either flights / trains were canceled or were running abnormally late. One such trip was my return to Delhi from Varanasi via train. Though the train was running quite late but since I was traveling by train after a long time, I was sort of excited at the prospect of eating those station foods (esp. hot omelets & boiled eggs) and buying books from the station stalls. There is something very different about train journeys & buying books from railway strand stalls, it somehow makes me nostalgic about my childhood, hostel life, vacations when I used to go home by train and definitely – definitely used to buy books from station hawkers –comics, magazines, novels (of course only those which were affordable in my very limited budget then ;)) …aha loads of them which I used to devour on whole journey. And so when the train stopped at a small station during this trip in the morning, the first thing which my eyes started to search for was a magazine stall. Even with dense fog, it was not difficult to spot a vendor just outside my window and guess what! He was having Billoo! And Pinki! And Chacha Chowdhary too! Oh wow…ultimate delight I must say. After how long, I got to see those comics. I do get to buy Archies & Tintin while book browsing on Airports or during my occasional book shopping in Bangalore but then Billoo, Pinki and that too hindi versions are almost extinct from these big city book stores. If I’m not wrong today’s generation kids must not be even aware of these iconic Indian comic characters. In fact these kids esp. the ones from bigger cities are so Archified or Tintinised that they can’t even relate to the simple existence of a character like Billoo or Pinki. I remember few months back, one of my cousin’s son reading English Billoo and saying, “ yeh kya bakwaas hai,yeh bhi koi comic hai”! When my cousin tried to explain the fun part of it, the kiddoo replied, “Mom, I can’t laugh at these stupid jokes”. Slamming the book on table, that 9 year old kid logged onto his Orkut account and started chatting with his friends.
But for me reading those comics after soooo long was great fun. Read it at a stretch & then after seeing a Billoo in my hand, even pati ji got out of his deep sleep and grabbed the book immediately :-). Even after all these years, I didn’t get bored of even one single page. Yeah, at times did get the feeling of “did we actually read all these silly stuffs” but then honestly speaking I love such silliness till now. Long live Indian comic characters – Billoo Rocks, Pinki Rules & Chacha Chowdhary ka dimag abhi bhi computer se tez chalta hai 😛