Patient or not to be!

Sorry for the non-commercial break, friends!

I was 7 or 8 when I started getting dissatisfied with Indrajaal Comics. You expect a product to develop more nicely as it grows in experience and stature. Indrajaal was heading in opposite direction in my view. With due respect to all fans, I never did like Bahadur much. It was not the character but execution which put me off! I was thinking a new character would take Indrajaal to higher planes, but after looking at finished artwork of Barrymore on a few issues of Phantom and mercurial thin linings of Flash Gordon(Oh!), The crisscrossing lines of Bahadur held nothing within them which could teach me some new things, and stories had no 'Fantasy' ingredient in them, which I always sought!

I used to buy dip pens (which were used for medical drawings back then), and tried to copy works of Phantom as closely as I could, my favorite being 'The Promise of Zorro'! The flow in lines of Flash Gordon felt beyond me, the ease with which it embellished the beauty of Dale with few lines and smudges of black was absolutely amazing.

But even back then, some Indian works influenced me immensely, foremost being Inspector Eagle by Pradeep Sathe and Shuja by Shehab. But Sathe failed to impress me by his works in YOGI ADITYA, the last nail in the coffin of Indrajaal comics! It was too static and sparce! Mind you, all these feeling I am sharing are feelings of a 10 year old! Only now I could find appropriate words to express them!

Pardon me! I flew off handle while trying to share my feelings about Amar Chitra Katha.

That moment is still fresh in my memory when I saw my first Amar Chitra Katha, second issue by them perhaps, titled Veer Pandavas. I think 1^st one was Krishna. Contrary to image you may conjure mentally, it was a book much read already, with its cover half torn and inside pages bearing pickle stains with their smell. All these points indicated that it was a much wanted much read book, even though it was hardly few months old! It was at my friends house and I borrowed it immediately without waiting for his approval or disapproval.

It had taste of India. The narrow-lined sketchy artwork, with illustrations in double colors, It was a treat to watch! I think it was drawn by great Mullick, with all mythological essence. Not only me, but whole India went mad about it. I had a big collection of Amar Chitra katha comics, Rukmini Parinay being my favorite. No one can match Great Mullick when it comes down to draw full voluptuous Indian female figures with sexuality covered with dignity. But slowly my enthusiasm weaned off. The editor inside me was taking over from my artist self.

It was not a comic, which is usually associated with sequential art, but an illustrated classic with panels connecting to each other with long captions and scenes jumping around. For me , comics were about fantasy! It was a long deviation from Indrajaal Comics.

I am still at a loss to know why we always try to fall back upon our mythologies in search for fantasy. We either copy west or our own past. But things always change with time and as in case of Indrajaal comics, my prophecies (known only to me) again came true, but they always took a longer time to arrive th

A JUVENILE EDITOR

Though India had comic strips even as back as in early 60's, those were syndicated western strips, later resized and published in comic format. that's why those had nothing like a title page and Cover's were invariably drawn by an Indian artist. those were the days when we were beginning to learn how to read a comic book, rather than how to produce one! I could still recall myself going through a Phantom's comic umpteenth times, flipping through panels after panels and finding jerks in the flow. I tried to fill the jerky spaces with my own captions or dialogues, as required and only after that I could have a satisfiable feeling! It was an absolute amateurish attempt to mend the works of Greats, but looking back now, I feel those were my earliest self-taught lessons in the field of sequential art, even though I wasn't aware that such a term even existed. I kept on reading TOI comic for next 10 years not only as a reader, but also as a self appointed editor. But it changed only as much as condition of lane in front of my residence with quality of Illustrations and stories riding a roller coaster.
Then one day, I laid my hand on a totally different looking double colored comic titled' VEER PANDAVAS by a brand new publications called Amar Chitra Katha!
Maybe things would change now! Wouldn't they?

CREATIVITY AT ITS ZENITH

I could never decide whether a picture is worth a thousand words or a word is worth a million pictures. I compromised on accepting these terms as being true vice- versa.
Words we all know but deciding upon the sequence in which to place them to get a desired impact is a craft not inculcated easily. Lines also, we all could draw but placing them at acceptable places to resemble with something one could draw simile with is equally hard. Comics are the place where these two hard-earned crafts fuse and create a new world every time they mingle, without fail!
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