Cool old Indian comic books
Jeff Vandermeer sez, "These old Indian comics were one of the three pillars of my childhood reading, the other two being Tintin and Asterix & Obelix. We lived in the Fiji Islands, which had a large Indian population. I’d buy these from the corner Chinese grocery store, about a quarter-mile from the beach." Link (Thanks, Jeff!)
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Hey, I had that old Rama comic! I got it in India when I was there however long ago. The old myths make the best stories. Cool!
Those look like Amar Chitra Katha titles, which is a great line of Indian religious and historical comics. They're still available, I ordered some not too long ago. Single issues range around $2.25--cheap! Just google Amar Chitra Katha, they're pretty easy to find.
It'd be interesting to compare them to Virgin Comics' current India Authentic line.
I'm thrilled to meet an old friend again here!
Amar Chitra Katha has a wikipedia page and all. I'm sure Jeff would be pleased to find that reprints are still available.
I grew up reading a lot Amar Chitra Katha books. My mom still has the collections hardbound for her grand kids supposedly. They also had another children's fortnightly - TINKLE. Vishal Patel has a website dedicated to the comics and ads in them from the 80s. http://www.vishalpatel.com/index.htm
Indrajal comics were another popular comic around the 70s and 80s. Other comics popular were Asterix and TinTin. Thanks Jeff for the post.
We had to read a couple of these in one of the better world culture classes I had in middle school.
I especially remember enjoying the Rama comic- it's right up there with "Batman Year One" and "Your Guide to Econ-comics", the edutainment economics comic book I read at some trade show in the 90s.
Wow, those were the three pillars of my childhood reading too (although I always read more Asterix and less Tintin). Ah, the memories....
Ooh.. makes me all tingly inside.
I just realized that I read a ton of comics as a kid, but hardly read any these days. Tintin was my favorite, but I also read a lot of Asterix, Amar Chitra Katha and Indrajal Comics (Mainly Phantom and Mandrake).
Anybody know where I might find collections of Phantom and Mandrake comics? I think the point when I got put off comics was when Chacha Chaudhary became the most popular comics in India.
Oh wonderful. Thank you for triggering old, wonderful memories. I grew up on these, Tintin and Asterix and these old comics were a wonderful, wonderful part of my childhood.
Thank you for the post.
I read some of those when I was a kid, too! I have cousins who live in Nepal, and they used to bring us Indian comics when they'd visit. I really liked them. They were so different from the underwear pervert comics I usually read, but just as trippy and epic. Really neat stuff for an impressionable kid.
I heart chitra katha. You can get them in some Indian grocery stores (or from India). They are way cooler than modern teen manga- plus educational.
Thank you! My brother and I had these as children and were recently wishing we could find them again! Thank you!
The site seems boingboinged.
Do these have English dialog?
Also, Rama needs to lay off the colloidal silver.
I learnt to read on the Amir Chitra Katha comics! They were so cool, and you could pretend they were educational too! Man there was some whacked out mythology there.
Any fans of the above series will want to keep their eyes out for a big-budget comic-styled treatment of the Ramayana that's in production in the Bollywood animation studios at the moment. :-B
I don't know much about it myself, but what I did hear sounded very juicy for a fan of these books.
I can't find any good gossip links yet, but keep an eye out for Keywords: Ramayan, Indian Superheroes, Virgin Comics, Suresh Seetharaman
Looks awesome, obviously Hindu-inspired.
I wonder if there is a theme of Kali Yuga in there, speaking of nothing...
Duly BoingBoinged earlier here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/11/25/indian-epic-ramayana.html
and here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/30/how-a-comic-is-made.html
Awesome find boingboing, (im indian) and when i read this article feature i went back and read some of the old Hindu tales and proverbial comic books that my parents read to me decades ago...
Really thrilled to see a lot of people here and on my blog post commenting about having grown up with these. It's a nice sense of community (and people mentioning Tintin and Asterix, too). And am learning more about the Indian comics, too, from these comments.
DMAN: Yes, they have English dialogue.
We have quite the stack of these in the basement that my wife, Tara, has retained from her childhood.
I use to read indian comics, and when I finally got around to drawing my own comics, I thought that everyone saying "indie comics" was referring to indian comics as aposed to independent comics.
The art is mind-blowing. o_o
The art is beautiful. And now, a more contemporary look (ignoring, if you can, the Deepak Chopra Presents):
http://hinduinfo.blogspot.com/2007/09/hindu-comics.html
(where, oh where, is the Bhagavad-Gita 3D IMAX movie of my dreams?)
Ah, Amar Chitra Katha!
I grew up on this stuff too. Having spent my summers in an ashram in upstate New York, we were surrounded by statues and did the Ramayana and Mahabharata as plays, did puja and all that. The comic books were one of my favorite parts. Thanks boingboing.
If you like those, look at these cambodian comics:
http://www.siewphewyeung.org.kh/?page_id=13
Sorry, but Indian stuff can not be cool. That just how it is. Indian stuff can be weird, funny, silly, stupid, but not cool. Ask anybody not Indian, and 99% will agree...
That is so not true. Indian arts are massively cool. And anyone who disrespects Bhangra Man is asking for trouble...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDgmlq6DOyw
That is so not true. Indian arts are massively cool. And anyone who disrespects Bhangra Man is asking for trouble...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDgmlq6DOyw
Here is a link to the online store.
http://www.ack-media.com/
Apana