With Mumbai’s first Film & Comics Convention just gone by, After Hrs explores the phenomenon of comics which seems to be making a comebac

The comic evolution

With Mumbai’s first Film & Comics Convention just gone by, After Hrs explores the phenomenon of comics which seems to be making a comeback

For most people, comics stir up happy childhood memories of sitting around and reading, be it Amar Chitra Katha or Marvel comics. But no need to get nostalgic about it, because comics are making a comeback, and how? “Comics are the first interface with reading for children as animation is for content viewing,” says Devdatta Potnis, Head of Sales & Marketing, Maya Digital Studios. “It is a good time for animation as we have good Indian content with international quality standards to support it. With fresh Indian stories coming up in the form of comics, we are taking them up and developing animated content for kids,” he says. Their latest collaboration is to create an animated show, The Sixth: Karna — The Warrior Kid based on one of Vimanika Comic’s The Sixth: Legend of Karna, the trailer of which was launched at last week’s comic convention. Jason Quinn, author of the graphic novel Steve Jobs: Genius By Design says, “Comics or sequential art has been around since man first learned to pick up a rock and use it as a tool — cave paintings are comics.” Comics never really went away, he adds, and declining sales around the world are because producers focussed on multi-issue tales that were too complicated to understand. Karan Vir Arora, CEO, Vimanika Comics says that new comics are being born now and the older ones are innovating and relaunching as well. There is no real difference between graphic novels and comics, Karan explains. Graphic novel is a term created in the 1980s, for comics to be taken more seriously. “The term was used to attract adults to the genre of comics by writing about more serious topics. The only other element is that most graphic novels begin and end in one book, while comics are usually a series, he adds. Jason agrees, “I never really liked the term graphic novel. It always struck me as a bit pretentious, as though the people saying it were trying to make comics seem grown up and respectable as though ashamed of the term ‘comic book’. I’m not ashamed of loving comics and in all honesty I don’t want to appear grown up and respectable either.” Manish Gupta of Raj Comics says, “Comics made a comeback a few years ago. And took a huge leap! Now there is more awareness and more readers. Taking comics online has helped. It has let people connect with the makers better and faster.” varsha.naik@dnaindia.net