INDOPAKBANGCOMICS
SOME NOTES ON THE OFTEN ODD WORLD OF INDIAN COMICS!
There can be little doubt that to many outside India comics from the subcontinent can be very confusing.
There is THE PHANTOM and MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN;Muthu Comics published the adventures of both. This was,obviously,in Tamil,which no other publisher was translating into. The PHANTOM will be dealt with elsewhere on this site but the publishing history is very complex.
Comic Sizes are weirder!
Most from Muthu are smaller than A5 at 12 x 18 cms -some even sized 10x13 cms;the latter have something like 242 pages while the former 74-122 pages.
Unusually,the adventures of the STEEL CLAW,SPIDER,BARRACUDA and MANDRAKE at these sizes does not affect the artwork.
Even at the larger 12x18 cms size,and in landscape format to boot,BLUEBERRY still looks good.
Gotham Comics are full colour and publish DC and Marvel material and are A5/Digest sized. Excellent quality with it. Gotham,of course,created the 4 part Marvel limited series SPIDER-MAN INDIA.
Indrajal comics are roughly US comic book size and full colour.
Raj Comics are full colour and just a wee bit shorter than A5/Digest.
Diamond Comics are similar in size to Raj Comics and colour throughout,though not as great in colour quality as Raj or Gotham.
A major problem is that with some Muthu comics you can find pages uncut so that you have to do this yourself. Bulky sizes,some fast and loose stapling and crooked covers are drawbacks. Muthu relies on cheap printing and this CAN show from time-to-time.
COVER PRICING
A rough guide to cover prices and Indian-US-UK-CANADIAN currency is as follows:
$1.00 US = 43 Rs
$1.00 CAN = 36 Rs
£1.00 UK = 84 Rs
Euro 1 = 58 Rs
Given this you can see that comics such as Raj at 10Rs are VERY cheap to Western visitors.....though few comic fans seem to holiday there or bring Indian comics back -or am I wrong?
VIOLENCE!!!!!
Death is part of every day life to Indians. I'll not go into the Subcontinents violent history since 1948 [go read a history book!] but children there encounter death more often than in the West.
Subsequently,Indian comics can be very violent. In one issue of Raj Comics excellent DOGA,the character goes on a revenge spree making the Punisher look tame. Taking revenge along the "Hear No Evil,See No Evil,Speak No Evil" lines,the character cuts away one persons lower eye-lid so his eyes cannot be closed;another has his ear chopped and,most chillingly,we see a knife slicing through anothers tongue! There's also a decapitation of a villain by a Captain America style shield thrown by a hero.
In Diamond's MAHABALI SHAKA & THE URANIUM THIEVES,the hero hands over a crook who is strung up by his feet while he is cut with a knife. In an issue of DYNAMITE,the character shoots someone in the face.
However,having written that,there is nothing I would not let a child of 8 or 9 years see. It is,after all,comic art work.
I LOVE these comics!
So,don't sit back and go "how disgusting";it isn't.
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