Fun Facts about Indian comics, and Mary Kom's biopic | #145

Also, why does SRK have female bodyguards?

Mar 04, 2023

Hello

From the iconic Chacha Chaudhary to the hilariously bumbling Suppandi, Indian comic book characters are household names, loved by readers of all ages. In addition, the Indian graphic novel is also seeing a rise in popularity. With themes ranging from history & mythology to love and loss, Indian comics and graphic novels offer something for everyone, and will have you laughing, crying, and everything in between.

This week’s newsletter has some interesting stories about Indian comics and graphic novels. These also double up as recommendations for the genre.

Things we learnt this week 🤓

Manjula Padmanabhan is a playwright, journalist and comic strip artist. But she is best known for her work on the comic strip Suki. She also drew popular ‘Western’ comic characters in the style of Ganga Devi - a leading exponent of the Mithila paintings. The results were brilliant - Calvin and Hobbes, Garware aka Garfield, Arjun and Vasundhara aka Archie and Veronica. Manjula used the series to reach the heights of the Mithila-dders of creativity.

Mahatma Gandhi is a known pacifist, not known to ever get angry. But what if the real reason for his Ahimsa is because he is actually Hulk, and would turn into a Hulk-like character when he got angry. Marvel has a ‘What If’ series that tries to explore what if things didn’t happen the way they did and the concept of Gandhi: The Beast Within was inspired by that. The story starts with Gandhi being tied to a bomb in a plane flying over Germany. Wait, it gets better! Also on-board are Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Josef Stalin. The trio plan to drop Gandhi over Hitler’s secret base. Bapu pleads with them to desist. However the bomb explodes and the beast within Gandhi has been unleashed on Hitler. There is a scope for Ma Hat Ma Bomb in this case.

Kari is an Indian graphic novel written by Amruta Patil and centres around a lesbian protagonist who is abandoned by her lover and the journey to heal herself. It includes an homage to Frida Kahlo’s famous ‘The Two Fridas’ painting highlighting the duality of the self. In Kari, Amruta Patil proves that graphic novels can be both visually stunning and emotionally powerful.

From IWTK, with love 💌

She might be the pride of Manipur, but Mary Kom’s biopic starring Priyanka Chopra was not released in Manipur. Know more about it.
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Why does Shah Rukh Khan have female bodyguards?
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