Was reading a post on comic book day by H.P.
Today I happened to be talking to my neighbour about comics – I can still remember stories from Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha like I read them yesterday! I think they’ve been pretty much a key influence in my appreciation for Indian mythology, else I doubt if I would’ve ever gotten round to reading books in plain text 🙂 I also developed an appreciation for the smallest creatures like ants or dragonflies, apart from animals in general with their series Meet The Animal.
About Tintin and especially Asterix: a visit of Europe can make one really appreciate how well Asterix comics actually depict timeless cultural and ethnographical aspects! I think comics are a key application of art. I am sure that it is only through comics that I got into the habit of reading (and through video games got into the information technoglogy industry).
Marvel comics were fantastic as well – every comic book hero seemed to have some speciality. My favorite was spiderman – I think he had the best sense of humor, and more importantly – he was less invincible, more vulnerable compared to the others. He was my idea of a real hero – someone who is more or less ordinary, and overcomes his vulnerabilities rather than merely rely on some specially endowed powers.
A similar character was Bahadur of our Indian genre. Phantom was pretty cool too, I love the cliches like “sometimes the Ghost who Walks walks through the city like an ordinary man… This was one of those times…” or the old jungle sayings like “The Phantom strikes, faster than greased lightning” or about Mandrake “Mandrake gestures hypnotically“.
On the other hand there were comics like the Archies which as time went by, I started to find them gradually starting to lack in humor or substance, and they ended up becoming a mere addiction (that I eventually managed to get rid of) rather than something I continued to enjoy or learn anything from.
[Actually much much later in college days, Jigar Jaimini and myself were in a quiz and as usual I proved to be more or less useless 🙂 – but – finally managed to answer a crucial question that clinched us the third place: If Reggie was on a remote island what would be the two most important things he would need? The other team answered “me and myself” – good attempt but wrong answer, and we got the chance where I could happily reply “a mirror and a comb!!!“]
Flash Gordon and Tarzan seemed to take me to a totally different world altogether – both of them worlds that I thoroughly loved – one into deep space with totally alien creatures, and the other into a deep jungle with all kinds of animals!
Btw, I once came across an article that helped me trace one of the main reasons for my absentmindedness back to my childhood days – it said that kids who have the habit of reading while eating end up becoming absentminded living in their own dreamworld. And as for me, inspite of objections from my Thatha (grandpa), used to read comics while eating while watching TV at the same time! 😉
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