The Amazing World Of Comics

Last week when I was going home after my fortnightly (weekly, when I am lucky) jaunts to college street, I was asked by a man sitting beside me in an auto-rickshaw,”You still read that stuff?” He had a smug, sneering look painted on his face, and pointed towards the bunch of superman and batman comics in my hand… somehow he missed Ray Bradbury’s “Golden Apples of the Sun”.

“Yes I do”. I shot back, countering his smugness with my best deadpan expression. We didn’t speak through the rest of the 15 minutes journey. But that encounter has visited my thoughts a few times over the last week. It amuses me. So many people associate comics with dumbed down entertainment meant for kiddos. The same people watch the mostly inane entertainment offered by the multiplexes and scores of television channels with relish. The more serious ones prefer to watch the distasteful black comedy presented by the news channels 24/7. Many of these people did read comic books as kids. Maybe they did not stay long enough. Because that’s the beauty of comics, the pleasure a regular issue of Batman can offer to a 10 year old would be quite different from that which is felt by a 30 year old.

Comics, like movies and television series are simply a tool for telling stories. They can be as intelligent or as dumb as the other two. The problem is that most people associate them with superheroes who wear their underwear outside. That’s true. But that’s just a part of the whole truth. One needs to read comics in order to pass a judgment. Though I am far from an expert on the topic, I have my reasons for respecting comics. I was hooked on to them before I knew how to read. My father’s collections of Tintin and Phantom comics were something I treasured, and initially tried to decipher by studying the frames, and making my own stories. Sometimes my uncle used to help me out by reading them out to me. Then I learnt to read them myself and there has been no looking back. I have covered a wide range of Indian and foreign comics from my initial heroes Superman, Phantom and Tintin to Chacha Chaudhary, Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv to my current favorites, Batman, Wolverine, Captain Haddock and Phantom, again.

Comics have given me more than hundreds of hours of pleasure. They have given me the tag of a bibliophile; they instilled in me a reasonably good taste for the visual arts. And they initiated me into the world of books. They have given me my career. If not for them, I probably wouldn’t have been a writer.

And for those who believe that comics are dumb. Let them know that X-Men is actually about xenophobia and racism that has plagued the world since the dawn of mankind and it tackles the issue much more effectively than any moral science lesson. Spiderman is about standing by your ethics in a world which is increasingly ungrateful and insane, and Batman is about the futility and tragedy of aimless destruction. In other words, it is about terrorism. Check out “The Dark Knight”, which came out this year. It is one of the most explicit films about terrorism made till date. It centered on an enemy for whom destruction was an an end unto itself. Today terrorists are mauling the world, apparently for some cause, which does not convince us. But once they did have a cause. Bhagat Singh had a cause when he hurled that bomb. He was a terrorist for our erstwhile rulers. But he was driven by a cause worthy of great respect. However, over the years spectacular destruction has overshadowed any “cause”. When we think about the twin towers crashing to the earth, no cause comes to our mind. “The Dark Knight” Is a movie that has foreseen the times we are headed towards. The terror attacks at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai were quite like the Joker’s onslaughts on Gotham City. It had no purpose, other than creating death, destruction and chaos.

All comics are not necessarily dark and grim like the above. There are Tintin’s delightful adventures and of course good old Asterix. I never tire of rereading them. A good comic is as good as any other piece of artistic entertainment; it entertains and educates, and leaves the reader a little bit wiser.