Learning to Floo

Also - the comic is being serialized now on the CIS India web site. For those of you who missed the beginning - you can start reading here.

Here's the latest page, as a teaser :

We'll be updating mondays and thursdays, so do follow. And let us know your comments and feedback right here on this blog.

Aamir Khan desperately tries to go one-up on SRK yet again.

Note : This post is part of an experiment to treat the same subject of satire in three different ways. There's a satirical fake news report here and a short story here.

Finally - my graphic novel comes to life.

Here - a special sneak preview of a project I'm working on for the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

It's a 100 page comic book on IP rights, copyright, piracy and all that jazz. It features futuristic technology, mind-altering gadgets, laser-blasters, doors that open vertically, conspiracies, jailbreaks and lots of more cool stuff. Starting next week, it will be serialized on the CIS web site, and this blog will act as a companion site, where I'll put up rough sketches, scripts and general background information.

The idea is to throw light on lots of issues surrounding intellectual property, patents, copyrights and trademarks, accessibility of content and technology, open standards and the like.

So, in the spirit of open-source, I'm going to invite anyone interested to collaborate on the project. Initially, I'm asking for suggestions for a name for the book. As we go along, anyone will be free to take the characters, situations and worlds I create, and run off in interesting new directions, creating back-stories, additional content to flesh out the universe, short strips - whatever.

So I'm just putting up the first two pages for you guys to get a sneak peek before anyone else. I'll also be shortly putting up the script for the first ten pages, and a concept note.

Do pitch in with comments, suggestions and the like.

Don't fear the Amazing Spider-Mouse.

Why the Disney-Marvel deal may not be the creative disaster fans believe it is.

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared in The Financial Express

This strangely prophetic image is apparently from 'Amazing Spider-Man' No.5.

The announcement that The Walt Disney company has acquired Marvel Entertainment for a reported 4 billion dollars is perhaps the biggest shake-up the entertainment industry has seen in a long time. This gives Disney access to Marvel's rich library of characters, including huge franchises like Spider-Man, The Hulk and the X-Men, for exploitation across multiple platforms.

Marvel’s chairman and principal stockholder, Ike Perlmutter, keeps his job, and Disney CEO Bob Iger stressed that the current Marvel management team has been doing a great job and would be allowed to continue doing it. Marvel shareholders will receive $30 per share in cash, plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share they own. Marvel's stock immediately went up 25%, or $9.72, closing at $48.37.


Marvel fanboys reacted with predictable outrage and fear that they would see their beloved bad-boy characters softened up to become 'family-friendly'. Jokes about Wolverine and Minnie Mouse, mashup art featuring characters like Spider-Mouse and Duck America, and raging discussions on the creative implications spread like wildfire on the Internet. You'd think this was the worst thing to happen to comics fans since that awful Joel Schumacher Batman movie.

But there are several reasons to believe that the panic is premature, and perhaps even unwarranted.

Firstly, it's unlikely that Disney will even bother messing about with Marvel's comics line, which is the feeding ground for IP that can be then translated into megabucks-generating film, TV and toy franchises. The comics business is hardly significant in Disney's scheme of things, and there's good reason to believe that they will see sense in keeping the nerdcore fans happy. Time-Warner owns publishing rival DC comics, and doesn't interfere in the editorial content at all.

Satyajit Chetri, comics critic for Rolling Stone India and ardent comic art collector, believes that there's no reason for fans to fret. “Things cannot get any worse than they are right now, at Marvel comics. The best that could happen is some real innovation thanks to involvement of fresh blood, if the Disney stable decides to get hands-on with the Marvel characters. The worst? More editorially mandated crossovers.”, says Chetri.

Secondly, as far as the film franchises (which are Disney's primary area of interest in Marvel) go, they're already pretty much family-friendly summer blockbusters anyway. Even edgier ones such as Daredevil and Punisher were extremely tame when compared to the content of the comics, and Spider-Man, Iron man and Hulk will require almost no major modifications to fit within Disney's creative parameters. Additionally, Disney is honouring all existing contracts that Marvel has, such as the one with rivals SONY pictures for the Spider-Man films, with Activision, Sega and THQ for videogames, and with Universal for theme parks. This puts them in the interesting position, for a few years at least, of generating revenues from their rivals' successes.

In contrast to fans, the response from industry insiders has by and large been positive.

Stan Lee, the original man behind Marvel comics, who remains as chairman emeritus at the company, felt that both entities would benefit immensely from the deal. “I think it's a terrific deal which will be extremely beneficial to both companies. The synergy between them is perfect. Nobody can produce and market franchises better than Disney, and nobody has the extensive library of characters that would make great franchises that Marvel has,” Lee said on comics web site newsarama.com.

Understandably, Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada was quick to reassure fans that all was well and that they had nothing to worry about. “"It feels like Christmas morning, I haven't seen this much excitement in the Marvel halls since... well, ever!” Quesada said on Twitter the morning after the deal was announced. He also had this to say to fans : “"Everybody take a deep breath, all your favorite comics remain unchanged and [Marvel Senior Editor] Tom Brevoort remains grouchy ... this is incredible news and all is well in the Marvel U." Quesada pointed to the relationship between Disney and animation superstar studio Pixar, saying that Marvel would benefit in a similar way.

Many analysts also believe that Disney's financial muscle would create better deals for the work-for-hire creators who work at Marvel, and attract more high-quality talent to the publisher. The deal undoubtedly opens up exciting possibilities in terms of toys and merchandise – an area where Disney surely brings a lot of strengths to the table that Marvel did not have before.

Either way, interesting times are ahead for fans of the Marvel universe. Well-known comics writer Kurt Buseik summed it up when he said “ I do recall, back in the '80s, people at Marvel used to say they wanted to be Disney for older audiences. Well, I guess now they are. What that means, though, remains to be seen."

The Amar Chitra Katha Hangover

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared in the Mumbai edition of 'Financial Express'.

When the animation boom hit India in the mid-nineties, everybody said that Indian animation would become the next big thing. Now, almost fifteen years later, it still hasn't happened. World-class animation films and TV series from India remain the exception rather than the norm.

However, things may be finally changing.

For many years, India's animation industry was sustained primarily by outsourcing contracts. Business heads quickly found that it was far easier to build technical competence than creative competence, and India's cost advantage saw considerable volumes of work being diverted to studios here. Even today, the larger Indian studios such as DQ, and Famous focus largely on this market.

But there has also been a gradual increase in the number of studios that are investing in creating their own IP for television and motion pictures. And the quality bar is slowly but surely rising. The reasons for this are manifold.

India never had a tradition of animation filmmaking. We didn't have a generation that was raised on animation, who grew up wanting to create stories inspired by the cartoons they loved as children. As a result, the first generation of Indian animators were mostly force-fitted talent that didn't have the natural advantage of 'animation DNA'. The current crop has much better exposure levels, thanks to the explosion of mass media and the Internet, and it is this generation that will drive the Indian industry to create great IP.

Secondly, the film and television industries are beginning to believe that original, locally created content has much better monetization potential, especially in the long run. So they are, albeit cautiously, making investments into creating films and shows that they hope will break through and become part of Indian popular culture – the tipping point for any animated show in the world to become commercially successful.

The mushrooming of smaller animation studios, which simply do not have the infrastructure to consider an outsourcing model, has also been a catalyst for this change. Motivated by big dreams, and working largely without the pressures that come with large scale, these studios are trying to push the envelope and come up with content that will attract the attention of a local, or perhaps even global market.

And the results are becoming visible. While Hanuman has its detractors in terms of its animation quality, few will argue that it demonstrated that a franchise building model could be successful in India. And Disney's Roadside Romeo, despite not finding box-office success, achieved a level of animation quality that is surely a signpost of better things to come. On television, shows such as Toonz's 'Tenali Raman', Green Gold's 'Chota Bheem', and BIG Animation's 'Little Krishna' are a far cry from earlier efforts, and are closer to world-class than anything we've seen in India before.

However, the question remains if any of this content can be made into a true-blue franchise. Today, while studios have come a long way in terms of animation and filmmaking skills, they sadly remain stuck with the old habit of dipping into Mythology or Folklore for stories. All these characters and stories are in the public domain, and can never really be exploited commercially as IP, at least when compared to original creations such as Ben10 or Avatar:The Last Airbender. This has already had an effect, with at least three separate creations based on Krishna being aired on different channels, surely diluting the viewership.

While the practice of using stories from mythology and folklore, which I'm going to call the 'Amar Chitra Katha' hangover, will perhaps build a market quicker, the animation industry will stand to profit much more from creating original creative IP, because this is the only way that the stakeholders can hold the rights to monetize what they create. While the other factors are slowly falling into place to create an environment conducive to throwing forth a breakthrough animation IP, the dependence on the perceived 'safe zone' of mythology / folklore needs to reduce before Indian animation fulfils the promise of the mid nineties.. The quicker we recover from the Amar Chitra Katha hangover, the better.

Hoog Lee comics on the KKR web site

The company I work at, A Bellyful of Dreams Entertainment, is creating some comics for the Kolkata Knight Riders web site. The comics are all based on Hoog Lee, the KKR mascot which was created by my colleagues Shashi Sudigala and Raj Golay.

The comics are essentially aimed at a younger audience (approximately 8 t0 12), as the KKR franchise is looking to create a strong brand equity with this age group, presumably to leverage SRK's popularity among them. But for that, I guess the team needs to, like,win a few games :)

The two strips I'm posting below are written by me and drawn by Ashish Padlekar. Click on a thumbnail to see the full strip.







We're also doing some single-panel stuff written by Ravi Abburi and drawn by Raj Golay. Am including a sample below, but you can head over to the KKR site for more.



Will keep you guys posted on more developments.

Magic Square Comics - An experiment in storytelling

Remember magic squares? Those rows and columns of numbers which used to add up to the same total whichever way you counted?

I'm just fooling around trying to do the same thing with comics. Presented below is a comics grid, if you will. Each row and column is intended to work by itself as a narrative, like a mini-story. So each panel actually plays a different role in unrelated storylines.

This is a rough effort at best, but I'm interested in how far this experiment can be taken. I'd love to hear your opinions, and idea submissions.

Click the pic for a larger version.