A Parody ( Page ) a Day…

There was a time the previous month ( June 2020, to be exact ), when I was focussing eagerly on the MAD style of comic parodies of movies and tv serials. The stuff started a month or so back had already resulted in 2 webcomics with the Bakarmax team, on the 2 tv serials ‘Panchayat’ ( already shared here in a previous post ) and ‘Patal Lok’ ( sadly, yet to be released online ).
And then talks started with a good friend Soumya Das, with whom I had already tag teamed up earlier to create 2 comics on Mike Mignola and Hellboy.
This resulted in a 10 page comic which we created, focussing on 2 movies… ‘It 2‘ and ( guess which one? Yes…) ‘Hellboy ( 2019)’, but in a slightly non-MAD type style… as in, with less panels per page.
Here’s to hoping that in the near future, we find publishers who are interested in using these 2 comics and put them in the sort of project we had aimed for, a compilation of 8 – 9 such film parodies…
And we did this fast, at around a page a day!
So here goes… have a look.

Illustrating your ideas

This year has been an interesting one for me ( and no I am not referring to the weird stuff, as in covid, amphan, etc, etc ) in terms of the work that I have done… as I have ventured into the world of illustrations properly after a pretty long time.
What’s more interesting is that that I tried to focus the work on the Bengali reading audience a bit, by working on books like Shonku, a comic anthology for Book Farm ( which I will post about later ), and a lovely book on Kolkata.
This post focusses on the illustrations done for the last option – a book titled ‘Shediner Kolkata‘, written by Shekhar Basu, and published by The Cafe Table.
Here are most of the illustrations done for the book, along with the cover.

My pact with Impact

Around this time last year, my friend of old from Symbiosis days, Roohi, currently working with Cactus Global, reached out as asked  me to draw a webcomic for a branch of their company, namely ‘Impact Science’.
Sharing here the 12 page webcomic I drew for them. It showed the daily adventures, metaphorically of Roohi, Radhika and their friends, as they went about their work, and ends with how they… well… make an ‘impact’ on ‘science’ and scientists!

Shonku-licious

The great Satyajit Ray has always been a guiding light for the writers and artists ( not to mention filmmakers ) of our country. Always been a big, big fan of his Feluda and Shonku stories, ever since I was a kid, and when I got the chance to do the illustrations for a few Shonku-based stories, couldn’t think of ever refusing. Thanks to Deep and Sudip.

The book I am talking about is ‘Swa-Mahimay Shonku‘, published by Kalpabiswa Publications in 2020, and contains 2 stories that were started by Satyajit Ray ( but not finished ) and wrapped nicely by Sudip Deb. These are: ‘Intelectron‘ and ‘Events at Drexel Island‘.
A big thanks to Sandip Ray for giving Deep and Sudip the permission.

My work was merely to take on the art for the cover and illustrations.
The book originally aimed at carrying 4 more stories, which were not used in the long run, for many reasons.
You’ll find here a poster made by me for the book fair, which will showcase the cover and some interior art. And I am also attaching a few of the illustrations done – some used, some not used. Add to that the portraits of Mr. Ray, Sudip and myself.

 

The Tale of The Crazy Sahib

This weird ‘corona’ry year – 2020 – finally saw the launch of the graphic novel ‘Pagla Sahib’s Grave’, based on the novella by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay.

Big thanks to the folks at Starmark – Gautam Jatia and Arundhati Gupta, for starting things off.
This, by the way, was the second book done for Starmark focussing on the tales of the great Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay , the first being ‘Chakrapurer Chakkare’.
This time, I left the scripting and editing in the capable hands of Shuvorup Bhattacharjee and Arundhati Gupta.
NOTE: If you want to get hold of a copy, go to Amazon and search with ‘Pagla Shaib’s Grave’.
Attaching a few pages of the comic.

 

Punch to the gut… er… ayat!

Had fun in May 2020, working with the good team at Bakarmax – Sumit Kumar and Shivansh Bajaj, on the cool Amazon serial called ‘Panchayat’.

I have always been a big fan of MAD and its amazing sets of artists, Mort Drucker, Angelo Torres and Jack Davis to start with, who took tv serials and movies and turned them into an amazing parody version of the same, albeit in perfect comic format.
This year, when the great Mort passed away ( the same year as the legendary Albert Uderzo, of Asterix fame ), I planned to do something good in that vein, and started with this pic… a take on a popular Amazon serial ‘The Boys’-

I had shared it on a few facebook groups and that brought me in touch with my old friend from the Comic Con days, Sumit Kumar ( of Bakarmax ), and we planned to do something similar. The first effort as made on the recent Amazon serial ‘Panachayat’, which I did enjoy a lot. It was nice, with a proper mix of comedy and emotion. Here is the comic we churned out!
Please to check it out on the Bakarmax site too, along with their other cool comics! Here’s the link: https://bakarmax.com/comic/punch-ayat/

 

 

To GST or not to GST, that is the question

The last year, 2019, was an interesting year work-wise, for quite a few reasons. One of these would certainly be the fact that I got to do the illustrations for a book. Not that I have not done such stuff before…. I have. Say, sets of 5 to 6 illustrations , or the cover, as asked. But this is the first time that I did more than 120 illustrations ( the exact count eludes me at the moment ) , and that too within a strict deadline of 3 months.

Let me tell you more. The book in question was an interesting way to look at GST ( which, to most of us, is unknown territory ), where my friend Anupam Arunachalam wrote the story and I took care of the art.
This book was the third created by the team of Guru and Jana, and my hats off to them, and to Ramjee Chandran and Pranati Madhav ( of Explocity ), who guided us through the process.

The book can be ordered via Amazon. Here’s the link:

I am attaching the cover and a few illustrations.
Check it out, folks!

 

 

Train-ic Panic

Finally, sharing on my blog some illustrations done for Anjum Hasan’s cool non-fiction story ‘Off the Rails’, used in the National Geographic Traveller India magazine, in 2018.
These pics are very important to me, as they helped me plan and start a new style ( for myself ), that resulted in the Moneycontrol webcomic, the comics for Amar Chitra Katha and the Netaji Graphic Novel, to name a few.

 

Mignola Ho!

I have been influenced by many artists and writers over the last 35 of my 40 years. None more so than Mike Mignola, not only via his amazing art skills, but also his prowess with plots, ideas and story-telling. The preferred term is ‘guru’, which he has been to all of us artists and writers wishing to get on to the comics bandwagon.
Recently, I worked on two comics on Mignola, semi-fiction and non-fiction, collaborating with another friend and Mignola-fan, Soumya Das.
Here is the 4-pager which we had done together to celebrate an event ( I think it was the celebration of the 25 years of Hellboy ) at which Soumya was to meet the legend and hand over the comic. Which he did sucessfully. 🙂

And here are the 6 pages of another comic which Soumya and I collaborated on.
This was for the Sandesh Puja issue, and the text was translated and used. This was a more documentary take on the recent Hellboy movie, based on the amazing character created by Mr. Mignola.

Sci + Fi = Calendar!

This year ( 2020 ), before all  hell broke loose and the corona virus landed on us with its multiple boots, I had plans to do quite a bit for this year’s Kolkata book fair. And that too, in both Bengali and English. The latter has always been my main recourse, but I thought of turning to and focussing a bit on Bengali this year.
This calendar, titled ‘The Legends of the Sci Fi Universe ‘ ( the title did get changed before printing, as it went from sci fi to being something else ), which Kalpabiswa Publications published, was the only take-out in English!
I wrote, drew and designed the pages and cover here. My focus was on my favourite authors in this genre and more importantly, the big names that I haven’t explored yet. Got me a wee peek into the works of Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick, which left me hoping to read their works soon…
So here is the cover and some of the pages!