Comic #233: Garth – The Mystery at Kanchenjunga

Still working on the yet-to-be-finalized-name project. Got some interesting responses, and one of them got it right :-)

I will be first posting a “pilot” episode and then seasons, each season with multiple episodes. It is based on not-so-current events, the idea is to relive the events that have impacted us. More details to come in this week, decisions are pending, some tough ones.

Also coming up is a landmark Indrajal within a couple of weeks.

Posting a Garth title after a very long time for your Monday reading. This one was sent in by Desiguru (an old contributor) ages ago and I had it in my posting folder, scheduled but never posted. Enjoy.

The India Project – Sneak peek

As promised a few hours ago, here is a sneak peek of the first episode of The India Project. Deciding the format, frequency, # of pages per episode, sequence and a lot of other things and the announcement is a bit premature but got to kick it out of the door or I will never start.

Naming suggestions are welcome. Well, not just naming but any suggestions but then, you don’t know much about this to suggest, do you? hmm..

Hint: It will be a comic, a story. Content will be images (sketches if possible).

More details to follow. And while I am at it, show me some of that old TCP love. And some link love and spreading the word around is always welcome :-)

And any guesses what I am talking about in this preview?

Also coming in the next few weeks, a landmark Indrajal Comic.

Coming Soon: The India Project

I was not quite sure what to call it, so settled on “The India Project”. It is .. ambitious..to say the least, and I fear I may be overreaching but have to give it a try and see if it survives my short attention span and limitations. I will try to make this as interesting to you, as it is exciting to me. Also trying to publish a sneak preview sometime today, it’s not much but it’s a start as I may finally have an idea on how to approach this.

Stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks.

Preview coming up very shortly

Feverishly working on the preview, but one suggestion already:

From Vishwas : The Great Indian Comic Project .. (that was brave considering he has no idea about what I am doing) Thanks a lot for the encouragement.

Hint: This is not Indrajal or Amar Chitra Katha or any of published comics

Suppandi on The Comic Project

Suppandi is a comic character that was featured in Tinkle, a servant whose masters changed very regularly, probably because he always did something foolish. He is not one of the cute looking characters we are used to, dressed in a half-chaddi and shirt/T-shirt, long nose, weird hair (like it’s oiled and combed flat). The fun about this character was that we knew that he was going to do something ridiculous but we always wanted to know “how bad is it going to be this time?”

Many of the Suppandi strips in Tinkle were ideas sent in by readers which was then illustrated by an artist. Can’t get more collaborative than that :-)

Check out this great write-up by comicology on Suppandi, Kalia, Shikari Shambhu, etc.

I found these Suppandi strips sent to me some months ago in an email chain that I usually avoid reading. Whoever scanned and put this online – thank you. So tell me, do you have any favourite Suppandi stories?

Another one

Here’s one Suppandi story by a reader Suspended Animation:

I remember he once ironed his master's legs.. because he wanted Suppandi to press them.

Reaching a milestone (500,000 page views)

For those who land up at TCP in the next few hours, I just thought of letting you know that sometime in the next 5-6 hours, this blog will reach 500,000 page views (260K visits). Half a million page views. Now, this mark was probably crossed a few weeks ago had the tracking code had not gone missing for a couple of months or if the blog had not been inactive for 9 months and in a slow moving mode for another 8 months after that. That doesn’t matter. What matters now… is getting there.

It has taken about 4 years to hit this number and I know that blogs/sites get as many views/visits in a month or even a day. But hey, I will gloat while I can :-) considering TCP was never promoted much and certainly not aggressively – partly because I didn’t and also because I couldn’t (anonymity has its pitfalls). 500K page views would be reached because of readers spreading the word, the new readers who stumble onto the blog looking for comics and contributors. The comments section which was so lively is now not as interesting and many have indeed moved on. But the blog will be here for a while I think. So here’s hoping that you keep coming back for more.

For the support, the comments, the visits – Thank you.

Have a great Sunday

P.S: I have recently noticed some followers to TCP – Thanks. Also to all those sources and sites that link to TCP. And to my followers on Twitter. (psst..Happy 3rd Birthday Twitter)

P.P.S: I have also updated contact details at the bottom, included a twitter feed and there’s a Facebook page for the blog too. Do check it out.

P.P.P.S: Readers from 170 countries have visited TCP in the last 4 years, barring Greenland, some countries in Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia, Angola, Congo, etc. who have more important things to worry about) and Turkmenistan.

Comic #232: Bahadur – The Savage Family

It’s good to know that some of you did enjoy the Commando comic posted last week, so there could be more in the future.

Election time in a month and things are heating up. BJD in Orissa has dumped BJP. Laloo Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan have shown Congress the finger. Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh are bickering when they should be trying to win an election. Sharad Pawar and Narendra Modi are lobbing water balloons at each other. Varun Gandhi has joined in and made some supposedly inflammatory remarks (the video I saw “beeps” out sections that will help determine if his speech was indeed “hate speech”. A soap opera in progress.

And to spoil all the fun, the BJP has done something meaningful and unveiled an IT Vision document. The PDF can be found on Dudaji’s blog - BJP IT Vision and Venkatesh Hariharan says on his blog Open Source India:

I did a quick read of the 40 page document and am impressed with how thorough and comprehensive it is. As a long time supporter of free and open source software, I am delighted to see a major Indian political party endorse it. However, I am even more delighted to see that this endorsement is rooted in a comprehensive vision for India's development

This is probably the first time a political party has unveiled an IT vision for the country. What do you think about it? And if you can’t be bothered much it, enjoy this comic by VenKIT (again!!). Have a great Wednesday and keep your eye out for a landmark comic in the next few weeks.

Comic #231: Commando – One Man’s Courage

Hope you all had a great Holi.

I had been thinking of posting a different comic for a few weeks, but after a bit of prodding by AKNYC (who blogs at Chammak Challo) I went ahead and scanned one. This is one of those amazing World War II comics that I enjoyed reading, featuring Brits (Heroes), and the Germans, Japanese who were the bad guys. Stereotypical but great stories of fighter planes, dog fights, anti-aircraft guns going ACK-ACK-ACK, tanks, soldiers fighting on beaches, in cities and in jungles, stories of espionage, courage, betrayal, defeats and victories against all odds.

So here’s the comic. Hope it rings a bell :-)

Just as I am about to post this, there’s a news flash on CNN-IBN that a “Third Front” has been formally announced to provide an alternative to the Congress and BJP. The Third Front will be formed of parties that would otherwise have supported the BJP or Congress, parties have enjoyed power without much responsibility. What do you think? Will they be able to provide good governance, handle the economic situation we are facing? Will they be able to provide stable and strong leadership?

Bloghopping:

Checkout Sketchpad by Shivani Ramaiah for some nice sketches.

Comic #230: Flash Gordon – Many Centuries Ahead

Things got a bit busy after I returned from Bombay. I had time, but couldn’t squeeze out enough to post about several things that I wanted to. And no better way to start off an interesting month than to post a comic, sent in by our contributor VenKIT like the previous ones. He has also sent in a very interesting comic last week that I plan to post later :-) Any guesses?

Have a great weekend with this Flash Gordon comic. Links have been posted at the usual location.