Growing up, I sometimes would read Indian comic books that covered stories of epic heroes. The visual depiction was traditional and often lacked the sophistication in story-telling that you are accustomed to in the Western world. Story-telling and character development is in our history, as is evident in the numerous Hindu gods and goddesses that we worship. And comic books would have been the ideal medium to instill the sense of pride and awareness that as a child, I completely lacked. Sadly, epic stories were not as popular as Archie comics. I often knew more about Veronica than about Tansen.

So imagine my surprise when I found out about Virgin Comics and their efforts to revive Indian history through comic books. What was even more surprising was to know that filmmaker Shekhar Kapoor is behind this effort. I have friends in the animation world that have done mini-projects backed by his vision and I have understood that his passion to put Indian history on the world map has been relentless.

So to see what these comics were doing different, I played hookie from my weekend errands and spent a few hours checking out the illustrated Ramayana. I admire the work and the the artists behind the illustrations. While the visual design surpassed my expectations, I was disappointed in the character visualization and story-telling style. Rama looks like a cross between a western superhero and the Indian god Shiva while Ravan had the flavor of an evil Manga character. The language had a yuppie spunk to it that is not typical of Indian story-telling. Call me old skool but I am still not sure if I really like this compared to what I have been used to growing up. I realize that to cater to a western world the characters were modified. This is heartening and despite my initial impressions of the visual impact, Virgin comics will be on my “interesting things to track” list.