Mr.India - The Comic Book - Part 1

Last week, I read a post at Shekhar Kapur's blog about a scene in the film Mr.India - the cockroach scene. Shekhar Kapur explains here how this scene was shot, why it was difficult for Baba Azmi to get the shot right. It was a fascinating story to read and I thought, many of us would have watched Mr.India, but wouldn't it be nice to bring back memories of this fantastic film like my memory was refreshed? In comic style? :-)

Old timers at TCP would recall that a similar post had come up - the "Chandni O Meri Chandni" post from December 2005. (Newcomers - please take a peek at that it if you can). It was a depiction of the Bollywood hit "Chandni" from Chandni's perspective in 16 pictures of Sridevi and it got several interesting reactions. Having seen magazines in the 90s that had pictorials of films, I figured it would be fun to post more on the same lines. But I never went through it.

The intention of giving Mr.India the "TCP treatment" sounded OK and even easy, but Mr.India would need more than 12 pictures to tell the story and I realised that it will be a "little" bigger than the Chandni post. Within the first hour, it was clear that this wasn't going to be a "little" bigger. I had completely underestimated the scope, the effort and the skills required. Without any storytelling or script writing knowledge, there was no way to go further. I considered postponing this to another day and scan a comic instead, but by now I was too curious to see how this was going to turn out.

And the result is a representation of one of the best films made in Bollywood in the 80s - Mr.India - in comic style. You can call this a comic remake as we seem to have run out of scripts in Bollywood.

Part 1 of Mr.India - The Comic Book, is now ready for publishing. It has 20 pages and part 2 will be posted in 2-3 days with another 20 or so pages. I have tried to best interpret the scenes as I saw them, edited some stuff out (Sridevi's adorable Charlie Chaplin impersonation), removed the context of some scenes to speed things up and used dialogues wherever it made sense.

Hope you enjoy this TCP Original - my attempt to recreate Mr.India in comic style. And do let me know what you think - your comments are extremely important.

Mr.India - The Comic Book - Part 1

The full comic (links, slideshow) can be found in the next post - Mr.India - The Comic Book - Full

AND WATCH THIS FANTASTIC FILM

Cast & Credits for Mr.India:
Anil Kapoor, Sridevi, Amrish Puri, Satish Kaushik, Ashok Kumar, Sharat Saxena and others
Directed by: Shekhar Kapur
Produced by: Boney Kapoor
Story by: Salim - Javed
Cinematography by: Baba Azmi
Music by: Laxmikant - Pyarelal
Lyrics by: Javed Akhtar
Songs by: Kishore Kumar, Kavita Krishnamurti, Alisha Chinai, Anuradha Paudwal, Shabbir Kumar

P.S: 2nd part will be up this week.
P.S: Comic World is up to comic #99. Please cheer him on as he reaches a major milestone - Comic # 100.

A new comic coming up - A TCP original...

I should be able to have at least one part up on Monday and the second in the same week. I usually don't announce anything but I am a bit excited about it. Hope you check in on Monday.

I will leave you with these interesting blogs that I have come across:

• Indian Temples and Iconography
• Bollywood Buzz
• Post-Punk Cinema Club
• A great list of things not to do in Bombay by Bombaylives

Check them out and let the blogs know what you think about it

And don't forget to check in on Monday.

The Merry Christmas Post

And here's a picture I took during a walk around town. For comic, check out the previous post (Xmas release) - Spear of Destiny

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

The city seemed abandoned and I think it is going to be the same on the 25th too, except for tourists maybe. Got to try take some more pictures, but a few more below.

....

This place is never so empty.Xmas tree not lit up yet


Damrak..empty?

...

Happy waffle lady

So quiet


Bikes

Comic #224: Phantom – Spear of Destiny

TCP has been around for over 3 years, a longer than expected lifespan but extended thanks to the tireless efforts of our contributors. The number of posts have come down drastically compared to previous years, thanks to 9 months of inactivity and very limited blogging since.

Yesterday, I went through some of the older emails and comments and wondered how many comments did TCP see in this period. It sent me on a stat mini-hunt and thanks to tips from realtrix.blogspot.com I was able to get the info.

The blog has been visited from 165 countries, almost all except a few in Africa, Greenland, etc. There have been 2,40,000+ visits and 4,60,000+ page views. Not exact but close, as I lost 2-3 months of stats due to a javascript error.

But here’s the awesome part – The number of comments on TCP is 5,000. Yes. Five Thousand Comments. The blog, posts, scans have done their thing but this honour belongs to you all. And despite comment moderation/deletion, etc. TCP READERS ARE AMAZING. Please keep coming back.

Now on to the comic. This comic was sent in as a contribution by “Lord Loh” over a year ago, when I had suspended blogging and I found it going through some of the older emails. This isn’t a Indrajal but an Egmont and since I let it lie in my mailbox for a year, it’s only fitting that this should be the Christmas release from TCP.

Thanks Lord Loh and you all have a great Christmas.

COVER
PAGE 1	PAGE 2	PAGE 3	PAGE 4
PAGE 5	PAGE 6	PAGE 7	PAGE 8
PAGE 9	PAGE 10	PAGE 11	PAGE 12
PAGE 13	PAGE 14	PAGE 15	PAGE 16
PAGE 17	PAGE 18	PAGE 19	PAGE 20
PAGE 21	PAGE 22	PAGE 23	PAGE 24
PAGE 25	PAGE 26	PAGE 27	PAGE 28
PAGE 29	PAGE 30	PAGE 31	PAGE 32

UPDATE: In case you notice that the comment count is not going up, it is due to a bug in the blogger feed. The statistics work only if the number of comments is LESS THAN 5000. Anything above and it shows 5000 :-) Which means..you are AWESOME++

How to say F**k You to terrorists in "Indian"?

Get the Oberoi/Trident and the Taj back in business within a month of the attacks. Love ya Bombay.
Now, how do we tackle the rascal politicians we have bred?


Edit: Bloghop - Check out this GREAT blog on Bombay. How did I miss it all this time?

PS: Technically, it isn't the Taj Palace but still :-) F**K You.
PS: It’s the Rock’s 61st birthday today. Happy Birthday.

Comic #223: Bahadur - The Savage Outlaws

It is great to see that what was started at TCP is being carried out by other bloggers in a much more organized and regular fashion than at TCP. TCP readers have already jumped on to these blogs but those who still do not know about it, check the blogroll as it has a few links. I want to continue posting comics but I don't have a lot of my own left and I also have a lot less time than I used to have. I will try to post comics once in a while and if it is a repeat, please indulge me :-)
Here's one that I scanned a few minutes ago.

COVER
PAGE 1	PAGE 2	PAGE 3	PAGE 4
PAGE 5	PAGE 6	PAGE 7	PAGE 8
PAGE 9	PAGE 10	PAGE 11	PAGE 12
PAGE 13	PAGE 14	PAGE 15	PAGE 16
PAGE 17	PAGE 18	PAGE 19	PAGE 20
PAGE 21	PAGE 22	PAGE 23	PAGE 24
PAGE 25	PAGE 26	PAGE 27	PAGE 28
PAGE 29	PAGE 30	PAGE 31

Oh!
Forgot.
A note on non-comic posts:
I state my views here openly and don't expect others to agree with it or have any interest in it. If you do not want to read these views, you can ignore it and go on to the other wonderful sites for Indrajals, etc. If you want to have a conversation in the comments, that's great but if it gets personal or abusive, please don't expect me to engage you in any manner.

A note on comment responses:
This blog had turned into a online community with between 200-300 visitors every day, a community not just interested in comics but also in sharing their views about events around us. Responding to comments was the best part for me personally, and I must have responded to at least a few thousand comments. It was fun to "know" all those people and their views and I could even make out who is new and who is not. But due to some events and my reaction to it, that community was effectively dismantled. It is no longer fun to respond to comments and although I try, I do not always find the motivation for it. So comment responses will be very limited.