The Year Of The Graphic Novel
Print
(It’s been a weird kind of semester. Starting off at full steam, it seemed like it’ll all be over and done with in two shakes of a dog’s tail… but it’s ended up dragging on and on. Mercifully, it’ll be over soon… my exams are starting in a week, and this will be the last entry in this blog for 15 days.)
Every year, around this time, I have a lot of reading to catch up with, (as the summer approaches) and as I start to look back at all the stuff I read, I notice a pattern. There are typically one or two writers/schools of writing to which I get attracted… and then I start to read up most or all of their work. And although I try to be as heterogeneous as I can while buying books, these writers inevitably end up on my list.
So,while the period around my tenth standard was mostly about magical realism(Rushdie, Marquez, Grass… the whole shebang…), after giving the Engineering Entrance Exams a couple of years later, I buried myself and my I/Me/Myself pangs into Camus and others of his absurdist ilk. Going even further back, I recall that I more or less saturated the Wodehouse rack at the local library in the summer vacation when I was in the seventh standard, before proceeding to do the same to the Asimov and the Stephen King racks.
Looking back at this year(Yes, being a student, I tend to treat an year from April to April) if I have to label it, it would undoubtedly be the Year of the Comic Book/Graphic Novel . I’d read some pretty good comics before, but the credit for introducing me to this wonderful world goes to my friend Arvind Sowmyan here on campus, geek extraordinaire, and brilliant artist himself. One day, when we were sitting in his room trying to beat the sticky Kharagpur heat, I commented on the drawing he’d made of a hooded, goateed figure (curiously resembling Colin Farrell!) he’d drawn on the wall, something which I thought had clear manga influences. He remarked, “It’s closer to Sandman than manga….”
It was then that I discovered Neil Gaiman’s stunning Sandman series, a huge, sprawling achievement in every way, something which has the density, maturity and texture comparable to the best of modern literary fiction. After that, there was no looking back. Afte completing Sandman, I quickly moved on to Alan Moore’s Watchmen, which is considered the definitive graphic novel of our times. By now, I’d well and truly caught the bug. I read up everything I could by Moore, including the massively entertaining LXG(League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) series and From Hell the stylistical masterpiece set in Victorian times. Later this year, I read dozens of prominent writers like Frank Miller(Sin City and Ronin are my faves). Among standalone graphic novels, I read “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi and “Maus” by Art Spiegelman, two memoirs about different childhoods in different parts of the world, both of which are throbbing with poignance and utter beauty, as is the magisterial “Blankets” by Craig Thompson. Honourable mentions go to Sarnath Bannerjee, whose witty and ambitious novels “Corridor” and “The Barn-Owl’s Wondrous Capers” I enjoyed immensely; and also to Amruta Patil, whose dark and shadowy “Kari” serves as an intriguing advertisement for her future work.
I feel that as visual artists, graphic novelists have a lot to offer to the world of cinema. While it is a bald and mundane topic that the comic-book medium is inherently similar to the silver screen, things cannot be put in such a simplistic manner. The stylistic innovations brought to the genre by messrs Moore, Gaiman and Miller are testimony to the fact that comic books today can be as challenging as the best offered by Scorsese, Stone or the Coens. Read any “Sin City” title or any of Gaiman’s Sandman books , and you’ll know what I mean. Iron Man was the film which started pushing the barrier last year, before Christopher Nolan set the cat among the pigeons with The Dark Knight. Inspired from classic Batman titles like Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns”, Alan Moore’s “The Man Who Laughs” and Jeph Loeb’s “The Long Holloween”, he made what is sure to be an enduring classic among movie-goers everywhere, helped generously by a hauntingly macabre performance by the late Heath Ledger.
And yet it wasn’t good enough for the pundits. I won’t start a tirade about the quibbling idiots at the Academy Awards.(I loved Hugh Jackman’s song-and-dance routine “How come comic-book movies never get nominated/How can a billion dollars be unsophisticated?!”) What I’m surprised about is the people who’ve actually been lavish with their praise have managed to make it patronising and ultimately holier-than-thou. Roger Ebert is a critic I admire immensely, not just for his forthright reviews but also for his often self-deprecating humour. Now, he gave the Dark Knight four out of four stars, recognising the brilliance for what it was. But even his review came with a rider.
Towards the end, he says that The Dark Knight is “a haunting film” which “leaps beyond its origins” and that it “redefines the possibilities of the comic-book movie” , the implicit argument being that the origins of the film were inherently inferior because they were, at the end of the day, comic-books. The air smells of intellectual snobbery when people like Ebert come up with stuff like this. I dare these people to see “Persepolis” (the film version was co-directed by Marjane Satrapi, the writer of the graphic novel, herself) and not be moved to tears by the end. The power of comic-books as a storytelling medium was explored by the Manoj Shyamalan thriller “Unbreakable” which had some pretty cool theories about comic-book sensibilities.
Part of the problem is that filmakers in Hollywood are still not ready, for the large part, to think of comic-books of anything other than huge, flashy colours and “Kaboom” sound buubles. The “Wanted” comic-book series by Mark Millar was a brash, in your-face crime thriller, with plenty of spunk and bold brushstrokes all over the place. But the movie turned into an excuse to show off every last one of Anglina Jolie’s curves in devout super-slo-mo sequences. Later in the year, “The Incredible Hulk” too, disappointed on most counts. Ed Norton, an actor I like immensely, gave a shockingly ineffective performance. Neil Gaiman has expresed his disappointment at several abortive attempts at making a Sandman movie… but he also said that a project like this was only possible with a director who was as obesessed with the subject matter as Peter Jackson was with the LOTR saga. This is one of the reasons why writer Alan Moore distanced himself from “V From Vendetta” , which was actually a pretty good effort in the end. He had faced bitter disappointement earlier with the film adaptations of his books “From Hell” and “The League of Exraordinary Gentlemen” (I think we can all agree that we never want to see Naseeruddin Shah beat up people with his boots again!).
I fervently pray and hope that there’ll be a brash maverick out there somewhere who’ll replicate the magic of people like Moore, Spiegelman and Gaiman. I haven’t yet seen Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” , but the initial rushes look very impressive indeed. Remember Watchmen was called “unfilmable” ….. Closer home, I’m eagerly waiting for the silver screen adaptation of “Doga”, one of Raj Comics’s more enduring titles, a Punisher-like ruthless vigilante wearing a dog-mask. At the helm of the project is Anurag Kashyap, who is currently the toast of the town with Dev D and Gulaal.Kunal Kapoor is said to be playing Doga. Having read a bit of Doga comics, the dog-man does kind of fit the bill as a typical Kashyap character…. Let’s wait and watch 
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
got carried away with the Kashyap thing huh… Kunal Kashyap?
Anyways nice read otherwise..
loading...
Quite a Post.Not read many recent graphic novels and not seen them all too (Watchmen).
Somehow missed the mention of HellBoy and Scanner Darkly in your near exhaustive piece. Correct me if I am wrong but Scanner darkly is one movie which was digitally shot and animated later to give it that graphic novel look.
Kunal Kashyap as Doga sounds hilarious…lol
Cheers!
~uh~
loading...
Ghost World is another good adaptation of a graphic novel.
UH: Scanner Darkly was a sci fi novel by Philip K Dick.
In fact many have ridiculed the term graphic novel itself.
Alan Moores, author of Watchmen-”It’s a marketing term … that I never had any sympathy with. The term ‘comic’ does just as well for me. … The problem is that ‘graphic novel’ just came to mean ‘expensive comic book’ and so what you’d get is people like DC Comics or Marvel comics — because ‘graphic novels’ were getting some attention, they’d stick six issues of whatever worthless piece of crap they happened to be publishing lately under a glossy cover and call it The She-Hulk Graphic Novel.”
loading...
@Gopi and Uh: Thanks for pointing that out
Glad to have raised a few laughs, albeit unwittingly…
loading...
@Ratnakar: I’m familiar with that particular comment made by Alan Moore… and I must say I agree… it’s another attempt by media-savvy book promoters to use cool-sounding buzzwords like “chick-lit” or even “lad-lit” (to describe Chetan Bhagat, Tushar Raheja etc..) nowadays….
BTW, for more such Mooreisms, watch “The Mindscape of Alan Moore” …. a superb documentary
loading...
Great post..one more point is that since these comics/novels have improved a lot on their visualizations, in terms of detail and creativity , films like sin city or 300 could focus more on the realization part…since the story board was almost ready, as part of the comic itself…so imagination is saved…Maybe ‘Doga’.'Nagraj’ etc…still have issues with creativity…there are some comics which I have not read but heard of ‘Sadhu’, ‘Devi’ etc…one of them had Shekar Kapur as creative consultant or something like that…They look like had better visualizations..There was also a plan of ‘Sadhu’ being made into a movie with Nicolas Cage in the lead..but somehow did not work out..
loading...
if u haven’t read Ennis and Dillon’s Preacher, do it immediately.
loading...
thanks dabba,
yes Preacher shud be thre in the list
as well as V for Vendetta and Swamp thing by that witch from England, Alan Moore.
and what about Osamu Tezuka’s BUDDHA which is the only japanese Graphic Novel I cud endure apart from Ringu & Dark Water.
loading...
it is not “man who laughs” but ALAN MOORE’s “THE KILLING JOKE” that inspired a little bout TDK but most of it is faithful to Frank Miller.
loading...
@labor_day_sale : Right you are, my friend… “The Man Who Laughs” was actually a French novel by the great Victor Hugo, which inspired the concept of the Joker(the concept of the facial mutilation causing a permanent grin is the thing borrowed by Nolan) in the first place…. what I actually meant was “The Killing Joke” by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland.
If it were up to me, I’d award Alan Moore the Nobel Prize for Literature… yes, I rate him that highly… Swamp Thing, V For Vendetta and the unforgettable Watchmen are all testaments to the man’s staggering talent.
Tezuka’s Buddha is a massive achievement when you consider that one man has written and drawn the entire eight-volume saga… Gaiman,Moore and others don’t draw their comics themselves… Miller being an exception, because he pencilled titles like 300 and Ronin, in addition to being the writer…
BTW, don’t give up on manga yet…. there’s a whole world out there, waiting to be discovered…
loading...
@Uh: About Hellboy…. I haven’t read the Hellboy comics, but I’m a diehard fan of the films.. Guillermo del Toro is a visual artist like few others…. Pan’s Labyrinth is one of my all-time favourite films
loading...
Watchmen was a good watch but it shdnt have been made the way it turned out..its faithful but without reading the book it really is an incomprehensible mess..also check out Transmetropoliton and Y the last man..spider jerusalam needs a movie franchise of its own..
loading...
@Praneet: Y-The Last Man is on my laptop right now… plan to read it this summer…
@Dabba: Mean to get my hands soon on Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher real soon….
loading...
Great post, o soon-to-be-engineer
I myself am an almost-became-engineer (I was in IITD.) Luckily, I realized that I majorly sucked at engineering, so I quit before they got a chance to chuck me out.
I agree with the general consensus that the Watchmen movie is kind of hard to follow if you haven’t read the comic. Just recently read The Killing Joke. The Long Halloween, The Dark Knight Returns, Hush – ah! Kya comics hain!
Naseer saab has said in his interviews that the shooting of Extraordinary Gentlemen was as boring as the movie itself. I’m not surprised Alan Moore dissociated himself from it. But I’m surprised that he’s done the same for Watchmen. It’s a very faithful adaptation right down to the frames and composition being almost ditto.
loading...
@Kenny: Firstly, I’m really happy that you realized your heart wasn’t in engineering… as for me, I’m actually in a 5 Yr Science course (Applied Geology)
Loved Batman:Hush… the story is just so gripping… ditto with Long Holloween… much of Harvey Dent’s story in “The Dark Knight” is inspired from The Long Holloween….
loading...
The Alcoholic, Shombots, The Ronin are some of my favorite graphic novels…i specifically enjoyed reading the first two…
loading...
i still hate hollywood for what they did to ‘from hell’ by alan moore. his most accomplished work. i’ve not watched watchmen. i really don’t know if the movie needs to be watched by ppl who have already read the book, except for a nostalgia trip. anyway, they must be making an adaptation of 100 bullets too for sure. it’s too good to be left out by hollywood. anyone got any info on that?
loading...
@triplesix: Ronin is one of my faves, too… there was a time when I used to think Frank Miller could do no wrong…. but then he goes and directs this absolute turkey of a film “The Spirit” ….
BTW, Nice blog
@KJ: Judging from the trailers and a few random scenes I’ve seen… “Watchmen” generates enough curiousity to warrant at least one dekko… regardless of whether you’ve read the novel or not…
loading...
Have read only 2 of Alan Moore’s work Watchmen and V for Vendetta. Wanted to buy Sandman but 4000 bucks were too much for me. Frank Miller’s best work I think is ‘The Dark Knight Returns’. Have read only 2 of Frank Miller’s, TDKR and Batman- Year One. Batman Hush is special for me, it was the first comic of Batman that I started to read. I started reading it in 2003 when it first came out but completed in 2007 because of the unavailability of the issues.
PS: Has anybody here read Superman: Red Son by Mark Miller?
PPS: Since when Kharagpur started an Applied Geology IDD program?
loading...
@Jahanpanah: I know how you feel, man… graphic novels are damn expensive…. I read most of ‘em on the laptop… and yes, I’ve read Millar’s “Superman:Red Son” …. interesting concept but slightly sluggish second half…
BTW, The Department of Geology and Geophysics in IIT Kharagpur has been offering a 5 yr msc course in Applied Geology since 1952…
loading...
I haven’t read Red Son but it was next in my list as it is considered to be one of the best Superman stories.
My bad, I thought it was a IDD program.
loading...
ADitya how do you get ebooks of these graphic novels. Can you email if you have?
loading...
@Vinay: Everything I have is courtesy the legendary file-sharing LAN of Kharagpur… which has about 70-80 Terrabytes of stuff
The comics are mostly in the .cbr or .cbz format, both of which are read via the CDisplay Comic Book Reader….. To give u an idea… one 25-30 page Sandman issue will be around 13-15 MB in size….full length graphic novels like Maus will be around 50 MB each…
Unfortunately, Gmail does not support file attachments of that size… :( But I’ll try anyway….
loading...
Geez. That might not work. You are right. Will try downloading from somewhere.
loading...
Great post! had missed it earlier somehow. GN ho ya comic book, they are all a great geek armour. Y Man is a lil overrated but fun in parts.
loading...
Those interested in RAJ Comics’ Doga, should try this out:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/-Genesis-de-Mumbai-Vigilante/203757015261
loading...
Any one for The Invisibles? I am reading it and though it gets boring at times, but love the details and the geeky-psychic stuff! It spins my head, and I wonder how it would feel to read this when I am drunk like a fish!
loading...