As promised a few days back, I wanted to share a sampling of the interior art found within a typical Amar Chitra Katha comic book. This particular page scan was taken from “Ashoka”, vol. 536.
Apparently, over 90 million copies of ACK comics have been sold since 1967. And there are 400 titles to choose from. But each title is self-contained, and not numbered as a continuing series.
The art is clearly staged – and always confined within a panel. The colors are flat -with no tonal shading. Backgrounds are simplified, but convey enough information for the story to be understood in its context.
Interestingly enough, there are no half-tones or any other Western design elements found within. The printing also does not appear to be the typical ‘dot-print’ offset kind, that is typical of most comic books from the 80′s and earlier.
The book credits Meena Talim for the script, Ram Waeerkar for illustrations, and Anant Pai as editor. I am assuming that Waeerkar lettered the comic as part of his illustration duties.
Hope this sheds a little insight into Indian comics!
-Krishna
Great! Thanks for letting us take a peek!
Wonder how its printed.
This may be a dumb question. I noticed your scan was in English. Are they printed in multiple languages or just English? I do know there are many dialects in India so I was curious.
Not a dumb question at all, Barry. Actually – a *great* question. ACK’s are published in a variety of Indian languages. The ones I received were the English versions.
Thanks for posting that up Krishna, most appreciated. I also was suprised to see they’re in English.
Cheers,
Oz.
Oh no! Not a Buddhist name!
Ashoka, come and save us from this oppression!