Heroes and Villains: The Battle for Good in India's Comics

I went to LACMA a few weeks ago for this exhibition of artwork from Indian (from India) comic artists. Comics and comic-style cartoons and animation are fairly prominent in my life. And I didn't know what to expect going to this showcase. What is it that makes these comic artists from India special? When I got there I was moved. I didn't know if I could bring a camera, and now I wish I had.

The showcase moved counterclockwise around the room. And started with the older comics. These reminded me of children's books. The style, framing, and color schemes were simple. The figures were fully drawn in a semi-realist fashion, with proportionate bodies and faces (unlike say the Peanuts characters). The oldest one dated back to 1936 with Pratap Mulick's "Valmiki's Ramayana".

I moved on to the next group which was Jeevan Kang's "Spiderman India". I found it funny on first sight just because I've been conditioned by our American Spiderman. But this comic was a Marvel brand and very well done. It was published in 2004 so computers played a huge part in this comics formation. It was highly stylized and completely devoid of the artist's personal style. When I looked at it a few other artists or works came to mind. Like this and all those other works I thought of could have been done by the same person. On the other hand, I think the culture shined through character clothing.

The last set of works came from a design studio called "Liquid Comics". Large preliminary sketches were displayed. And there was a short video about the layering process of going from a pencil sketch to a full comic page. The illustrations on display were pen and ink over pencil. This was especially effective because you can ascertain the artist's style before it gets to the computer. Each work was a storyboard layout of a page. There were a few character explorations in storyboard form. There was a lot of stylistic variety in the works even from one artist. Demons and bakground figures took on an impressionist style while the main character was highly detailed and exaggerated as contemporary Asian animation does with elongated extremities and so forth. These artists used line in a very meaningful way: outlines, line character and thickness, contour lines as patterns to create forms. All of this is progressive. I don't see that kind of line use in other comics. And again being that these comics are about the deities of Indian culture, the characters and settings are fashioned appropriately (ie. apes dressed in cultural armor). Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the Liquid Comics section and was even inspired to try a little comic animation myself.