Comics have always been a respite for nerds like me. With this pandemic and social distancing, many of us have utilised our quarantine reading comics – old or new. The Indian comic industry is also booming and there’s a new entrant in town.
Indusverse, a new comic book company helmed by TVF founder, Arunabh Kumar, as the founder and CEO has released three titles, part of its first set of Comic books YearZero which was launched by Bollywood director Vasan Bala and actor Jaaved Jaafri lately. Supporting Kumar are Alok Sharma, the chief creative officer and Saumin Patel the chief design officer.
In 2016, Kumar met Sharma, who once headed Graphic India Comic Books and had even worked with the iconic Indian comic book brand-Raj Comics. Discovering their common passion for comics, Sharma introduced Kumar to his co-founder Saumin Patel, who is a noted artist and has worked with Bollywood directors like Sriram Raghawan, Ashutosh Gowarikar as well as International comic book brands like Image comics.
Shared Kumar, “It was my chance meeting with Sharma that we started discussing the Indian Comic Book culture and how it was almost dying. What I liked the most about Patel was his desire to create the best looking Comic books from India.”
Sharma and Patel go back over a decade and have been thinking of creating comic books. “Within just three years of meeting Kumar, we have three lovely books in our hands, which we are so proud of,” said Sharma. Patel, who is responsible for the artworks added, “No one nurtures and pushes a creative team like Kumar does and he makes your artistic ambitions come alive in the best possible way.”
The three titles of the YearZero set are – The Beginning, Outrage and Stunt.
The Beginning revolves around Simone is a normal millennial girl from Goa who loves Junk -Jewellery, Herb Based Make Up and hanging out with her Instagram Influencer friend Anisha, until one day when her life is turned upside down by enemies of her father, but only because she is destined for much more than a normal life. She is a female superhero character who then goes on to fight for nature.
This character was co-created together by Kumar and writer-actress Lianne Texeira Singh. Kumar met Singh in 2016 and discussed the idea of who bonded over their mutual love for comic books. She said to us, “I have always loved comic books and always wanted to write one, but the person who actually made it happen had to be Kumar, given his reputation of nurturing talents his whole life, starting with TVF. I wanted the character to represent the women of today with a strong voice. He was very supportive and gave me full freedom in finding the voice of this girl.“
Written by Kumar, Outrage, the second book from the series features Satya, a social media manager who works in a digital marketing agency which makes things go viral. He and his friend Amit make YouTube videos and aim to be the biggest YouTube creator until one day, when they encounter the dark side of social media and his life changes forever.
“The concept of the comic book started with several discussions. It took shape when I ended up setting up a comic book company as the full time CEO and decided to devote all the focus to it,” Kumar stated.
Penned by Sharma, Stunt on the other hand deals with Sameer, son of a deceased Bollywood stuntman who is wading through his college life, loneliness, infatuation and therapy when a sudden twist in fate brings him face to face with criminals, cops and a secret that has been brewing for a millennium.
Bala shared during the launch, “I loved Stunt by Indusverse, as it has the feel of rustic Mumbai along with premium artwork and I found the whole plot around a son of a deceased Stuntman from Bollywood very appealing. Indusverse books indeed are one of the coolest comic books from India.”
The artwork for The Beginning has been done by Rajesh Nagulakunda. For Outrage, it’s Hemant Kumar and by Patel for Stunt. The lettering for all the three books are done by Mandar Gangele and edited by Nupur Sharma. The book’s look and supplementary pages have been designed by Faizal Khan.
Indusverse is presently working on nine more titles, out of which, three will be sequels to the current books and the rest will be new ones, with new characters and new stories. The stories will be set in India within present time and space.
The books are available for sale now on the Indusverse website in both hardcopy and softcopy, and the team wishes to leverage and utilise the lockdown and social distancing to help people discover new stories and unique and innovative medium of storytelling which is taking the whole world with a storm.
As Kumar informed, “The upcoming projects would involve empowering as many artists as possible to create great art and books and help them grow and push this industry along with adaptation in as many media as possible.”
We wish Indusverse all the best.
