Indian is getting its presence felt at Comic Con!
This year’s Comic Con at San Diego which is slated to begin July 11 will see the launch ofMumbai Confidential, a 144 page, crime noir comic book series created by comic book writer and creator Saurav Mohapatra and artist and co-creator Vivek Shinde. The crime noir comic book / graphic novel will be published in a digital format (for iOS, Android , Kindle & the web) by Archaia Entertainment which will launch a new edition each month and the hard copy print edition will be published after 9 digital releases in March 2013.
Set in the 90’s, Mumbai Confidential is revolves around Arjun Kadam, a depressed drug addicted encounter cop .Arjun meets with an accident and slips into coma. In the accident which took place with Arjun, a little girl who sold flowers also got killed in the accident. After releasing from the coma state, Arjun develops a strong urge to find the people behind his accident. Mumbai Confidential moves through three timelines, the life of Kadam as a cop, the accident aftermath & the climax. Mumbai Confidential is aimed at mature viewers due to its strong language and violence.
Sharing about Mumbai Confidential, Saurav Mohapatra said, “, I believe crime-noir to be a universal genre & Mumbai is a unique prism for it. Mumbai Confidential started as passion project. I and Vivek always wanted to watch something enthralling in the crime-noir comic series & this is how we thought to develop our own creation. Mumbai Confidential for me is James Ellroy doing Ab Tak Chhapan. I pitched Mumbai Confidential to my publisher Archaia as a James Ellroy story is set in Mumbai and it was appreciated.”
Vivek Shinde elaborated, “Colors are one of the crucial elements in any kind of visual medium. Immense research was executed for finalizing on the color scheme for Mumbai Confidential. Saurav and I mutually froze on a style that had a surreal yet real feel of Mumbai to it. We chose to rope in a black and white look at the beginning of the story and later divided colors according to the various timelines, mood graphs featured in the book. We preferred to go for a monochromatic look that will change as per the situation. The average amount of time I took to finish coloring one page is one and a half day.
Mumbai Confidential is inspired from Ram Gopal Varma’s works, Shimit Amin’s Ab Tak Chhapan, Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday and Hong Kong crime flicks of John Woo, Johnny & Johnnie to. Saurav and Vivek were also impressed by seminal crime-noir comics like Frank Miller’s Sin City, Ed Brubaker’s Criminal, Brian Azarello’s 100 BULLETS and Greg Rucka’s Gotham Central.
Adding more on Mumbai Confidential, Saurav stated, “We believe in creating a book which we ourselves wish to read. Mumbai Confidential uses a hyper-realistic art style & I’d love to see MC get adapted someday into a Ghost in the Shell type animated movie. Mumbai Confidential took three years time span for its completion & it’s a great feeling to see MC be published at San Diego Comic Con International & I hope it kick starts more Indian creators to develop comics for a broader audience.”
Saurav Mohapatra, a BTECH from IIT Kharagpur has worked on scripts for comics including Shekhar Kapur’s Devi, Sadhu, Deepak Chopra’s India Authentic, Mumbai MacGuffin, Jimmy Zhingchak agent of Disco, for Virgin comics, and many more.
Vivek has worked on the art and of comic titles including the Snake Woman and Project Kalki of Virgin Comics. He has also created illustrations for, INX Networks, JWT India, JWT Dubai, Leo Burnett India, Leo Burnett Dubai, Bates 141, Creative land Asia, O&M.
Readers can connect to the official Face book page of Mumbai Confidential at:http://facebook.com/mumbaiconfidential
