9th Art

While going through the Hindustan Times a couple of days back, I came across an article on India’s comic book industry. A statement about graphic novels being more popular than serialized comic books got me thinking about format viability in emerging markets.

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Most comic (and movie) buffs have heard of The Ghost in the Shell. Thus far, I had contented myself on just the animated movies (which are iconic in their own right). If you haven’t read the book but watched the movies, then you’re pretty well clued into the story. It doesn’t deviate from the book and I can only imagine the pains with which the screenplay for the animation was written since it does indeed put forth the philosophical aspects rather well.

The year is 2029. Cybernetic technology has successfully (to a large degree) moulded Man and Machine. Hands and legs can be easily replaced by more technically advanced limbs. Eyes can be replaced by electronic lenses that allow you to zoom or change visual medium (think Robocop). Even the brain can be downloaded and transferred to a human exoskeleton, called a Shell. With all human organs easily replicable, what’s left is the ‘Ghost’ of the person that existed earlier; call it a ‘consciousness’ if you will. This forms the basis for the title’s etymology. » Read the rest of this entry «

A few years back, I had picked up a graphic novel because it stood out boldly among others on the display shelf. A bald, cigarette-smoking tattooed man was standing on the edge of the roof of a skyscraper and looking up with a wicked smile. Even odder were the shades he wore: one lens was a circular red while the other was a rectangular green. I think, perhaps the reason I bought it was the title – which it shared with Irving Stone’s biography of Van Gogh – Lust for Life.

The very same day, I read it and made a mental note to get my hands on the entire series. Some time, after that, I did manage to get them all. Then, over a period of two days, I read 60 issues – an epic that had taken the author and artist 5 years to accomplish. That is how gripping Transmetropolitan is.

Created by Warren Ellis (author) and Darick Robertson (artist), Transmetropolitan is the story of a gonzo journalist in a dystopian liberal future where sex, drugs, violence and consumerism are rampant – ‘postcyberpunk’ to jargon lovers. » Read the rest of this entry «