Why do I get so psyched up about comics?

I don’t have too much of love for funnybooks – Asterix and Tintin are fine, I finished reading them(the entire run available then, minus the new Asterix titles) way back when I was 12 , and now I don’t find them funny enough to evoke laughter ( I remember laughing loudly quite a lot while reading Asterix, forcing the librarian to go “Hush!!” a lot of times, although with an understanding smile on her face. ) Archies were ok, I ODed on them just after I passed my Class X exams, and a month later, I started to find all the stories the same. That went for all the rest of ’em funny-books – they were all stories about characters in a setting, but the stories were all fragments, if you know what I mean. Story A does not necessarily have to follow through into story B; like I said, the characters and the setting remains the same, but something that happened in story A has no bearing in a different storyline. I don’t remember Archie coming and asking Betty, “Hey! Remember the time when Veronica did so-and-so thing?”

Then there were the mandatory Indrajal and Amar Chitra Katha comics too. Even now, if I try to talk superheroes to some guy, the standard names that come out of it are Superman, Batman, Spiderman, He-Man(because of the DD cartoons. Bah! ), and then follows the Indrajal menagerie. Phantom. Mandrake. Flash Gordon. (I have not met too many Flash Gordon fans though, maybe no one except for a distant uncle ) Seems there was a time when Phantom comics were hip and really IN! If you didn’t read the latest Indrajal, you were a loser or you were lying. I had my fair share of purple-clad and top-hat wearing heroes too, courtesy my uncles’ collections. But again, the storylines refused to grow up. Or maybe I got pissed off at the declining quality of the artwork and stories. Every newspaper runs Phantom and Mandrake strips even now, with the Phantom rescuing some dame in distress from some tribal witchdoctor, or apprehending gun-runners, or maybe drug-smugglers, or, on a bad day, a feudal tyrant or two.

Amar Chitra Katha comics are genius, plain and simple. Anant Pai (and Ram Waeerkar, of course) deserves the Bharat Ratna more than anyone else, in my opinion, he has done more for Indian culture than any other psycho saffron-lover. But again, you can’t evolve too much with Indian mythology and history. I think ACK is doing the best thing, reprinting high-quality editions of its titles and maintaining a decent market. Stuff like this deserves to stay on, at least for my kids and my kids’ kids.

That was it for comics in India, at least.( I won’t even consider the likes of Chacha Chowdhary and Tauji and the rot churned out by Diamond Comics, with its bad English and equally horrid illustrations. This guy Pran, he has the temerity to show people’s heads being chopped off and stuff like that and claim these books are for children. What crap! ) Among the regional language stuff, the Hindi comics are ripoffs of Image and DC titles, with characters having weird names like Jozumba and Super Commando Dhruv battling it out in tights in Delhi. (Tights in Delhi !Awk!!! ) I loved just one character – Nagraj, I couldn’t help but love the way his origin was written, and even now I think of making a movie on Nagraj. Real eerie it would be, with snakes and all. I have read some Bangla comics, which had two of the most hilarious characters I ever met – Baatul the Great, a deadpan jock who’s strong enough to have bullets bouncing off his chest ( that’s what was featured on every cover of Baatul the Great comics, Baatul whistling while his scheming nephews shot bouncing bullets at him. ) and Haada-Bhooda, the Bangla equivalent of Dumb and Dumber. Brilliant, both of them.

Of course Target also had its Detective Moochwala (and Pooch) by Ajit Ninan, and Gardhab Das by Neelabh and Jayanto, and for a brief period of time, the awful Tegrat.

Again, the same problem with all the aforementioned titles is the same story-a-has-no-relation-to-story-B syndrome. After sometime, when you’ve read enough stories, you stop giving a damn about the next one. At that point of time, I wasn’t just looking for good stuff to read, I was looking for anything that could be read and enjoyed without being too predictable. Literary value be damned, at least give me something that can keep me at the edge of my seat and make me refuse to have dinner when I am reading it.

That’s when, at about the grand age of 15, I discovered a world that actually gave me what I wanted. I refer to, of course, the continuity-crazy world of DC, Marvel, and Euro-American comics in general.

Nine years later, I am so freaking caught up in the loop that here you are – it’s me in my office at 3:30 AM in the morning, waiting for an eBay bid on two comic-lots to get over. I need those comics. I have waited too long for them.

I am so freaking sleepy.

HP Lovecraft works available online here.

Some resolutions I made. I intend to stick to them, regardless of whatever happens.

1) No more CDs. Enough doth be enough. I already have too many. (A very vague concept, too many, but still….) The next original CD I buy is going to be, in all probability, Half Life 2, in October, and until then, NO CDs.

2) No watching bad movies. Considering that I spend money on autorickshaws, the actual movie, popcorn, chips, cold-drinks, and all that for a lousy concoction of half-baked ideas…I would rather sit at home and play NOLF or sit in the office and dream about eBay bids.

3) Buy books only if they are hard-to-come-by-again-types, or if they were on my Must-Buy list. No impulse buying. No salivating at every Elmore Leonard novel or Rolling Stone magazine I see. Comics are exempted, and I must make a mental note to go and get acquainted with the respective managers at Walden and Odyssey to find out they bring in new comics.

4) Less coffee. One cup every two days at the office. One trip to Barista’s/Coffee-Day every fortnight. Or less. No Qwiky’s. Qwiky’s sucks. More Coffee Day. Is cheaper.

5) A vitamin tablet per day. Must try to put on some weight.

6) No more trips to out-of-town cul-fests and quizzes. Absolutely NO NO NO.

If these were Mahabharata-type times, the skies would have opened by now, followed by a shower of flowers and assorted aromatic oils, accompanied by conch-shells and veenas. Maybe the gods would have changed my name or something.( Wonder if I would have a choice in it….love to have a name like Prometheus, or even Dracul. )

The earphones to my discman are busted. One of the phones doesn’t make any sound at all. That means, at the end of a month saturated with expenditure and needless buying, I need to spend some more cash.(Needless? Ha ha ha ha! )

For some funny reason, earphones never seem to last with me, even though I am a big fan of theirs. I mean, most people seem to have this problem of the earphones being too big or too small for the ears, they keep popping out ( never heard a case where they keep sliding in and got stuck inside the earhole, though.) I can’t handle headphones. The big ones give me a headache, plus, especially in the summer, they get my ears all hot and sweaty underneath. The smaller ones “leak”, you can’t put on anything at decent volume without half the world listening in, and face it, that tinny sound from someone else’s headphones is really too much, especially when you are in a public place and are talking to somebody. ( Believe it or not, I have civic sense, at least when it comes to music! ) But ok, like I said, the shelf-life of the average earphone-set decreases tremendously when I use them. Dunno why – my volume level doesn’t cross 6 (the average being 4).

I must have used some 4 sets of Aiwa earphones with my walkman, and now with the discie (does a word like “discie” exist?), this is the second pair to go bad, and both the sets were pretty good.

And I have my fads too. I can’t handle earphones with rubber muffs, they keep popping out. And no phones with equal left and right lengths for me, the best ones are those with a short left and a long right, perfect to wear around the neck.

I am using my blog to discuss designs of earphones. Jeezalouise!!!

Now where do I get the new pair from? Abids? Cheap, but won’t last too long. MW, Lifestyle, as usual doesn’t carry the ones I want in stock. Let’s see. Will have to check out some shops I know.

Thanks, rulinian, for the funny start to the week. :-)

Yesterday I kind of bunked office for the afternoon, to get some medicines for my mom. Rishi’s going home to Guwahati this weekend, and I am supposed to be sending stuff through him. Just to make sure how many tablets I need to buy, and which ones, I called up home. Mom was at home, and somehow, we ended up talking for nearly one and a half hours…with infrequent interruptions from my sis and would-be bro-in-law, both of whom also happened to be at Guwahati now.

Ma filled me in with a lot of gossip. :-) Hot news: my cousins are getting married. Some of them. Two girls and a guy, all of them being elder to me by a year….Hmmm, seems like yesterday, when I tripped Indraniba and broke her nose and specs and stayed hidden on the terrace the rest of the day. Had a BIG crush on the other cousin. All this when I was in the fifth standard. Crazy thing is, I haven’t met both of them for something like six years. Family feud. :-)

Medicines bought. Decided to check out the MR book exhibition at Panjagutta. My fault. Or my luck, depending on how you look at it. To think that a day ago, I was telling patrodz that I haven’t bought any books this month. Sigh!

William Gibson’s Neuromancer. (Finally!) Stephen KIng’s From a Buick Eight. (Finally!), Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors. (Finally! Finally!!!) Each at 80 rs apiece.

Also saw Two volumes of Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries on sale. Volume I wasn’t around, though. The guy convinced me that it will be available soon, and I convinced him that I would buy all three volumes when he gets them.

Now, at this critical juncture, a pattern begins to emerge. I got lucky here, I tell myself. That means, I tell myself again, I will get lucky at other places too. (Editor’s note: This line of reasoning may not be entirely logical, but whoever said I am logical? ) “So do we make the journey to Best Book Stall as well?”, we ask ourselves. “Naaaaah”, we replies. “Too friggin hot!” ( Editor’s note again: Contrary to popular belief, Beatzo’s inner urges are not completely in disharmony with the elements ) “Okie, Odyssey then?” “Yup, yup, yup!”

Right-o!

Odyssey yields more pleasant surprises. They have the trade paperback of Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that’s issues #1-6, with a neat blurb saying “Soon to be a major motion picture”. Wheeee! And it’s in the Sci-fi section. Two copies. I hope someone picks it up and gets hooked. The movie’s gonna be trash. I can feel it.

(Short enlightening, editorial note: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen happens to be the brainchild of a certain Mr Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. The premise: Victorian England. Four intrepid adventurers are brought together by the Diogenes Club, the secret arm of the British Government, in order to quell a threat against the Monarchy. The “Extraordinary gentlemen” happen to be an opium-addicted Allan Quartermain, Dr Henry Jekyll, whose fits of rage transform him into Hydeous you-know-who, Mr Hawley Griffin, presumed dead a long time ago, but of course, still alive and ..umm…invisible. Miss Wilhelmina Murray, who had had a scandalous affair with a foreign Count and keeps her throat hooded. An Indian Prince named Dakkar who calls himself the Latin equivalent of “No Name”. Together, they must defeat the a mysterious Oriental…and well, the movie’s going to be completely different from the comic, it seems. They have Americanized part of it, adding Tom Sawyer into the mix. Blah! The India-centric news is that Naseeruddin Shah plays Captain Nemo. The trade paperback collects the first six issues and is available for a paltry 500 rupees. )

The comics section in Odyssey is so sad!