orpheus78 had this interview meme on his Livejournal, in which he can ask a potential interviewee five questions, and those questions have to be answered on the latter’s Journal. I volunteered, and these are the five questions he asked me. Each question in itself would be fodder for single posts, but I have done my best to abstain from excessive verbosity.

1.What are the best and worst things about living in India?

The diversity. It’s like constantly being surprised by your surroundings. You travel to a place a few hundred miles away, and you find yourself in a locality that looks completely different, that has a different language, the food’s different – it’s like you are somewhere else altogether. Meeting people whose lifestyles are radically different from one another, and watching them get along. There’s just too much of this country to take in during one’s lifetime.

The worst thing about living in India is the tendency to “adjust” yourself to societal norms. I know that’s a problem everywhere, but more pronounced in India because of the volume of the population. You find yourself conforming to a lot of things just because it’s the acceptable thing to do, and not because you like doing it or would want to do it. It’s still a country where your future career would be decided by your parents and the people around you, and not by what you are interested in.

2.What do you think is the worst thing about being a collector of stuff, aside from the obvious two problems of spending too much money and running out of space?

Three things. Burning out. Running out of things to collect. The fact that my collection won’t be appreciated by my kids.

What worries me the most is that one fine day I might wake up and get the feeling that everything I own is worthless and does not deserve a bit of my attention, which for me is equivalent to burning out. Looking around for things to possess, that gives me the enthusiasm to look forward to every new day, and I do not want to lose that. I have begun collecting comics artwork because I had a scary thought last year – at the rate at which I was getting things, by the time I was thirty, I would own and read every comic I ever wanted. Original artwork would make it more challenging – I have a new set of goals in life now.

I constantly fear that my kids (that is, the progeny of me and my future wife) would be these gadget-crazy, coke-snorting, party-going animals who would think me a doddering old fool who has spent money on a bunch of useless artifacts. I have come out of that phase now. I will show those wretched ingrates who’s boss – I shall just gift my comics away to the first comicbook fan I find! (No donating to libraries, libraries in India are full of magpies who would rather lock book collections away than let people at them. Which is not a bad thing, really.)

3. What collectable have you spend the most time trying to acquire, and was it worth it when you finally got it?
This was the easiest to answer.

Before eBay, there was the humble Indian Book Store, where one could pick up scattered issues of comic series and try to make sense out of them. So it was with a miniseries called Batman: Black and White, which came out sometime in the nineties, with quirky stories related to Batman and his mythology, all of which were out-of-continuity, and written and illustrated by the best creators in the industry. You had everyone from Denny O’Neil to Katsuhiro Otomo to Simon Bisley to Brian Bolland to Neil Gaiman writing about Batman, and was it good or what!

I found issue 4 first, in 1997 in a bookstore in Guwahati. Issue 3 in 1998 in a dingy basement shop in Delhi, issue 2 in Hyderabad, in 2002, in a book-sale right next to my office. And I DIED looking for issue 1. It was nowhere to be found! I was tempted quite a few times to buy it on eBay, but refused to do so, out of the stubborn belief that I would find it someday, just like I found the other three issues.

Until I talk to a friend in Guwahati, and he casually mentions that among the comics he bought in a recent Book Fair, issue 1 of Batman:Black and White. It took a lot out of my Amazing Powers of Persuasion(tm) to get him to part with it. That, and a couple of issues of Ronin.

It was worth it, it was completely worth it. The Bruce Timm Two-Face story in the first issue alone made up for all the wait.

4. If you could ask Alan Moore one question, what would it be?

Now this question made me think a lot. Because there are a lot of questions I could ask Mr Moore that would get me a firm “no”. ( Examples that come to mind: “Would you have me for your son-in-law?”, “Can I come visit you sometime?”, “Could I kiss your fingers?”) or monosyllabic answers.

Hmm, sometime in the unforeseeable future, I would like to ask him this question, either in person or through mail. Pardon the long-windedness of the question, or the inherent conceit. Even though this *might* still get me a monosyllabic answer, it would at least make me happy to ask the question.

“Mr Moore, I am from India, and I have been part of this community that encourages comic reading and collecting throughout the country. We are organising the first comic-convention ever in India, and though I know that you do not frequent such events outside the UK, we would be honoured to have you as a guest here, and we promise you a good time and a lack of any autograph hounds during your stay. Would you be interested?”

5. What do you believe is the biggest misconception of you that people have?

That I spend too much money. Not really. I buy loads of stuff, true, but I rarely buy them at full price, or the price they retail for. I do not spend money on (what I inherently think are) stupid things – like full-price branded apparel, or shoes, or over-priced restaurants. $299 for an iPod, which will last only a couple of hundred battery cycles? Uh HUH! I would rather buy a Bill Sienkiewicz original page for the same price, and listen to music on my discman.

The second-biggest misconception people have is that I am obsessed, which is not really a misconception, because yes, I am obsessed. “Focussed” is the word I prefer, but I can live with obsessed, too. :-P

Without much ado, let’s plop ourselves right where we were the last time. Feel free to refresh your memory with this entry. Oh, fine, because I am a generous person ( and also because I know how lazy I can be when reading an LJ entry, I would NOT have clicked, heh heh), here’s the rundown so far: John Constantine, along with his compatriots Frank and Judith, and with Swamp Thing in tow, plan to prevent these harmless cavedwellers called the Brujeria from launching a peaceful, non-violent assault on humanity. On the way, Judith decapitates Frank, Constantine is captured by a guy whose face he cannot see ( heh heh, Pee Jay only) and Swampy is stuck between worlds. Judith vomits out her innards, Constantine near-drowns in a pool of mud, and a single flower changes a lot of well-laid plans. John is saved, and Judith becomes a crow that flies away, and all something bad is about to happen.

What happens next…

Just before lunchtime on Sunday, I got a call from my friend at MR Book stall. The RTC Crossroads exhibition has now moved to a place near Paradise Circle, and quite a bit of new books had come in. I went there in the evening and picked up Batman: A Death in the Family for 40 Rs, bwahahahaha. And it turned out to be a first printing, at that. Also found a copy of Batman: Strange Apparitions, a reprint of the classic Steve Englehart-Marshall Rogers-Walt Simonson run of the 1970’s for 100 Rs.

Yesterday, a colleague returned from the States, carrying with him four issues of Fables. Issues 5,6,8 and 9, and that brings me closer to completing my Fables run. I had picked up the first five issues at Bookworm for 20 Rs each, and issues 6-46, missing a couple of issues, for 31$ off ebay. These four issues my colleague brought, I had picked up seperately along with 2 Charlie Adlard original art pages – one of them from Marvel’s Hellfire Club, and the other from DC’s The Establishment. Now I had seen scans of the pages when I bought them, but nothing had prepared me for the vibrant art. The black and white inks leap at you from the page – it’s so flawlessly done that quite a few people from my office who saw the pages were unable to believe that these were not “printed” material. I had picked up these pages for quite cheap really – 16$ for one, and 12$ for the other. Charlie Adlard, by the way, is the current artist on the hugely-popular zombie series The Walking Dead.

Other recent eBay buys

(HUGE fricking images behind the lj-cut plz)

Obligatory intro: Alan Moore joined DC Comics in 1984. He was made to work on this series called Swamp Thing, a character created way back in 1972 and relaunched in 1982 – but about to be cancelled because of low sales. There was not much one could do with an angsty Swamp Monster but play the Frankenstein card – sympathetic human mind trapped in a monstrous body and all that. Nobody thought that the character had much potential. Nobody but Moore, who began his work with issue 20, with a story called “Loose Ends”, in which he wrapped up previous cliffhangers, and then launched into a series of storylines that destroyed comicbook conventions of the day and gave Swamp Thing a new lease of life. His 40-odd-issue body of work stands as an entity that is worshipped to this day by fans and professionals alike.

The first Alan Moore Swamp Thing story I read in my life was issue 34, ‘Rite of Spring’, published in a digest called The Best Stories from 1985. Yes, DC used to bring out digests too, and though the colour seperations were really terrible, I loved reading them, especially the Superman digests. This one was a compendium of stories from various titles, and what sold me completely was the picture of Ambush Bug on the cover. Ambush Bug was my favourite character back then, a completely wacked-out guy who got everyone fuming with his complete irreverence. For instance, there is a storyline in which Ambush Bug approaches every major character in the DCU with a proposal to join his superteam. In Batman’s case, it ends with The Bug squashed under the giant penny in the Batcave, and Batman with a thought balloon that shows him solving a crossword puzzle. “Lunatic (9, down)” and he fills up A-M-B-U-S-H-B-U-G in the blanks. Keith Giffen, the creator of Ambush Bug later went on to do the hilarious Justice League America series from the 1980’s, and runs on Lobo, of course. Oh blah, I digress again.

The story in ‘Rite of Spring’ was about Abby Cable and her love for Swampy, and the consummation of their relationship. Now remember, Swamp Thing is a plant ( there, I have spoilt issue 21 for you, muhuhahahahah!), so consummation is not as easy as you might think. The issue was COMPLETELY mindblowing – quite literally. I could understand the prose and make out that they were making out (*snicker* lame PJ of the day), but it was just too hallucinatory, the panel layouts were strange, the artwork was very jarring to my newly developed sequential art-senses used to the clean styles of Curt Swan and Paul Gulacy ( from Superman and Batman, respectively). The story ended with a very cool splash page showing Swampy and Abby kissing each other, and Abby almost overrun by plants. That image stuck in my mind, and not just because it was a kiss, mind you.

But the Moore effect struck me good and proper sometime in the winter of 1992. Having painfully obtained the grand sum of 75 Rs from my parents, I proceeded to the neighbourhood haunt for comics – Western Book Depot, Panbazar. There was also another shop – called Modern Book Depot, but I stayed away from it because the salesmen were really grouchy. Also, Western Book Depot used to get fresh comics from time to time. And luckily for me, they had a HUGE bundle of new comics waiting all for me. Slobber slobber slobber. I pounced on Legends issues 1 and 2, and also two stray Batman titles. And then I saw them. Four issues of Swamp Thing, with covers that promised much gibbering nightmares, issues 48, 49, 51, 52.

Finances in hand: 75 Rs. Price per comic = 15 Rs. This was…SACRIFICE TIME!

The Batman issues were default buys. (Word of advice: You DO NOT leave behind issues of Batman if you find them at any shop. The probability that a Batman fan will land up at the same shop within 24 hours is quite remarkably high.) That left the choice of whether I should buy one issue of Legends and two Swamp Things or two Legends and one Swampy. Now, let me clear things a bit – I was at that stage in life when Legends – a completely fight-dominated crossover involving Darkseid against all the heroes of the DC Universe would be my idea of meditative reading. Chances were, if I was reading meditative literature and you interrupted me, I would punch you in the face. I actually did punch a guy in school just because he tried to take a comic from me, but that’s another story.

BUT, the covers of the Swamp Thing issues, in particular issues 48 and 49, seduced me like Legends never could. Observe:

    
What sold me on issue 48 was the sight of the guy with the twisted face and the hand stitched up behind his back. I bought Legends issue 1, and left 2 behind, in the hope that nobody would come and buy issue 2 if they did not find issue 1. And I picked up both the Swamp Things. I was pretty sure issues 51 and 52 would be gone by the time I came back. but I was willing to take the chance. I just HAD to read both 48 and 49.

What happened next…

Post-V-For-Vendetta Blues