Anant Pai, popularly known as Uncle Pai, was an Indian educationalist and a pioneer in Indian comics. He is most famous as the creator of two comic book series viz. Amar Chitra Katha, which retold traditional Indian folk tales, mythological stories, and biographies of historical characters; and Tinkle, a children's anthology.
Chitrakatha are comics or graphic novels originating from India published in a number of Indian languages.
Amar Chitra Katha is an Indian comic book publisher, based in Mumbai, India. The company was founded in 1967 by Anant Pai. Most of its comics are based on religious legends and epics, historical figures and biographies, folktales and cultural stories.
India Book House Pvt. Limited (IBH) is an importer, distributor and publisher of books and magazines in India.
Thuppariyum Sambu is a detective short-story series in Tamil, written by Indian writer Devan in the early 20th century. The novel's protagonist is Sambu, a not-very-intelligent bank clerk in middle age, who solves difficult crime puzzles out of serendipity but is quick to explain as well as take credit. Sambu's character is sometimes considered to be a comical version of Sherlock Holmes.
Kalia the Crow is a cartoon character in the popular Indian monthly comic Tinkle. Kalia is a crow that usually features in strips of the Kalia the Crow series. Chamataka the jackal and his accomplice and friend Doob Doob the crocodile are usually featured desperately trying to catch two rabbits, Keechu and Meechu. However, the rabbits are always saved by the clever Kalia. Kalia also has a friend in the female crow named Bhoori.
Balarama is an Indian weekly comic magazine published by M. M. Publications, of Malayala Manorama Group from Kottayam, Kerala in Malayalam language. It is one of the most widely read children's magazines in India. Balarama celebrated its 50th year of publication in the year 2022.
Shikari Shambu is an Indian comics character created by Vasant Halbe and Luis Fernandes for the Tinkle magazine in 1983. Shikari Shambu is one of the characters of Tinkle.
Suppandi is a comic character who appears in Tinkle comics. Suppandi is typically a village simpleton and is still considered the most famous and loved among the characters appearing in Tinkle.
Ram Waeerkar was an Indian comics artist for the series Amar Chitra Katha, based on Indian mythology, history, and folklore. He illustrated the very first issue, 'Krishna' in 1969, and many others later. He was behind the art work for nearly 90 ACK titles. In the 1980s he was an illustrator for Tinkle, a magazine edited by Anant Pai. Here, he was the man behind the art of such iconic characters as Suppandi, Pyarelal, Nasruddin Hodja, Choru and Joru and many more. Suppandi's head was illustrated as flat as he was supposed to have no brains. Ram Waeerkar died in 2003, with comics on Chanakya and Vishwamitra as his last projects. His daughter Archana Amberkar has been an artist for Tinkle magazine ever since and his son Sanjiv Waeerkar too illustrated for Tinkle in the early 1990s.
C M. Vitankar was an illustrator who created several covers for the popular Indian comic book series Amar Chitra Katha, as well another lesser-known series Manoj Chitra Katha. He also worked in the Hindi film industry in Mumbai as a poster artist, according to Nandini Chandra, author of The Classic Popular: Amar Chitra Katha, 1967-2007. He did the artworks for different Amar Chitra Katha comics like 'Ganesha', 'Tales of Shiva', 'Arjuna', 'the Monkey and the Boy' and 'Karttikeya' edited and published by Anant Pai
Pratap Mullick was an Indian illustrator and comics artist. He was best known for illustrating Nagraj of Raj Comics which gained lot of popularity under him and was later handed to Anupam Sinha who made Nagraj an actual superhero. He worked for the Indian comic book series Amar Chitra Katha created by writer and editor Anant Pai. Mullick drew the first 50 issues of Nagraj from 1986 until 1995. He designed the comic-book character Supremo, who featured in a series published for two years in the 1980s.
Yusuf Lien also known as Yusuf Bangalorewala is an Indian book illustrator best known for his work on the Amar Chitra Katha comic book series, which deals with subjects from Indian myth, legend and history. His dream-like sensual work on the titles Tansen and Mirabai is admired by many who believe he had one of the most distinctive styles among the Amar Chitra Katha artists. According to researcher John Stratton Hawley, the Amar Chitra Katha staff took a 'nonsectarian pride' that the exquisite depictions of Krishna in Mirabai were the work of a Muslim artist, who as his editor Anant Pai described it, would be in tears as he drew his frames for the comic book. Yusuf also painted the image of the child Krishna seen on the cover of the comic book of the same name.
Arun Prasad is an historian specialised in the history of karnataka, a comics archivist and a pannapictagraphist. He is also a researcher, freelance writer and columnist on the heritage of Bangalore and presently the Project & Research Head of Discover Bengaluru, an organisation documenting the Bangalore city's heritage and history.
Mahabharata is a comic adaptation of the Indian epic poem Mahabharata. The 42-issue best-selling series by Amar Chitra Katha, Mumbai was illustrated by Dilip Kadam. The team of script writers included Kamala Chandrakant, TMP Nedungadi, Subba Rao, Yagya Sharma, Lopamudra, Mihir Lal Mitra, Sumona Roy, Mohan Swaminathan, Shubha Kandhekar and Margie Sastry.
N.M. Mohan (1949–2012) was an Indian comics writer, editor, magazine and advertisement designer, visualiser and architectural consultant. He is one of the pioneers of comic magazine publication in Malayalam and creator of a number of popular comics characters in Kerala. He served as the editor of the Malayalam comics Poompatta and Balarama.
Poompatta was a Malayalam children's magazine which started publishing in 1964. It was initially published by P. A. Warrier and later by Sithara Publications, Pai and Company (PAICO), Manorajyam Publications and Suryaprabha Publications. Poompatta under PAICO was the first Malayalam children's publisher to syndicate comics produced by India Book House and publish Amar Chitra Katha in Malayalam.
Mapui Kawlim is a superhero appearing in the Indian comic book Tinkle. It was created by Sean D'mello and artist Vineet Nair. It made its debut on the 35th anniversary issue of the comic book, issue number 639 released in November 2015. It is the first superhero from Mizoram, and the first female superhero from northeast India in the series of Tinkle. According to D'mello, the purpose was to "create awareness about the Northeast [northeast India]." The name "Mapui" is a popular pet name among the Mizo people. The character originates from Aizawl, the capital city of Mizoram. She acquires super flight and super strength from gadgets developed by her inventor-father.
Khyrunnisa A. is an Indian author of children's fiction, speaker, academic and columnist who also writes for adults. She created the comic book character 'Butterfingers'. The character first appeared in the Indian children's magazine Tinkle. Thirteen-year-old Amar Kishen, aka Butterfingers, now features in the eponymous Butterfingers series of novels and short story collections published by Puffin, the children's imprint of Penguin Random House India.
Aarthi Parthasarathy is an Indian filmmaker and webcomic creator. Having grown up in Mumbai and living in Bengaluru, Parthasarathy is known for creating the webcomic Royal Existentials and writing for the webcomic Urbanlore. Parthasarathy became part of feminist art collective Kadak in March 2016, where she has collaborated to create Personal (Cyber) Space and Aloe Vera and The Void.
