Monday, October 28, 2013

Animated Porn Star.

CULTUREOCTOBER 27, 2013

An Animated Porn Star Is Changing Indian Views on Female Sexual LiberationComic Sutra!

In a country that has long had a troubled relationship to female sexuality, animated Indian porn star Savita Bhabhi might seem like an unlikely heroine. But the erotic-comics character, created online in 2008 by the UK businessman Puneet Agrawal, known as Deshmukh, has gained a massive following: two million people visit the site monthly, and an English-language version of Deshmukh’s animated movie starring Savi comes out next month. Her character is a tarty young housewife whose extramarital dalliances are nothing short of hardcore, with the same money shots and stock language you’d see in classic porn. But what’s different, for a country as patriarchal as India, is that Savi always calls the shots.
Courtesy of Kirtu.com
Savita in Shimla, November 11, 2009
 
It’s long way from the cultural imagery that has for decades shaped the relationship between women and sex in the Indian imagination. As a child growing up in 1970s Bombay, I found few stories more enthralling than that of Sita, the virtuous wife and heroine of the Hindu god Rama. Sita was abducted by the ten-headed demon king Ravana while she and Rama were in royal exile in the forest. Stories of the Indian epics came alive in Anant Pai’s wildly popular comic-book series Amar Chitra Katha (ACK), which Pai, a Times of India executive, created in 1967. The color-saturated comics illustrate bloody, romantic tales of love, longing, war, and honor from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
Sita was typical of the idealized, voluptuous women in the ACK series who lounged around in palaces or gardens waiting for their husbands. They wore glittery saris and shiny gold jewels, and had eyebrows arched like bird’s wings, thick black hair, and bare stomachs that narrowed above curvy hips. As for Sita, her husband enlists the help of the monkey god Hanuman, a war ensues, Rama kills Ravana, and the couple reunites. To prove her chastity, Sita steps into a fire and emerges unscathed.
But even though I loved the comic, I always wondered why Sita had to prove herself. As I got older, the modest, patrivratra-style sexuality of women in the ACK series bothered me. (Vatra is the vow a woman takes to worship her pati, or husband, like a god.) Happy as these women appeared, feeding deer and bathing in rivers, I imagine they must have been bored. They were demure until their husbands appeared. Then, in response, they became sexual beings and had a life again. They were always full of longing.
Courtesy of Chitra Ganesh
"Atlas," Chitra Ganesh, 2013
Take the ACK story of the Hindu saint Mirabai, a free spirit who devotes herself to a Krishna statue instead of to the man she marries. When her husband discovers her secret, he eventually throws her out and tells her to drown herself. Before she does, Krishna comes alive and holds her back. People flock to hear her songs, and her husband takes her home. After he dies, significantly, she refusesto throw herself on his funeral pyre. Here, I thought, was a powerful, self-possessed woman. (She dies alone.)
Savi, with her long hair and voluptuous body, invokes the sensual female protagonists of the ACK series—but with a sly, modern spin. “Arousing sexual excitement and moral anxiety with equal ease, Savita Bhabi straddles both continuity and change,” said Shohini Ghosh, professor of media at Jamia Millia University in New Delhi. India is a major consumer of porn. The international porn star, India-bornSunny Leone, has said that 60 percent of her revenue comes from India. And Savi is now firmly embedded as an icon in the landscape of sexual contradictions that define India today. Characters like Savi have helped to open up the conversation about freedom of sexual expression. When the government shut down Savi’s website in 2009 in the name of the IT Act, which outlaws “lascivious” electronic material, feminists, journalists, and other anti-censorship voices rallied around her in the press.
Courtesy of Diane Mehta
Amar Chitra Katha, Volume 504, 1970
 
As a role model, Savi isn’t the best judge of character—she entices teens, a bra salesman, and a terrorist—but she’s bossy, playful, provocative, and she gets what she wants. She has an orgy with three of her husband’s poker buddies just because she finds it sexy. But she is a self-possessed woman. Deshmukh told me he set out to show that sex is a two-way street, as well as to push society toward greater openness about female sexuality. “One of the reasons for creating Savita Bhabhi was to portray that Indian women have sexual desires too,” he said. “India is a country which is still sexually repressed, and to break the shackles, it is the women of India who are going to have to come out first.”
The conversation around female sexuality in India is still far from open. A 2012India Today sex poll of married couples with children suggests a more sexually progressive society compared to earlier surveys. But if you break down the numbers, it’s clear that women aren’t speaking up. In the survey, only 17 percent of women claimed to masturbate, 41 percent watch porn, 26 percent indulge in oral sex, 6 percent are voyeuristic, and 9 percent role-play. (The masturbation stat alone is suspicious: 71 percent of men masturbate, but only 17 percent of women have tried it? If 41 percent watch porn, is the figure still only 17 percent?) By that unlikely standard, Savita Bhabhi indulges herself in all kinds of things Indian women don’t: she enjoys orgies, she’s voyeuristic, she loves role-play.
Courtesy of Chitra Ganesh
"It All Came Flooding Through," Tales of Amnesia, 2008. 
In a country that gave us the Kama Sutra and has a 1.1 percent divorce rate, something clearly doesn’t add up. Aroon Purie, editor-in-chief the India Today, bizarrely claims that the 2011 survey’s discovery that women are faking headaches to avoid sex with their husbands means that “women were asserting their sexuality more firmly than before.” It says a lot about how women’s sexuality is viewed that this is considered cultural progress. We should be grateful for Savi if only because she stands to keep issues around women’s sexuality in the news.
Of course, there is a danger of confusing the world of representation with that of lived experience. While Savi certainly inverts the traditional, sensual female ACK protagonists with her coyly demanding sexpot stance, the gap between actual Indian women and the media’s portrayal of them is vast. In a country that puts such a high premium on tradition and marriage, sexually liberated, independent women are still looked at askance.
Brooklyn-based artist Chitra Ganesh, a 2012 Guggenheim fellow, has spent years riffing on the women in the ACK series in her art. She collages her ink drawings with original ACK images that she manipulates on the computer, and rewrites the text (“What is the common denominator of these traumas?”) poignantly, to express the daily miseries with which Indian women live. In her comic books “Tales from Amnesia” (2008) and “She: the Question…” (2012), women occupy the same epic settings but are disembodied, inflamed, three-breasted, half-naked, and headless or bloodied. “I wanted to touch on and maximize the kitsch or humor already in the form and to explore the femininity I noticed in ACK and other comics, where women are depicted relationally to men—as wives, daughters, or queens,” she said. “I wondered what it would be like to tell stories with women at the center, moving them from supporting roles to agents enacting their fantasies or conflicts.”
It’s the same question that India itself is facing today, still reeling from collective rage after the two brutal rape cases in Delhi and Bombay. How do you make women’s rights more central to India’s cultural identity, and how do you prevent violence by changing deep-rooted male ideas about women and sexuality? These comics are just one indicator of the cultural progress that India must make. One frame from Ganesh’s first comic book offers hope: “A series of successive illusions shattered the old country and swept it into the river,” it says.
Diane Mehta is a writer in Brooklyn. Follow her @DianeMehta.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Turner International’s Indian Cartoon Network Will Debut Stan Lee’s Indian Superhero, ‘Chakra: The Invincible’

Turner International’s Indian Cartoon Network Will Debut Stan Lee’s Indian Superhero, ‘Chakra: The Invincible’

Posted a day ago by 0
chakra-the-invincible
Coming to Cartoon Network and ToonsTV  in India this November is the debut of Stan Lee‘s (‘The Avengers‘) new superhero cartoon movie, ‘Chakra: The Invincible‘. This is Stan’s first take on an Indian superhero and we’ll see if he can live up to the expectations set by past creations such as ‘Spider-Man’.
To create Chakra, Lee’s company POW! Entertainment worked with Indian graphic novel publisher Liquid Comics to create the hero. According to Lee, “I am incredibly excited to be collaborating with my friends at Graphic India as we launch this great new, thrill-a-minute superhero saga named, Chakra: The Invincible, on Cartoon Network.”
Lee’s target is not only audiences in India but viewers from around the world. Within the story we follow Raju Rai, who is a young Indian boy living in Mumbai. Raju, with the help of his mentor Dr Singh, have developed a new technology that can activate the mystical chakras that are found in the body. They have put this new technology into a suit and when Raju wears it he has suddenly gained super powers that he plans to use in order to protect innocent from the dangers of the world and the supervillains the plague it.
With art by acclaimed Indian artist Jeevan J. Kang, the character design brought forth by Lee and Graphic India’ CEO Sharad Devarajan has been truly brought to life. Devarajan is excited about the project and feels that “Stan Lee is one of the most prolific storytellers in the world, and in the same way his previous characters are known by nearly every man, woman and child on the planet, we believe Chakra will captivate audiences from Boston to Beijing to Bangalore.”
High praise for one of the most recognized comic creator’s in the world and high hopes for what sounds like it could be an interesting new addition to the superhero genre. Will Chakra live up ot the hype? We’ll all find out on November when the made for TV movie is released!
Are you excited for a new creation by Stan Lee? Looking forward to seeing ‘Chakra: The Invincible’ in November? Sound off below!

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Stan Lee's Chakra

Comic Books

Stan Lee's New Superhero Fights for Truth, Justice, and the Indian Way


Stan Lee's New Superhero Fights for Truth, Justice, and the Indian Way
Photograph by Ringo Chiu/Corbis
Stan Lee, the comic book legend who co-created such enduring superheroes as Spider-Man and the X-Men, shared plans this week for his latest creation: an Indian superhero named Chakra.

Lee’s POW! Entertainment has joined forces with the Cartoon Network (TWX) and Graphic India—a comic book and animation company based in Bangalore—to produce Chakra: The Invincible, a 66-minute, made-for-TV movie that will premiere at the end of November on India’s Cartoon Network (available in just 34 million households, a small fraction of the country’s 1.27 billion population). The story follows Raju Rai, a boy living in Mumbai who’s given a magical body suit that activates his yogic chakras and gives him superpowers. In a statement, Lee promised that the “thrill-a-minute superhero saga” will “captivate audiences in India and around the world with his adventures.”
It’s not the world’s first superhero from the subcontinent. India has its own comic and superhero culture, with dozens of beloved characters, such as ParmanuSuper Commando Dhruva and Nagraj, who is so popular that he’s been called the Superman of India. What’s different about Chakra is that he’s the first original superhero from India marketed to a global audience: Americans can watchChakra: The Invincible in 2014, when the movie premieres on ToonsTV, a new online channel from Rovio Entertainment, creator of the Angry Birds franchise.
Jatin Varma, the founder of Comic Con India, credits Lee’s involvement for Chakra’s splashy debut. “It certainly is a big deal,” he says. “I hope we get to see more Indian characters marketed on an international scene.”
Until recently, there’s been a noticeable lack of Indian superheroes in U.S. comics and animated series, says Phil Hampton, a comic book marketing expert. “They’ve all been minor supporting characters. Comics companies are more likely to showcase a gay superhero than one of Indian heritage,” Hampton explains. “Possibly they’ve done their research, and an Indian superhero either wouldn’t sell or they’re not confident enough that they could portray such characters accurately enough, in line with their heritage, to satisfy readers.” Back in 2004, Marvel Comics attempted to court Indian readers with a character called Pavitr Prabhakar, an Indian version of Spider-Man who wore the familiar suit as well as a dhoti and curl-toed slippers. Hampton says it lasted just four issues.
Even if the world is ready for an Indian superhero, it’s debatable whether Stan Lee is the man to do it. He has created a lot of new characters over the past decade—for TV, comic books, and direct-to-DVD—and they’ve ranged from minor flops to huge embarrassments. Remember The Condor, a skateboarder-turned-superhero? OrThe Mighty 7? Or, lord help us, Stripperella, voiced by Pamela Anderson? The Governator, a planned 2012 animated series based on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political career, got only as far as a teaser-trailer before being unceremoniously dropped.
Lee’s biggest blunder, the National Hockey League’s Guardian Project, with 30 new personalized superheroes created by Lee for each NHL team, was such a monumental flop two years ago that Oxford Metrics Group, a British tech company that collaborated on the project, blamed its failure for an 80 percent drop in the company’s annual profit.
Even if Chakra were Lee’s greatest idea since inventing Iron Man, he still has an uphill battle ahead of him. T. Campbell, a veteran comic book writer, says it’s increasingly difficult to introduce new superheroes in an already oversaturated market. “You have to think past the American comic book, which is not very receptive to new ideas,” he says. “The Indian comics market is more fluid, but the market really hungry for new superhero characters is TV.” He points to SheZow, an animated series about a 12-year-old boy who transforms into a girl superhero, which premiered on the Hub channel in June. Since then, the struggling network, a joint venture of Hasbro (HAS) and Discovery Communications (DISCA), has seen big increases in its ratings, thanks in large part to controversy surroundingSheZow. “TV is where barriers really seem to get broken these days,” Campbell says.
That appears to be Lee’s strategy as well. Chakra was originally released as a digital comic book in April 2012, and while it got some media attention at the time, it was nothing like this week’s announcement of the forthcoming TV movie. Lee may have a master plan after all—or maybe, as he told me in a 2011 to promote that ill-fated NHL characters, he’s putting in the minimal amount of effort. “Coming up with characters is the easiest thing in the world,” he said. “People make it complicated for no reason.”
The now-90-year-old writer added: “I’m very proud of being a hack. It’s why I’ve lived as long as I have, I think.”

Sunday, October 13, 2013

First comic book store in Bandra,Mumbai-India

Bandra gets its first comic book store!

Friday, Oct 11, 2013, 11:31 IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA
Just when libraries were losing their charm to e-libraries and online stores, Bandra got its first comic bookstore!
A collection of Vimanika Comics
A collection of Vimanika Comics - Khushnum Bhandari/DNA
Comic book aficionados in the westcoast have something to look forward to! The queen of the suburbs, Bandra, just got its first comic book store. Vimanika Comics, known to have made heroes out of Indian mythological characters including Lord Shiva, Ganesha, Kalki, and Dashaavatar, launched its flagship store in Bandra last month.
Situated in a quiet by-lane in Bandra, the red-and-black interiors of the store are in keeping with Vimanika’s new logo. At first glance, you may feel that the 200 sq.ft. store does not do justice to the prolific brand, however, scan through the collection and you will be left spoiled for choice. With an old world charm to it, the store stocks comics and graphic novels for comic enthusiasts of all age groups. They also have T-shirts, framed posters, sketches, digital paintings, posters, canvas paintings, and other knick-knacks. “Though our target audience is between the age group of 12 to 40, our doors are open for all,” gushes Karan Vir Arora, the creative director and CEO, Vimanika Comics.
A fitting setting Bandra, often referred to as a ‘shopper’s paradise’, has its fair share of plush, huge glass-fronted stores selling designer wear as well as these hole-in-the-wall kind of stores selling quirky stuff in its innumerable by-lanes. Vimanika’s flagship store is situated in one such bustling by-lane, off Linking Road. Arora, the brain behind it, says, “The store is located in a family-owned property. I had the option of opening the store in a sprawling mall for which I would have had to cough up an exorbitant rent. But I chose this.” Quiz him on why he chose to have a store despite Vimanika’s strong online presence, and he replies, “My father and I had been wanting to open a comic store for the last one year. What better location than Bandra, which is such a rocking shopping hub? It will give people from Mumbai as well as nearby cities, like Pune, a chance to come visit us.”
Turning gods into superheroesThink of comic book superheroes and international superheroes like Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Wonder Woman, Superman, and Wolverine (to mention a few) throng the mind. At Vimanika Comics, however, the focus is on Indian superheroes. Ever since their inception in 2008, Vimanika has revamped and repackaged Indian mythological superheroes for the modern-day audience. Take their comics like The Legend Of Karna, in which the unfortunate hero of Mahabharata returns as a business tycoon, Dashaavatar, which talks about the ten different avatars of Lord Vishnu or the I Am Kalki series that addresses environmental concerns.
“Indian superheroes like Hanuman have often been side-lined. Few know that Superman has been inspired by Lord Hanuman,” says Arora. He believes that it was not just the scarcity of Indian comic companies that propelled this venture, but also his agenda of educating the youth around the world about Indian culture, heritage, and spiritual values, which was spurred by the need to share the art of narration and visualisation with the world, which his brother had indoctrinated in him from childhood. Their current titles include The Sixth: Legend of Karna, Moksha, I Am Kalki, and Shiva-The Legends of the Immortal and Arora candidly admits that the content of their comics is part-fiction and part-true—often borrowed from ancient texts.
While at the store, do not be surprised if you stumble upon Dave Ryan’s War Of Independence. “Of the 200 international superheroes in the book, the only Indian one to be featured is Karna,” says Arora. 
Fans galoreWestcoast resident Bhushan Prajapati became a fan of Vimanika Comics ever since he accidentally stumbled on their facebook page. A voracious reader and lover of the Vimanika titles, Prajapati has his own little Vimanika collection at home. “Indian mythology gets a whole new meaning with Karan Vir’s efforts. I think he is doing a brilliant job.”
Software developer and aspiring artisit, Sumit Sinha drove all the way from Pune for the store launch. Once at the store, Sinha waited anxiously for award-winning senior artist Amit Tayal to arrive just to get an autograph and left only after he had purchased all the new titles of Vimanika Comics. He says, “I love the Shiva comics. They are beautifully written and illustrated.” Animesh Pathak, another Vimanika fan, returned home armed with a huge collection of their titles along with an exclusive sketchbook, signed by Arora. 
Looking forwardVimanika has more in store for its fans. “In the next six months we are coming out with two new titles--one is on Devi Durga and the other is on Lord Ganesha,” confirms Arora. The store will also introduce new T-shirt designs along with polo neck T-shirts.
Source:-DNA

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Aghori-Mythologies With a Modern Twist

Mythologies With a Modern Twist

Having dared to think out-of- the-box, a brave new breed of publishers have revamped the modern Indian comics by adding a zing to flat storytelling and zoomed in on lesser- known aspects of Indian mythologies, making new pop-culture icons out of age-old characters.
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Shiva is no longer just a god, nor Ravan a mere villain.
Having dared to think out-of-the-box, a brave new breed of publishers have revamped the modern Indian comics by adding a zing to flat storytelling and zoomed in on lesser-known aspects of Indian mythologies, making new pop-culture icons out of age-old characters.
Not only youngsters, but veteran comic book fans are lapping up the current trend, where mythological characters with contemporary twists are acquiring a swashbuckling superhero-like stature in a departure from folklore of yore imparting moral lessons.
“Well in India, many of the smaller and newer publishers are moving away from the traditional mythological and historical storylines to more contemporary content. Most are solely focusing on a much older and mature audience,” Jatin Varma, founder of Comic Con India, said. Comic Con annually brings together stakeholders in the field for an exposition and conferences.
With the advent of web comics and graphic novels, comics are now part of the mainstream.
Vivek Goel, whose Holy Cow Entertainment churns out the popular Aghori andRavanayan series of graphic novels, points out children are more likely to take to mythologies if there’s more to the story and deviating from stereotype helps.
“If you need youngsters, teens, adults to get hooked on to mythology then you need to upgrade the same with better quality art, a changed perspective and non-stereotypic cradle to grave stories. Give them a different perspective of the characters and they will love it,” Goel said.
“For example Ravanayan is the Ramayana story from its villain’s perspective and his personal journey to become the biggest villain Hindu mythology has ever witnessed. Ravanayan is Ravan’s personal life story before the abduction of Sita,” Goel explained, adding that Aghori delves into the outlandish world of the sect of ascetics that children rarely read about.
It is not just the rehashed script that attracts the super-hero loving youngsters accustomed to the bright tones and stylized content of western comics juggernauts like Marvel and DC.
Bold and gritty, the illustrations in themselves are tempting enough. A storyscape dominated by rich colors, sharp brush strokes and angular features to provide a 3D-like effect is a successful tool to sway the average “Avengers” fan to Shiva and Vishnu.
“Our art is more global and 3D oriented...it’s more stylish. We put more effort in the research on our art and colors,” said Karan Vir Arora, CEO/Visionary of Vimanika Comics that brings out the top-selling I am Kalki and Shiva-Legends of the Immortal series.
Moreover, weaving the age-old formula of triumph of good over evil into a contemporary backdrop is a powerful tool to woo readers, and Vimanika has done just that.
While Kalki, the 10th reincarnation of Lord Vishnu, is known to slay the demons of corruption in the original, in his new look, he is an ordinary teenager in a modern city who hunts down demons by night.
“From experimenting with colors, narratives, styles, to dealing with issues that concern society, feminism, sexuality, religion and the like, the world of comics is no longer defined the way it was even some years ago,” said Sreejita Bose of StripTease, the e-magazine on comics.
While novels and webcomics are “interesting and swift” portals to disseminate stories on Indian culture and heritage to children, exaggerations of characters might lead to development of skewed concepts of right and wrong.
“It is not possible in our busy schedule to tell them stories. So these media do help. But on the other hand if the characters are too bold or exaggerated then it confuses the kids about what is right or wrong,” said Suchismita Ray Paul, sociologist and assistant professor at the Jogmaya Devi College here.
“But they are the most important way to teach them about good over evil,” Paul added.

source:-http://www.littleindia.com


Thursday, October 3, 2013

बॉस को मिला चाचा चौधरी का साथ

चाचा चौधरी
PR

चाचा चौधरी के ढेर सारे दीवाने हैं और वर्षों से यह कॉमिक किरदार लोगों का मनोरंजन करता चला आ रहा है। अक्षय कुमार की आने वाली फिल्म ‘बॉस’ और चाचा चौधरी की कॉमिक बुक में टाय-अप हुआ है। इसके तहत किताब का एक स्पेशल एडिशन हिंदी और अंग्रेजी में निकाला जा रहा है जिसका लांच अक्षय कुमार नई दिल्ली में करने वाले हैं। इसमें चाचा चौधरी के साथ बॉस भी नजर आएगा और दुश्मनों के छक्के ये दोनों मिलकर उड़ाएंगे। अक्षय कुमार से जब इस बारे में बात की गई तो उन्होंने कहा ‘चाचा चौधरी और साबू का मैं बचपन से फैन हूं। मैं अपने आपको सम्मानित महसूस कर रहा हूं कि मेरा बॉस का किरदार इन दोनों के साथ स्पेशल कॉमिक बुक में नजर आएगा।‘

Akshay Kumar to feature in comic book Chacha Chaudhary

Akshay Kumar to feature in comic book Chacha Chaudhary

We all have grown up reading one of the most popular comic books of India 'Chacha Chaudhary' which has become a cult brand & has sold over 10 million copies over the years!

For the first time in the history of Indian comic books, Chacha Chaudhary will have a tie-up with Bollywood, for Akshay Kumar's forthcoming film 'Boss'.

Akshay will feature in the special edition of the comic book.

Well! There is certain kind of similarity between Boss & Chacha Chaudhary, who is a middle class Indian, frail but very intelligent old man and helps people in distress by solving their problem, on the other hand our Boss -Akshay Kumar also helps people who are in trouble but in his own fun way.

This special edition of comic which will be printed in English & Hindi will be launched officially by Akshay Kumar in Delhi who has been a huge fan of this comic since his childhood days.

When quizzed Akshay about it, he excitedly said, "I have been a fan of Chacha Chaudhary and Sabu since my childhood. I feel honored that my character of Boss will now be featured alongside them in a special comic book."

The story is going to be new for this particular edition and will revolve around the theme of the comic where the Boss Akshay Kumar will join Chacha Chaudhary & help him fight out the enemies!

Produced by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, Cape Of Good Films and Ashwin Varde Productions Boss is all set to release this 16th October.