India's Immortal Comic Books by Karline McLain

As Nandini Chandra observes in her book, The Classic Popular: Amar Chitra Katha, 1967-2007: Nor was the resemblance coincidental the first 10 issues of ACK featured translated editions of Classics Illustrated stories, initially published in eight languages. The series shared with the American Classics Illustrated an editorial mission to expose young readers to ‘great literature’ (or, at the very least, ‘real’ books), via the popular comic-book medium. ĭetermined to help Indian children become reacquainted with their own country’s history and heritage, Pai eventually convinced a local publisher, India Book House, to provide financial backing for his new educational comic-book series, Amar Chitra Katha. Olympus, and the children could answer that question! This is the trouble with our education system: children are getting alienated from their own culture’ (Pai, quoted in McLain, 2009: 24). But then a question came about the Greek gods on Mt.

I was disappointed, but I thought, well, that is from a long time ago. When they were asked, the students could not name the mother of Lord Ram. ‘In February 1967, my wife and I were visiting Delhi, and stopped the TV was on … and the program was a quiz featuring five students from St.

Pai’s own account of the creation of ACK is now well-known, and is frequently cited in most histories of Indian comics, such as this excerpt taken from Karline McLain’s India’s Immortal Comic Books: Gods, Kings and Other Heroes (2009): Although his name may be unfamiliar to many Western comic-book audience, ‘Uncle Pai’ (as he was known to generations of Indian children) occupies a significant place in the history of Indian comic-books, akin to that held by Osamu Tezuka in Japan, or Stan Lee in the United States, and is widely credited with launching India’s comic-book industry in the 1960s.Īnant Pai is best known for his creation of Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) (‘Immortal Picture Stories’), an epic series of comic-books that retold stories from Indian folklore and mythology, together with graphic narrative accounts of India’s turbulent history. The death of 81-year-old Anant Pai, in Mumbai, India, on 24 February 2011, was widely reported in the Indian news media (such as The Hindu newspaper), as well as international publications, including the online editions of the New York Times and The Washington Post.

India's Immortal Comic Books by Karline McLain