Visual Vision and the Comic Life

Remember how every storybook in early years of schooling and pre-schooling times had an appealing picture that fascinated us. I always loved books with more pictures and found it hard to adapt to literature books in the later classes, which were picture less, heavy text laden long stories.

Picture of course is worth a thousand words and even when reading any of the best sellers we begin to visualize and take over 50 pages to have the character images in our head. Imagination is always visual if you notice and is never textual. Even to write a copy most of the times, we first play a visual scene in our head to tell the tale in words. Memories too come in images- snapshots of our life in the past.

Images rev up thoughts and sometimes it’s the other way round. Irrespective of which comes first, the visuals definitely make the whole story telling simpler. And this is where Comics and graphics come into play. A friend (Anshul, thanks man!) recently introduced me to comics, (yes I have never read any in my childhood) and I loved reading a 75 pager Romeo and Juliet published by Campfire, cut short, crisp and visual. And another one in the list was a 68 pager Leonardo Da Vinci again published by Campfire and I was in love and awe with the great artist, completely drawn to his life and mind-bent.

Also recently there may Graphic Novels based on hindi flicks that are seeing a prospective rise in demand. Though there always existed a market for the English ones. If you still have doubts on what are graphic novels and how they differ from comics, it’s simply a descriptive novel with graphics.

The Graphic Drama Spreads, an article in today’s Delhi Times, once again triggered my interest in comics and it’s good to know that comics are catching up trend with readers in India once again. So what if I missed reading Champak and Chacha Choudhary in childhood, I can still do it and cover up for not reading comics now.