In Graphic Detail

When Bangaloreans Suhas Sundar and Shreyas Srinivas became friends at engineering college,they were bound by their love for comic books,not calculus.

When Bangaloreans Suhas Sundar and Shreyas Srinivas became friends at engineering college,they were bound by their love for comic books,not calculus. The two would skip classes and set out for old bookstores to buy comics. After college I went to the US,and Shreyas worked for an FMCG company. We lost touch, says Sundar,27. But the love for comic books remained. When the two met a few years later,they decided to start a company. Last August,Level 10 Comics took off in Bangalore,and last week they brought out the first issue of their monthly comic anthology Jump.

The name comes from the Japanese magazine Weekly Shonen Jump, says Sundar,who was drawn to manga in his teens. While the Japanese magazine inspired the duo to begin their own comic book,they are adamant that it will carry only indigenous content. Apart from mythological retelling,Indian comics have not explored indigenous themes. Level 10 takes global comics themes such as zombies,aliens,futuristic settings and high-paced action and delivers them in an Indian context, says Sundar.

The first anthology is proof of that: in Shaurya,the first of three stories,five teenagers with supernatural powers find themselves in a Mumbai B-school. They must overcome their personal differences to battle a global terrorist organisation. In Northern Song,Balas quest takes him into a land inhabited by rakshasas and yakshas. This is a homage to the mythological comic work done by Amar Chitra Katha, says Sundar. The final story,The Rabhas Incident,sees a deadly virus turning Bangalore into a zombie-land and a lone RAW agent fighting to find survivors.

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Level 10 comprises Sundar,Srinivas and a group of artists. Each story is conceptualised by a member of Level 10 Comics and then a storyboard evolves with inputs from others. The idea is to give every comic book enthusiast something they will love, says Sundar. All three stories are serialised over five volumes. The 82-page magazine comes for Rs 60.

We are working on two projects,Jump Independent and Jump Manga. In the first,we publish comics where its creators hold the rights to the work and the publisher only holds print rights, says Sundar. Jump Manga will explore seminal work in Indian manga. In every issue,we will have some frames devoted to it, says Sundar.

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