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Panchatantra: The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma
In light of my previous post, I thought I'd take this opportunity to write about a Virgin comic that's actually really, really good.
So, Panchatantra. This would be that Virgin Comics kiddie series that I've been drooling over since it was first solicited back in February 2007, and then subsequently delayed oh, about a year. But it's finally here!
Panchatantra will be five issues long, and right now we're three down. And it's a lot of fun so far.
So, the story. We start with young Vishnu Sharma, a typical Indian teenage dork who's really into MMORPGs and other geeky stuff. He is not, however, so interested in the ancient copy of the Panchatantra that his grandfather leaves to him shortly after his death. Unfortunately, Vishnu is unable to feign disinterest for long, because one day a lion, a monkey, and a bull walk into his house and start talking to him. Oh crap. Turns out that Vishnu Sharma is a Guardian, with a capital G, and that he has a ton of magical responsibilities (*sigh*) and has to face a lot of danger (*siiigh*) in order to Fulfill His Destiny (TM). Vishnu is less than thrilled to hear this. He is REALLY less than thrilled, however, when Harry Potter shows up and tries to kill him.
No, seriously.
Turns out that Someone or Something is hunting down old stories and, well, killing them. Opposing this mysterious Someone-or-Something are the Panchatantra animals and a handful of others. They want Vishu on their side. Unfortunately, Vishnu soon meets a representative of "the enemy" as well, and he has a pretty compelling argument to get young Vishnu on his side instead. What will Vishnu choose?
So far this is a great comic - really fun, with great characters, and lots of imaginative romping around among old stories and fairytale worlds from across all sorts of different cultures and milieu. There is a certain amount of folklore savvy that's required in order to make sense of the story, however. In short, readers should probably brush up on their Panchatantra before diving into this comic, because there's some cultural knowledge that's just assumed by the comic, and a few things that just aren't explained to new readers. Fortunately, there's about a gazillion websites where you can find the entirey of the Panchatantra translated into English; just google, and ye shall find.
I really like the characters so far. One thing that pleasantly surprised me was what the writers did to the Monkey character. Basically, they made her a woman - and a terribly kick-ass woman, at that. Bandra the Monkey is, in this version, the leading general of the Lion's army, as well as his closest (and most outspoken) advisor. She gets some really cool action sequences and some of the snappiest dialogue. And I am very, very glad that the Monkey was re-gendered, because I remember way back in the day when I first read the solicit for the first issue, I was afraid that there were going to be no women characters at all. "Bull? Monkey? Lion? Vishnu?" I remember thinking. "But the Panchatantra animals are all men! Where are the women?!" Thank God for Bandra.
Another fantastic character is the Jackal, rather unimaginatively named Jack. He's a classic Magnificent Bastard and nobody is quite sure which side he's on, but everybody kind of wants to trust him... And he knows that, and he plays on that. And I just love his self-introduction: "Jack of all trades, of fine taste and immaculate pedigree, son of old Anubis himself. You've met some of my relatives, no doubt - the dog in Two Gents of Verona? The real hero in dear Mr. Forsyth's slightly overdone thriller? The wily coyote? Or his great-grandfather, the Aztec's Ueuecoyotl? No? Mr. Kipling's Tabaqui? Something more contemporary? Very well, the Anti-Christ's mother in The Omen - my niece."
Awesome.
The central villain, whose face has not yet been revealed as of issue #3, is named Cameo. Cameo is, in the words of one character, "the second brother, the last-but-one suitor, the hero's neighbor, Sherlock Holmes' drug dealer, Quixote's blacksmith, Pollyanna's dentist." You get the picture. Cameo gains the ability to enter the real world, which in turn lets him enter any storyworld that he wants (since all storyworlds are connected to the real world). He's spent years traveling through every story that he could, which makes him a formidable opponent for Vishnu Sharma. Cameo has learned fencing from Zorro and magic from Harry Potter. He's got King Kong and the Queen of Hearts on his side. He's a potentially scary guy, and we still haven't seen his face.
Vishnu is a great character as well. He's an everygeek, but he's not just a cipher. He's a complicated person who has realistic reactions to the insanity that he's suddenly confronted with. He's not always brave. He's not always heroic. In fact, he makes at least one really bad, selfish decision in the third issue of the series. But despite his flaws, he's still a character that we want to root for, and that's what counts.
Anyway, this is really good stuff. In what other comic will you find Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and the Cheshire Cat in a single panel together? Also, there's a fabulous Monty Python joke that's probably going to fly over the heads of Panchatantra's target audience, but whatever.
Panchatantra earns major points for having a young Indian hero as its star, and for having (so far) almost entirely non-white supporting characters. And I'm going to go ahead and count the Panchatantra animal characters, in their human forms, as Indian. Because, well, they're from the Panchatantra (so they're kind of Indian by default?), and at least two of them have Sanskrit names. Their skin tone varies, albeit none of them are as dark as Vishnu. Still, though, it's not a stretch to read any of them as Indian. They dress in kind of vague fantasty-Indian clothes, but... Hmmm, I guess what's really throwing me is their strange hair colors and their skin tone, which tend to be the same as the Caucasian characters. Like I said, they're not as dark as Vishnu. (The exception being Bandra's depiction on the cover of the third issue, shown above. She usually has paler skin and red hair in the actual comic.) Then again, I think that their hair coloring is supposed to be reflective of their animal fur colors, which explains why three of them have red/gold hair and one of them has brown hair, but none of them have Vishnu's dark hair. Aaaaaah, maybe I'm reading too much into this. Pale-skinned and funky-haired though they may be, the animal-cum-human characters DO read as Indian, so I'm going to go ahead and count them as such.
Now for the bad. There is some unfortunately skeevy racial stuff going on in a few panels, most notably a particularly vomit-inducing depiction of Savage Injuns in one panel. And it's really bad. It's like, Peter Pan-bad. Also, in another panel, the entirety of Middle Eastern folklore is represented by Disney's Aladdin. That's very, very bad.
Also, no matter how amazingly awesome Bandra is, she's still the only female character with any lines so far. (Except for the swans in the first two pages of the first issue, who are killed right away and don't appear again.) Three issues into Panchatantra, and we still haven't even passed the first step of the Bechdel test. Ouch.
But maybe things will get better in the final two issues. We'll see.
EDIT: A review of the final two issues. I was right! Things did get better!
So, Panchatantra. This would be that Virgin Comics kiddie series that I've been drooling over since it was first solicited back in February 2007, and then subsequently delayed oh, about a year. But it's finally here!
Panchatantra will be five issues long, and right now we're three down. And it's a lot of fun so far.
So, the story. We start with young Vishnu Sharma, a typical Indian teenage dork who's really into MMORPGs and other geeky stuff. He is not, however, so interested in the ancient copy of the Panchatantra that his grandfather leaves to him shortly after his death. Unfortunately, Vishnu is unable to feign disinterest for long, because one day a lion, a monkey, and a bull walk into his house and start talking to him. Oh crap. Turns out that Vishnu Sharma is a Guardian, with a capital G, and that he has a ton of magical responsibilities (*sigh*) and has to face a lot of danger (*siiigh*) in order to Fulfill His Destiny (TM). Vishnu is less than thrilled to hear this. He is REALLY less than thrilled, however, when Harry Potter shows up and tries to kill him.
No, seriously.
Turns out that Someone or Something is hunting down old stories and, well, killing them. Opposing this mysterious Someone-or-Something are the Panchatantra animals and a handful of others. They want Vishu on their side. Unfortunately, Vishnu soon meets a representative of "the enemy" as well, and he has a pretty compelling argument to get young Vishnu on his side instead. What will Vishnu choose?
So far this is a great comic - really fun, with great characters, and lots of imaginative romping around among old stories and fairytale worlds from across all sorts of different cultures and milieu. There is a certain amount of folklore savvy that's required in order to make sense of the story, however. In short, readers should probably brush up on their Panchatantra before diving into this comic, because there's some cultural knowledge that's just assumed by the comic, and a few things that just aren't explained to new readers. Fortunately, there's about a gazillion websites where you can find the entirey of the Panchatantra translated into English; just google, and ye shall find.
I really like the characters so far. One thing that pleasantly surprised me was what the writers did to the Monkey character. Basically, they made her a woman - and a terribly kick-ass woman, at that. Bandra the Monkey is, in this version, the leading general of the Lion's army, as well as his closest (and most outspoken) advisor. She gets some really cool action sequences and some of the snappiest dialogue. And I am very, very glad that the Monkey was re-gendered, because I remember way back in the day when I first read the solicit for the first issue, I was afraid that there were going to be no women characters at all. "Bull? Monkey? Lion? Vishnu?" I remember thinking. "But the Panchatantra animals are all men! Where are the women?!" Thank God for Bandra.
Another fantastic character is the Jackal, rather unimaginatively named Jack. He's a classic Magnificent Bastard and nobody is quite sure which side he's on, but everybody kind of wants to trust him... And he knows that, and he plays on that. And I just love his self-introduction: "Jack of all trades, of fine taste and immaculate pedigree, son of old Anubis himself. You've met some of my relatives, no doubt - the dog in Two Gents of Verona? The real hero in dear Mr. Forsyth's slightly overdone thriller? The wily coyote? Or his great-grandfather, the Aztec's Ueuecoyotl? No? Mr. Kipling's Tabaqui? Something more contemporary? Very well, the Anti-Christ's mother in The Omen - my niece."
Awesome.
The central villain, whose face has not yet been revealed as of issue #3, is named Cameo. Cameo is, in the words of one character, "the second brother, the last-but-one suitor, the hero's neighbor, Sherlock Holmes' drug dealer, Quixote's blacksmith, Pollyanna's dentist." You get the picture. Cameo gains the ability to enter the real world, which in turn lets him enter any storyworld that he wants (since all storyworlds are connected to the real world). He's spent years traveling through every story that he could, which makes him a formidable opponent for Vishnu Sharma. Cameo has learned fencing from Zorro and magic from Harry Potter. He's got King Kong and the Queen of Hearts on his side. He's a potentially scary guy, and we still haven't seen his face.
Vishnu is a great character as well. He's an everygeek, but he's not just a cipher. He's a complicated person who has realistic reactions to the insanity that he's suddenly confronted with. He's not always brave. He's not always heroic. In fact, he makes at least one really bad, selfish decision in the third issue of the series. But despite his flaws, he's still a character that we want to root for, and that's what counts.
Anyway, this is really good stuff. In what other comic will you find Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and the Cheshire Cat in a single panel together? Also, there's a fabulous Monty Python joke that's probably going to fly over the heads of Panchatantra's target audience, but whatever.
Panchatantra earns major points for having a young Indian hero as its star, and for having (so far) almost entirely non-white supporting characters. And I'm going to go ahead and count the Panchatantra animal characters, in their human forms, as Indian. Because, well, they're from the Panchatantra (so they're kind of Indian by default?), and at least two of them have Sanskrit names. Their skin tone varies, albeit none of them are as dark as Vishnu. Still, though, it's not a stretch to read any of them as Indian. They dress in kind of vague fantasty-Indian clothes, but... Hmmm, I guess what's really throwing me is their strange hair colors and their skin tone, which tend to be the same as the Caucasian characters. Like I said, they're not as dark as Vishnu. (The exception being Bandra's depiction on the cover of the third issue, shown above. She usually has paler skin and red hair in the actual comic.) Then again, I think that their hair coloring is supposed to be reflective of their animal fur colors, which explains why three of them have red/gold hair and one of them has brown hair, but none of them have Vishnu's dark hair. Aaaaaah, maybe I'm reading too much into this. Pale-skinned and funky-haired though they may be, the animal-cum-human characters DO read as Indian, so I'm going to go ahead and count them as such.
Now for the bad. There is some unfortunately skeevy racial stuff going on in a few panels, most notably a particularly vomit-inducing depiction of Savage Injuns in one panel. And it's really bad. It's like, Peter Pan-bad. Also, in another panel, the entirety of Middle Eastern folklore is represented by Disney's Aladdin. That's very, very bad.
Also, no matter how amazingly awesome Bandra is, she's still the only female character with any lines so far. (Except for the swans in the first two pages of the first issue, who are killed right away and don't appear again.) Three issues into Panchatantra, and we still haven't even passed the first step of the Bechdel test. Ouch.
But maybe things will get better in the final two issues. We'll see.
EDIT: A review of the final two issues. I was right! Things did get better!