Paper Moon

1. Sugreeve crashes and airplane right in the middle of Kishkindha, walks right through a hundred of Baali's soldiers, walks right the hell up to Baali himself and tells him, point blank to his face: "Neener-neener you can't kill me because your whole kindgom is watching and I'll be martyr." Dasgupta's version of Sugreeve has officially achieved that perfect balance of "scholarly peaceful statesman" and "delightfully flip badass" that Hanuman had in Valkimi's version.

2. Ravan tries to intimidate Sita with his "Blah blah blah I am the most powerful being in the world" speech. Sita stares him right in the eye and tells him, No, actually, she's a thousand times more powerful than he is (go Sita!), and that if Ravan were so powerful then he wouldn't have had to resort to trickery to abduct her. She also tells Ravan that she could destroy Lanka with her mind if she so chose to do so (this is true - just like she did with Panchvati), and that the only reason she isn't right now is because Ravan's maya garden is sedating her brain. Granted there's nothing she can do about that, but the point of her speech is, she has Ravan's number. This version of Sita is kind of awesome.

3. Jambwan's utter pwnage of Lakshman.

4. Lakshan crying uncle. Literally.

5. Rama and Jatayu's half-airborne battle. That was just fantastically rendered. Hats off to Siddharth Kotian.

Now, the sadness factor: According to an advertisement in this issue, the next issue of India Authentic would have been "Krishna." There's a very cute image of a baby Krishna printed beside an announcement of the third India Authentic trade, which may or may not happen now. Probably not.

There's a five-page excerpt from Kshatriya at the back of the issue. It looks potentially very fun. Oh well.

And of course there's also an advertisement for Stan Lee's probably-definitely-not-going-to-happen Virgin superhero project. Of course.

So I guess this is the end for Ramayan? Arrrrrrgh. Even if the final issue hadn't ended on a cliffhanger, still, arrrrrrrrgh. I am going to miss this series a lot.