HathyaSaiBaba wrote:


I'm shocked you mention Chandamama in the same breath as Champak, olo. Chandamama in spite of its very unhip name had the BEST stories going and was the least sugar coated of all the kiddy magazines.

I just meant they were all unanimously disliked, and the kids who were reading Tinkle would not read any other Indian mags. I only distinctly remember Gokulam in both tamil and english completely sucking ass. Chandamama and Chapak are only vague memories. Another kid magazine I remember was(is?) the friday supplement with the tamil daily Dina Malar. It had lots of comics and was pretty much my only source of comics based on tamil history. Wasn't hep and wasn't even as good as Tinkle then was, but my dad somehow felt my Tamil needed to be as good as my classmates and subscribed it for a couple of years in my late primary school years.

Tinkle ruled. I used to buy them at the 'Indian Store' in Detroit whenever we used to go there to buy Basmati rice. But the real awesome hauls used to happen on Devon Avenue in Chicago. Like Ravi, Shikari Shambu was my favourite with his KVLT hat and trademark moustache - I remember being fascinated by his eyes - or rather, the lack of them.


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Ram Waeerkar and V.B. Halbe were the star illustrators for Tinkle. Waeerkar did a lot more detail and he had a greater variety (he also did spectacular work on a lot of the mythologicals for ACK). But Halbe, especially in his work for Shikari Shambhu, would put in these little asides that would add to the humor quotient of the panels. For instance, in one of the Shambhu stories he shows Shambhu stalking about in the jungle. In one panel he sees a hare sleeping blissfully against a rock, and in the next, a tortoise beatifically moving forward. In another story, Shambhu and his wife are having a conversation while she is dusting the various animal trophies in the house, and the panel shows a bear trophy sneezing after she uses the duster on it.

And Chacko, I could well be wrong on this, but the few instances I saw of Sanjeev Waeerkar's work caused me to regard him as a VERY inferior Ram Waeerkar clone.

Here are some of my favorite main feature stories from Tinkle (not in order):

1. Three friends open a barber shop after gathering things from their houses (without leave, of course) and proceed to give totally sadistic haircuts to people.
2. The Mahabharata story where Bhima owns Bakasura. This was in the 1st issue, I think.
3. Japanese folk-tale where a little boy escapes from a mountain-witch using magic scrolls.
4. Two boys, saddened at the imminent sacrifice of the family buffalo try to teach it to dance. Halbe's best work and this story had me swallowing large lumps when I read it.
5. The Foolish Villagers of Moira, a Konkan-side story where the villagers are duped into thinking that they have increased the size of their church and moved it by pushing with their hands.

More as I recall.

Damn, that's some memory. My cousin in Bangalore was the Tinkle nerd and has them all collected in his attic - I think he stopped about 2 years ago when he turned 18. He'll be able to tell you about more of those stories.

He may have been too young for some of these, especially:

>>
2. The Mahabharata story where Bhima owns Bakasura. This was in the 1st issue, I think.

which is one of my fond memories, too.

ravenus wrote:
And Chacko, I could well be wrong on this, but the few instances I saw of Sanjeev Waeerkar's work caused me to regard him as a VERY inferior Ram Waeerkar clone.
Intriguing. I'm trying hard to remember WHAT cartoons Sanjeev had drawn that I based my judgement on, but coming up short. The internets doesn't seem to be granting me any immediate results either. I just remember liking the way his characters were drawn better (Apologies for claiming he was Ram's brother, reports indicate that he is his son).

For some reason or the other, I denied Ram Waeerkar his due and didn't think his drawings were all that great at the time. May have had to do with the fact that my Gulf cousins brought down copies of MAD magazine from time to time, so he was effectively competing against people like Mort Drucker, Jack Davis and Sergio Aragones, which is a no-win situation.

Used to buy target for years and must have dozens of copies.I remember an issue called birds of the himalayas which had a fanatastic pull out of birds and that regular article on basic programming. Awesome. Target had some totally mind blowing illustrators.

Champak was a ridiculous piece of trash. Tinkle was just about bearable for the occasional shikari shambu surreal adventures. Most of the suppandi and kalia the crow stories were rip offs.

Chandamama was totally out of this world. I think a very large part of my childhood imagination centered on the bizzare stories that appeared in it. I vaguely remember this episodic tale of Rahu and Ketu and all sorts of monsters with astounding illustrations. I think the chandamama's of the 80's for me will forever be the high watermark of comics. I dont think anything can even aspire to reach that kind of level these days.

Ajit Ninan, who still does cartoons for TOI and Mumbai Mirror, was awesome in Target.

This is the best memory test for all of us. Let's see what we can dig up :D

Suppandi/Shikari Shambu/Kalia the crow/Tantri the mantri never amused me as they grew formulaic and repetitive. I used to save that stuff for the very last.

Most of the stories were typically about greed or gluttony and how the jackal/vazier/crocodile/woman/man/farmer/king ends up paying for it. I never appreciated these stories and could distinguish easily between a good story and bad story by reading a page or two.

I can also visualise those Nutrine bonbon ads with that demented bucktoothed rabbit playing slide around a river of brown ooze which looked like shit but was supposed to be chocolate.
Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha were the only desi comics that made the grade. Tinkle was wierdly indic, where else would you have dosas as a key plot element?
In one story a male suitor goes to a prospective bride's household to have some dosas. He calculates the number of dosas made in his head while he licks his lips in anticipation, as the dosas make a SOAN SOAN! sound in the background. The mother in law has cooked the dosas on one side, so the suitor assumes incorrectly that ten dosas have been made, when only five have been.
Because of this faux pas, he ends up eating all the five dosas that have been made, leaving the prospective mother in law with a very poor impression of him as an individual.

Tinkle had a signature :s face with a highly pronounced S-like lip formation as the punchline to many a story where it was used to express dismay/shock/fail.

One of my favourite stories had this magical drum which would make an identical copy of whatever was put inside it. After an accidental discovery, the farmer's wife doubles the number of eggs/fruits much to their delight, then they put in jewels and other valuables to make clones of it, but in her greed the farmer accidentally stumbles into the drum and therefore the woman has to contend with two husbands. She saves the story by entering the drum, making a copy of herself. The story ends with everyone happily ever after, even though they were a bit greedy.

Hee yea, I remember those stories... the growing sense of horror in the little boy when he realizes that more and more dosas are disappearing (Dosas? I believe they were referred to as Pancakes and the boy's name was Pedro)...and that :S expression was typical Waeerkar, along with the "eyes and tongue popping out" thing he did to show astonishment/horror.

Kaalia and Mooshik were generally quite boring. I liked Dog Detective Ranjha too - I mainly recall the story where they investigate the case of a woman dancing with a severed head...actually, I can't say recall because one of the tinkle digests I have contains the story.