Earlier this week, Amardeep introduced us to the hilarious Desi comedian Kumail Nanjiani. Little did I know till dinner conversation last night that Kumail had recently been comedy hijacked by the Accidental Racist (via Angry Asian Man).

The story goes like this - Kumail was scheduled to do a comedy set at the Slipper Room a couple weeks ago, when John Mayer (the musician) showed up unannounced to the show and jumped on the mic for an unscheduled five minute comedy performance… that turned into an awkward twenty minutes. Mayer’s comedy bit on the mic ate into Kumail’s scheduled performance time. Allright, fine. A famous musical douchebag takes the mic, and feels entitled to hog a comedy stage. To be expected, I guess. But then, he turned into a racist douchebag.

To hear Nanjiani tell the story, he was somewhat rattled after having had his set time cut by John Mayer, but things got awkward after Mayer referred to the Pakistan-born Kumail as “Kabul.” Whoops! Making matters even worse, Mayer apparently then began heckling Nanjiani onstage, telling him that “he looked like a brown guy but sounded like a white guy.” Double whoops! [vulture]

Check out an interview with Kumail below. They refer to John Mayer as the accidental racist at the 4:25 point.

Comedians say racist remarks all the time doing stand up. But I think what sets this apart is that, well frankly, Mayer isn’t a comedian and he hijacked a comedy set with pompous entitlement. Secondly, he interupted Kumail’s set to heckle him with racist comments.

In the words of Angry Asian Man, “Thinking you can be an actual standup comic is one thing, but interrupting another comic’s set, then making jokes about the Brown man? That’s racist! Stick to the music, Mayer (if you must).”

The latest Brown Girls comic made me cringe with unease when it popped up on my blogreader this week. Swiped from my latest blog addiction, Devis With Babies, this week’s Brown Girls episode made me wonder just how many similar conversations were had this election cycle.

As a SDMF (Single Desi Muslim Female) in my twenties, I’ve had my fair share of Brown Girls-type talk, usually over brunch and usually about boys. Many boys. Over the years, I’ve dated a Desi Hindu and a Black Muslim and I’ve always wondered with whom my parents would cringe less with — would their racial prejudice or Muslim orthodoxy take precedence? I’ve always thought they would be more accepting of a Muslim man, no matter what race, but my friends always begged to differ that racism prevailed over all. Of course, I would like to think that my parents would accept anyone that I would love, but we all know the desi Bradley effect there.

Truth is no boy over the years has met the bar to be introduced to my parents so I have no way to test this effect yet. But I am curious, if Obama is elected President, and my parents vote for him, will it be more acceptable for me to bring home a black man? If elected, will Obama essentially increase the desi dating pool of what boys us SDMFs can bring home? Single brown girls, what are your experiences with the Desi Dating Bradley Effect?

Way to go, Devis, on hitting the nail on the head on this one. I am Brown Girls comic latest biggest fan. Other Brown Girls Comics: Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 3.

Hari Kondabolu’s video Manoj is up in its entirety** on YouTube. It’s about 11 minutes long, and well worth a look:

I mentioned the short film and posted a few lines of the script a few months ago. It’s well done — my favorite bits include the “South Asian Studies” major, and the comedy club owner who wants Manoj to “Indian it up” with the curry and cows.

Having short films like this available might be especially good for young Desi comics starting out, as they try to figure out how to tread the line between intelligent ethnic comedy and self-hatred. That said, I think the film also shows that there really is a gray area there; aren’t many people (including many Indian Americans) still quite prepared to find a comedian like “Manoj” funny? (Paul’s comment in the earlier thread on this also illustrates how the path to the right kind of “Desi material” is not an easy one.) Another issue raised here (and I know everyone is tired of it) is the ABD/DBD divide, specifically the different relationships to Indian accents. I imagine some readers might watch this and think, “well, isn’t Hari himself actually using a fake version of the Indian accent here for comedic effect?”

(For those in the Washington DC area, Manoj will be screened publicly as part of the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival this Friday night at 7pm. Another obviously Desi short is Maya Anand’s Anjali, which screens on Sunday.)

** Hari emails me to say that the YouTube version is itself slightly edited. The real full version of the film (15 minutes) is at Vimeo, here.

Star Wars fans were excited to learn today that a new animated film based on the the Star Wars Universe will be released this August:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars makes its theatrical debut as an all-new, computer-generated feature film in August 2008, followed by a television series in the fall.

The new adventures in a galaxy far, far away apparently take place between the second and third Star Wars prequel films, similar to the Clone War series of the same name that ran between 2003 and 2005. Returning characters include Anakin Skywalker - who later becomes Darth Vader - along with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Padme Amidala. New heroes also join to battle familiar villains from the Star Wars prequels, such as Darth Sidious, Count Dooku, and General Grievous.

“I felt there were a lot more Star Wars stories left to tell,” said George Lucas, Star Wars creator and executive producer of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. “I was eager to start telling some of them through animation and, at the same time, push the art of animation forward…” [Link]

One of the major points covered in the press release is that a new female Jedi character will be introduced. She will serve as Anakin’s padawan (the way Anakin was Obi-wan’s padawan). The name of this young Jedi (who will of course eventually be hunted down and killed by Vader) is Ahsoka Tano:

… among the familiar characters like Obi-Wan, Anakin and Yoda is a mysterious new Padawan named Ahsoka Tano.

This young Togruta is eager to prove herself as a worthy Padawan to her bold Master, Anakin Skywalker. Able to wield a lightsaber and pilot a spacecraft with great talent, Ahsoka promises to become a worthy Jedi. [Link]

Tano joins a long list of other sci-fi desi characters. Mysterious is right though, because I can’t find much of a backstory on her yet. The name Ahsoka makes it seem like she is Indian (dot not feather) but the name Tano makes it seem like she is Indian (feather not dot). Or maybe, since this all happened a long long time ago, and in a considerably far off galaxy, ethnically ambiguous is ok. For those of you who like bad-ass ambiguously desi chicks, get your tee-shirt here. For those of you who like your animated warriors more traditional, there is always this.

Via SAJAForum, an…interesting political cartoon by Ted Rall which experiments with a provocative question: what if Republican threat to everything presidential candidate Mike Huckabee were a different sort of fundamentalist?

Here are the cartoonist’s own words regarding this work, from his blog:

Today’s cartoon responds to the generally respectful tone accorded Mike Huckabee, who does not believe in evolution and is therefore, by definition, a lunatic. [vague link]

I do appreciate Rall’s overarching point— Huckabee is allowed to be as batshit crazy as he wants to be because he’s on the fundamentalist fringe of my religion instead of any other one— since I’m no fan of the preacher man. It’s a very valid concern.

If the pop culture ref I used for my title didn’t float your yacht, try this one from tipster Raj, who single-handedly ruined my afternoon by sending us the bad news:

“Oh my God !! They killed Asok, you Bastards!!”

A moment of silence, please, for the adorable, paavam*, wide-eyed IIT alum who will no longer be available for scapegoating and abuse. Wait a second…maybe he’s better off away from Wally, the Pointy-haired Boss and everyone else he (got) worked (over) by.

Asok (pronounced “a-shook”) is an intern in the Dilbert comic strip. He is a brilliant graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology…Asok often solves difficult problems in a few keystrokes, but he is still naïve to the cruelties and politics of the business world. As a result, he often ends up being the scapegoat for his coworkers’ antics. Despite many years as an intern, and performing the functions of a senior engineer, Asok has been denied permission to be a regular employee and the usage of company resources for his work.

It has been mentioned that Asok once lived in the handicapped stall of the bathroom; he later moved to a storage facility (but was only allowed an hour leave for moving by the Pointy-Haired Boss). Asok is also trained to sleep only on national holidays, a trait that he allegedly carried over from his alma mater. In addition, he was trained during his time at the Indian Institute of Technology in telekinesis, using it once to vaporize an obnoxious Texan and more recently to stealthily steal donuts in a meeting, and remove asbestos from the office. As well, he has mentioned that he has the ability to reheat his tea by holding a cup to his forehead and think about fire. Asok appears to be a fan of Indian music: in the animated episode “Art” he is shown listening enthusiastically to a female vocalist singing in Hindi. Recently, the Pointy-Haired Boss announced that Asok died while on a test of a moon shuttle prototype. Asok had planned to reincarnate into his clone, unfortunately Carol had used the jar containing his DNA as a candy jar. It is not known how Asok will return. [viki]

If you are one of the three people reading this post who has not been exposed to the charm of Asok, read on:

Asok: You can use my key to open the box with its teeth.

Dilbert: To open this box I’ll need something stronger than a key.

Every year, at Ramadan, Hawk draws comics showing how his alter-ego is dealing with the challenges of fasting. These trippy comics are some of my favorites:

If you click on it, it’s the first in a sequence of Ramadan fasting themed strips.

Related posts: ‘Applegeeks’

It looks like Jughead wont be the only cartoon character wearing a crown in Riverdale any more, there’s a desi (probably ABD) character in Archie’s world (via UB). I’m happy that the character looks and sounds like the others, hopefully he wont be Hajji to Archie’s Johnny Quest.

That said, I actually associate Archie more with India than America. I rarely saw Archie in the USA, but when I went to India there was always a stack of Archie comics in my relatives’ houses in Delhi. Since I often got bored hanging around while the adults caught up on years of news, I spent many hours reading the escapades of Archie, Betty, Veronica, Reggie and Jughead. Just writing this brings back that India paper smell, and all of a sudden I’m 10 again and in my parents’ country, with all the ambivalence that entails.

…in a land not-at-all far away, there was a divisive issue that was almost as annoying as Paris Hilton— and just as ubiquitous, too.

According to the SAJAforum blog, yesterday, there was another cartoon on outsourcing (shocking! original! unexpected!).

This time, it’s Mother Goose & Grimm who are having their say. Well, more like Grimmy and Attila, but you know what I meant.

Do you think it’s funny?

Better yet, does anyone feel like getting creative the way our beloved DJ Drrrty Poonjabi did with the last cartoon I blogged about on this “hot topic”?

::

w00t Nina! Thanks for the prompt “revision”. :D

…that’s much better. Anyone else?

Questionable Content is a cult webcomic that is a cross between Friends and Seinfeld, except for Indie music snobs instead of mainstream audiences. It’s a “slice of life” story about 20-somethings in Northampton, Massachusetts. Recently, author and illustrator Jeph Jacques introduced Meena.

Meena works at the morgue, and flirts by making Ebola jokes. (This is realistic - I do know desi women in real life who flirt by making jokes about horrible diseases). She also has all the normal tribulations of a desi woman:

Yup. It’s slice of life, alright.

…via SAJAforum. This ran in the WSJ today, as we were still discussing caste on this blog. What excellent timing for a barely-mediocre cartoon.

What do you think? Over at SAJA, commenter Sendhil had the following to say, which left me giggling:

If this is from the WSJ’s “Pepper… and Salt” spot, it’s not unusual that it’s not funny. Those cartoons are funny less often than “Fred Bassett”. I have concluded that they must serve some other, hidden, purpose, like sending coded messages about tomorrow’s Dow performance to the members of the Trilateral Commission.

Fred Bassett? Ouch.

A raccoon, a turtle and a squirrel walk in to a bar…and nothin’. But this procyonid, testudine and rodent are a bit more useful than that—they’re amusing. Via Sajaforum:

Sigh. This Sanjaya free-existence is almost unbearable.

Come back, little papaya, with or without those bees. We long to know what directions your tresses could have taken next, what conditioner you use, and whether you ‘poo. No, really…do you? And where do you stand on hair oil? Perhaps we’ll never know…

Just to chime in on the same theme as Abhi’s post below, I get a kick out of these Sikh Park cartoons from SikhChic.com:

It has been a while since we’ve received any Badmash in our inboxes. That’s because the Badmash crew has gone on a semi-permanent hiatus (as each of them moves on to other endeavours). Two Sundays ago anyone watching King of the Hill may have noticed that the lead writing credit for the episode went to former Badmash-er Sanjay Shah. The plot involved Hank Hill as the protagonist hooligan in a Grand Theft Auto-style shoot-em-up game called Pro Pain. Only fans of the show (living in Texas this is required viewing) will get why the title of the video game is so funny.

Badmash, however, isn’t the only example of a periodic desi comic strip. Readers of India Currents might also be familiar with a strip titled Small Hands, inked by Bay Area artist Nidhi Chanani. Here is an example of her cute strip:

So, towards the end of my essay on acceptance, a commenter thoughtfully asked me to clarify what I meant by mentioning the fact that Nina Paley had lived in Kerala more recently than I had even visited it. Here’s what I said, which prompted her inquiry:

Nina has been to Kerala far more recently than I have; my last visit was back in the dark ages of 1989. In fact, she lived there, which is something I’ll probably never be able to claim. Who the hell am I or anyone else for that matter, to pull rank over that?

Did Nina’s stay in my parents’ home state give her carte blanche? No, of course it doesn’t. When I said that I wasn’t going to “pull rank”, I meant that I was going to acknowledge that others, even white others, might be more familiar with what everyone expects me to be an expert on, and because of that, I especially loathe the idea of playing the race card, i.e. I am desi, therefore I know more about (and/or get to restrict the unbrown from) my culture. If you read my post, you’ll know that I have a very intimate and poignant reason for why the part I italicized resonates with me.

I appreciate that Nagasai and Amitabh both opened a respectful dialogue about how they feel about Nina’s art but I also am known to be a fan of keeping threads on-topic, so I thought I’d spin this discussion off in to its own separate post, because the issues at play here are fascinating and significant.

What does Nina’s artwork mean to you?

What role does race play in all of this— how many of us would have the same issues we do if her name were Nina Patel vs. Nina Paley?

And how far do these “rules” go? Do some of you have a problem with the fact that I’m writing this post (i.e. that I’m a Christian, commenting on the appropriateness of Hindu imagery in art)? Inquiring and potentially bored mutineers want to know!

Red-white-and blue, flying across the sky with his underwear on the outside … it’s hard to think of anything more American than Superman, right? Manish alerts us to an interesting claim made in an article by the “IndiaFM News Bureau” that Superman is nothing more than a Kaavya’ed Hanuman:

Word is that, that the original creators Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel were inspired from none other than the Indian mythological hero Hanuman and that is how Superman got his flying powers. [Link]

Sure there are some similarities between the two fictional characters: neither is human, they’re both super-strong, they can both fly, and both have names than end in -man. But that’s it, really. Much as I would love to claim Superman as desi, this claim makes as much sense as the claims that Vedic civilization had both airplanes and atomic weapons.

People (scholars even) have written a lot on the origins of Superman.You can find entire articles on this topic in the highly obscure internet source Wikipedia:

Because Siegal and Shuster were both Jewish it is thought that their creation was partly influenced by the Jewish legends of the Golem, a mythical being created to protect and serve the persecuted Jews of 16th century Prague and later revived in popular culture in reference to their suffering at the hands of Nazis in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Another influence could be Hugo Danner, the main character of the novel Gladiator by Philip Wylie. Danner has the same powers of the early Superman (as do many other pulp characters of the twenties and thirties)… However, the sources sited by Jerry Siegel himself were Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars and Tarzan, Johnston McCulley’s Zorro and E.C. Seegar’s Popeye. He also appears to have been influenced by Jack Williamson’s “The Girl From Mars.” [Link]

See - no reference to Hanuman made, ever. While it’s impossible to prove a negative (I cannot show definitively that they were not influenced by Hanuman), how would two Jewish kids in the 1930s know about Hanuman anyway? [And why would they need to know about Hanuman to come up with the idea of a flying hero? What, nobody in the west had ever thought of flying people before? This is after Peter Pan, for crying out loud.]

All of a sudden the desi comic book scene seems to be blowing up. It has led me to pose the timely question, “is the world ready for a brown Justice League?”

Let’s meet some of the candidates. First we have Sonic. No, not the hedgehog. This one is all woman as you can see. Sonic is featured in the new comic book series titled Guardian Heroes by Kevin Grevioux, who was one of the folks behind the movie Underworld.

There are three questions that immediately came to mind:

1) Does this woman workout at Manish’s gym in Mumbai?
2) What are the tunes she be spinning from those long fingered hands?
3) Does the oversized bindi have any special powers associated with it?

I’ve always loved comic books—actually, any illustrated book. It seems insane that you wouldn’t. Why wouldn’t you want words and pictures to work together, in harmony? But many people don’t. They think the pictures are a shortcut, that the words cheapen the images.

A new Cartoon Network series, Minoriteam, aims to be a sendup of racism. But it’s not clear whether it’s mocking stereotypes or just profiting off them. I’m going to assume the humor just doesn’t come across well in print:

‘By chutney, you’re right!’

Created by Adam de la Peña, Todd James and Peter Girardi — all alumni of the ribald Comedy Central puppet series “Crank Yankers” — “Minoriteam” is a provocative animated show that sends up bigotry. It makes its debut tomorrow night on Cartoon Network’s late-night “Adult Swim” block of animated shows…

Non-Stop is the alter ego of Dave Raj, an Indian, former professional skateboarder turned convenience store clerk who is incapable of being killed by firearms. After having been shot 235 times during various attempted robberies, his skin is saturated with lead, which serves as a bulletproof armor of sorts; when necessary, his skateboard morphs into a flying carpet. [Link]

If you’re keeping score at home, we have one half-naked, turbaned Indian convenience store clerk on a flying carpet, one Chinese laundry owner with a thick accent, one Mexican gardener who can’t speak English, one angry, promiscuous black man and one avaricious Jew. How subversive.

The team’s leader, Dr. Wang, is an Asian, wheelchair-bound mathematical genius with a freakishly large brain. He speaks with a heavy Chinese accent and is in the laundry business…

Landon K. Dutton, a black man awkwardly teaching women’s studies at Male University, turns into Fasto, the world’s fastest man. His extreme rage propels him to travel at breakneck speeds. When not fighting crime he spends his time “studying” the opposite sex; during one episode, it takes him only seconds to satisfy a roomful of Thai prostitutes.

Richard Escartin, a Mexican oil baron, trades his tailored suits and silk ties for a giant sombrero and a leaf blower when he becomes El Jefe, Minoriteam’s hardest working member. El Jefe’s blower is no ordinary garden tool. It can suck and blow with deadly force and rip holes through time and space. His kryptonite? Tequila. “I think a lot of people can relate to that,” Mr. de la Peña said.

Neil Horvitz may be a wimpy mail clerk in his early 20’s, but his alter ego, Jewcano, is a muscle-bound 62-year-old who sports an XXXL yarmulke and has all the power of the Jewish faith and a raging volcano. Watch him shoot molten lava from his wrists (move over, Spider-Man)…

Surely someone will be uncomfortable watching a Jewish superhero get aroused while chasing a giant glowing nickel, they said. “But who exactly will it offend?” Mr. de la Peña asked. “I have no idea…” [Link]

Applegeeks is an anime-style Web comic drawn by two desi students at University of Maryland, College Park, Mohammad ‘Hawk’ Haque and Ananth Panagariya. They got a shout-out in last week’s Newsweek for a potential book deal:

Haque

Panagariya

As a sign that they’re settling in, some of the parents of these twentysomethings are beginning to see that prestige can be measured in more than M.D.s. “In the end, if you do excel, you’re going to succeed in your field,” [Arvind Panagariya, an economics professor at Columbia University] concedes, referring to his 22-year-old son, whose Web comic Applegeeks is in negotiations to be published as a book. [Link]

It’s lushly drawn with mostly geek humor, but Haque occasionally throws in references to Islam and discrimination:

Mr. Squirrely - The squirrel with mysterious powers and the ability to communicate with Hawk. Possibly a delusion brought on by Hawk’s Ramadan fasting…

Jayce torturing Hawk during Ramadan. Ramadan is a Muslim holiday which calls for fasting. Hawk follows this tradition and during it, Jayce often teases him by eating immense portions of food. Mr. Squirrely’s first appearance is during one of Hawk’s fasts. [Link]

UMD is also the alma mater of Liberty Meadows creator Frank Cho. That’s at least three Asian-American cartoonists from one campus — must be something in the water. But both strips’ obsessions with cartoon vixens is classic geek.

Related post: Smashing icons

From time to time, Ennis and Vinod remind me of the awesomeness of the Secret Asian Man comic strip. They’re drawn by Boston artist Tak Toyoshima, and although only a few are specifically about desis, there are tons of parallels.

Jet Li and Aaliyah in ‘Romeo Must Die’

If Secret Asian Man hooked up with Angry Asian Man, we’d have Secret Angry Asian Men. And where you find Secret Angry Asian Men, mutiny hangs thick in the air. (Whereas around Fat Happy Asian Men, you find muttony hanging. Very different.)

Here at SM headquarters we have quite an intricate system for vetting which stories make it to our website. Most of our stories are unearthed by the army of ex test-monkeys (retired from military, space, and medical research) that we house in our basement. They are the ones who scour the internet all day and feed important stories to our bloggers, while we spend most of our time at our full-time jobs. We also have the tipline, by which dedicated readers send in tips. Later, in our conference room, we ask ourselves three main questions about a prospective post:

1. Can I do this story justice/am I knowledgeable and interested enough to write about it without sounding ignorant?
2. Does the story have an angle highlighting South Asians?
3. Does the story have an angle of interest to North Americans?

The reason you haven’t seen us post on this topic before is because not all of us were convinced that we could answer yes to all three questions. After attending the SAAN Conference this past weekend (which will be summarized in my next post), I have become convinced that we have missed the relevance this issue has to our community, and that the answer to all three questions is yes. I am speaking of course of the controversy surrounding a Danish newspaper’s decision to publish a picture of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb as his turban.

Arab foreign ministers have condemned the Danish government for failing to act against a newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
At the Arab League conference in Cairo, they said they were “surprised and discontented at the response”.

Islam forbids any depiction of Muhammad or of Allah.

The Jyllands-Posten newspaper published a series of 12 cartoons showing Muhammad, in one of which he appeared to have a bomb in his turban. [Link]

I see great irony in this situation that doesn’t seem to have registered in the press (as far as I know). Muslims around the world are protesting this cartoon (often violently) because it is forbidden in Islam to depict the Prophet, especially in such a vulgar manner as this. Muhammad, in his boundless wisdom, wanted to make sure that his image would never be used or treated as an idol, and that men would never worship him as one. In Christianity for example, many most sects now worship Christ as God, instead of seeing him as only a mortal prophet. It was the message of Islam, and not Muhammad the man, that was to better the world. By violently protesting this cartoon, it could be argued that Muslims around the world are acting as if an idol has been desecrated. Using violence to protest this “desecration” legitimizes that which the Prophet cautioned against in the first place. He has become an idol to be defended and avenged in the eyes of many.

Last night I went to the sold out Badmash Comedy Night in West Hollywood. The Badmash guys (Sanjay Shah, Sandeep Sood, Nimesh Patel, and Aron Bothman) are going to be putting on a recurring comedy night in LA (next one is on February 9th), which brings together both South Asian and non-South Asian comics. This is a smart mix. Audiences get tired of a whole night full of desi comedy, with only desi “insider” jokes. The comics end up competing with each other over who will use the same hackneyed “aunty joke” first. Some of the best new South Asian comics that perform here in LA are already moving away from such played-out routines. Their jokes are well balanced and appeal to a general audience, which is key for long term success. Badmash is trying to foster this new talent.

Continue reading this post to learn the sad real life story behind this picture

[The internet] has also allowed Sanjay Shah, 28, and his friends to find an audience unserved by traditional TV. For the last few years, their weekly South Asian-themed animations—like an Indian spoof of “The Simpsons” ‘s opening theme—have drawn millions of visitors to his site, Badmash.org. “I look at the Internet right now as the incubator, the RD department for traditional channels,” Shah says.

I actually attended the comedy night as “Press.” One problem. The batteries in my camera died just as the show began. THIS folks is why I am a mere blogger and not a journalist. I’d make a sorry excuse of a journalist. It was quite unfortunate, because none other than Sheetal Sheth was in the audience. The night was co-sponsored by Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, which was plugged throughout the night. Also performing was a surprise guest. Mr. Cleveland himself, Drew Carey, was in the house. His jokes are a lot dirtier in person than you would think from watching him on television. Comedian Jo Koy was on fire. Good stuff.

As much as I complain about life in LA, THIS is why I do like living here. Everyone desi you meet in LA has a thing that they do on the side. They have their main job, career, or way to pay the bills, and then they have their “side thing.” The truly brave ones make their “side thing” their main thing. I’ve always felt that life would suck unless you have “a side thing,” going at all times. You should, at all moments of your life, be pursuing something that you will probably fail at. Speaking of which…

A Singapore-based desi art studio is launching four new Indian comic books in India and Southeast Asia (thanks, Rage). The four titles are Bollywood, Mythology, Santa Banta & Trendy and Hawk.

“Focusing on the 25 million strong Indian diaspora, Illustrated Orchids started developing the comics based on Indian characters. Of course there is a huge market at home, but the Indian staying overseas always want to have something which can keep their kids attached to our culture.” [Link]

While the Mythology title looks like a higher-quality, manga-style competitor to Amar Chitra Katha, the Bollycomic looks like Archie come to life. Shah Rukh Khan would be Archie (but not Panjabi), Rani Mukherjee is Betty, Aishwarya Rai is Veronica, Aamir Khan is Jughead and plug-haired Salman Khan is definitely Reggie.

A lot of lame Sikh jokes revolve around Santa and Banta Singh, so it’s a bit surprising to see a sardar involved with that title.

More art after the jump.

Asok corrects the boss

In the latest Dilbert, Asok the intern puts the pointy-haired boss in his place.

I’ve often heard from uncle types that desis don’t advance up the U.S. corporate ladder because they’re bad at office politics. But business in the motherland is highly political. I think it’s partly that they’re unfamiliar with American office politics, and partly that many of the straight-arrow types emigrated precisely to get away from it.

‘The Boondocks,’ a leftist, angry-black-man comic drawn like anime, reeeeeeaches for a punchline. This is more puerile than its usual fare and conflates Hinduism with Islam, though it’s more a comment on the grandfather character’s bumbling.

Mohandas Gandhi’s hunger strikes have long been the object of derision in cultures without ascetic tradition. Churchill dismissing Gandhi as ‘nauseating’ and a ‘half-naked fakir’ wasn’t just the poisoned fruit of an embittered colonialist, it was also gut-level cultural revulsion which transcends political orientation. When Jon Stewart makes fun of ululating Arabs on the Daily Show, or show alumnus Stephen Colbert cracks a Gandhi starvation joke, they’re expressing culture clash. Personally, I draw the line at the Shi’as’ bloody self-flagellation during the Ashura festival and the self-mortifying skin hooks for the Thaipusam festival shown in the ‘Mundeyan To Bach Ke’ video (thanks, jeet).

But dissidents like Mandela have long gone on hunger strike, and many African countries are much poorer than India. The American shorthand for starvation used to be Ethiopian famine — why now Gandhi?

I blame Richard Attenborough. There’s nothing you can teach an American about what’s outside our borders that we can’t make fun of

In 2003, Maxim beat up an icon.

Related posts: Fatty fatwa, New evidence uncovered about Gandhi’s assassination, Promo’s pizza leaves bad taste in actor’s mouth, Gandhi didn’t wear Armani

Update: Ennis points out that pork chops are Southern food, like yams and greens. But pork is still laden with cultural connotations with which I’m sure Aaron McGruder is familiar, and he uses it for comic effect.

Both ‘Dilbert’ and ‘Doonesbury,’ two of the most popular comic strips in America, just ran desi topics on the same day. The new stereotypes: both kinder and more boring than the old.

As usual, India and first-genners loom larger on the cultural radar, at least among these blunt instruments of cultural critique, than the second gen:

Absent… personal interaction with South Asians, people’s perception of South Asia itself determines how they treat us. [Link]

Click the pictures see the full strips.

Fifteen years ago, I fell for an oddly-coiffed Belgian boy named Tintin. I was Anna-Johnny-come-lately; the object of my affection had been loved by people all over the world for 75 years. I met Tintin in India, where his English-language comic books have always been popular. Looks like the cub reporter who has starred in more than 120 million books 200 million books (Thanks, Avi) is about to make a whole new set of friends:

for the first time, DVDs and Video CDs (VCDs) of “Adventures of Tintin” have been launched in Hindi too…

Saibal Chatterjee, a media critic, says the move is driven by pure commercial sense.

“When you do something in English, you’re only reaching out to a certain number of people, a certain percentage of the audience,” he says.

Herge, the nom de plume of Georges Remi, Tintin’s creator, imagined up some charming friends for our boy with the unique hair. They included:

Tintin’s loyal dog and partner-in-adventure, Snowy, and Captain Haddock - famous for his love of whisky and colourful expletives

I guess some words just don’t translate well:

For the curious, Captain Haddock’s “blistering barnacles” translates unexpectedly as “bhadakte hue baingan” (literally, “angry aubergines”). “Thundering typhoons” comes out as “toofani lehren”.

It’s so strange, if Amazon.com were to compile a list of MY statistically improbable phrases, “barnacle” would be one of the anomalous words they’d notice— suddenly, I’m struck by one of those “eureka” moments which occurs when something I’ve always done has a new and logical explanation. ;)

You know the comic strip which still features a big guy named ‘Punjab’ with East Asian eyes, a genie turban and pirate earrings? Now it’s saving desis from the tsunami. Chutzpah, thy name is Annie:

But don’t worry — Daddy War-Rupees still blames ‘the crooked locals’:

Previous post here.

The late American astronaut Kalpana Chawla is the subject of the newest comic book (or graphic novel) in the Amar Chitra Katha series (thanks for the tip Cecilia).  The BBC reports:

The life and achievements of an Indian-American astronaut who died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003 has now been illustrated in comic form.

An Indian publishing house has released the comic book based on Kalpana Chawla, the first American female astronaut of Indian origin to have gone on a National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) mission…

“If Kalpana Chawla inspires even two more students to go out there and achieve what they are dreaming for, well, then that’s our job done really,” she said.

About 437 titles have been released under the comic series and 90 million copies sold.

That should be an interesting read.  I am curious as to how much fiction might be added into her real story to play to the young Indian audience that is most likely to pick up this book.  Likewise, I want to see how much nationalism might be displayed by the comic book character.  Bottom line though is whatever gets young kids interested in space and science is good to see.

Fifteen-year old Meghna Pithadia says her ambition is to become an astronaut.

She says a comic on Chawla’s life is a great way of introducing her to small children.

“They can come to know about her, what was her life, what was her history. It’s a good thing, they can learn from her.”

Nine-year old Sakina Machiswalla said she read a little of the comic book and realised that girls can do everything that boys can do.

“She wanted to become an astronaut and she went out there and became one. If boys can do it then so can girls. Now I have a goal that I must do something big in life.”

Editorial cartoonist Sandy Huffaker published this toon today:

Sure, maybe it’s a stereotype, but 9/11 changed everything. We really need to sock it to the bastards.

Well, we’ll do it sensitively. We’ve learned from our excesses.

“If I see someone (who) comes in that’s got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over,” [Louisiana Congressman] Cooksey said. [Link]

How people think subway bombers look:

How some of them actually look:

Here’s a Reaganesque guy in a suit:

That’s the Boston Strangler.

You can’t catch the black guy above by profiling those who ‘look Muslim.’ You couldn’t even get accurate racial ID before the bombings. To the confused masses, those who ‘look Muslim’ means those who ‘look Arab,’ which means Sikhs and other South Asians.

It works in reverse too: last month, a light-skinned man with brown hair was gunned down after being misidentified as South Asian.

At the subway station, you need to scan for the bombs, not the people.

The talented artist behind Ghee Happy just published a short graphic story in a new comic anthology with fellow Pixar employees (via Boing Boing). Sanjay Patel’s story, ‘Loopholes,’ is in an anthology called Afterworks. The coworkers call their venture E-Ville Press, named after Pixar’s Emeryville location. Patel is selling the anthology and a new T-shirt at Comic Con in San Diego, July 13-17:

In case you’re confused, the artwork suitable for toddlers is the one on the left. I figured that out all by myself despite, I swear, never having been to a comic book convention in my life.

Previous post here.

Amardeep directs our attention to the  Indian Superheroes page at the  International Catalogue of Superheroes. While it's no Museum of Black Superheroes, it goes alot further than just Indian Superman and the new Spiderman.   Among my favorites were Koushik, a cyborg spy working for "Research & Analytic Wing, the super-secret intelligence service of Indian Government." What boy wouldn't like a superhero like this:

During one mission, his right arm got severely injured and had to be amputated at the wrist. One genius scientist from the espionage service replaced it with a very special robotic arm. This robotic arm has many secret powers including being able to fire bullets (used as a gun in emergencies) and spraying paralyzing gas which can paralyze even an elephant for a few hours. It also has nails which he can extended out from the hand and use like claws. Those nails can also be shot at any object, like a double-edged knife. The arm can be used as a laser gun; has a hidden transmitter/receiver near the wrist; and is so flexible that when he wears a glove, nobody can make out that it is a robotic arm.

There is also Jumbu, about whom virtually nothing is known (Real Name: Unknown, Identity/Class: Unknown, Occupation: Unknown, Affiliations: Unknown, Enemies: Unknown, Known Relatives: None, Aliases: None, Base of Operations: Unknown, First Appearance: Unknown, Powers/Abilities: Unknown, History: Unknown) except that he is "One of the earliest Indian costumed superheroes." What his constume is, exactly, is very hard to tell. I also don't understand why he's wearing his chuddies on the outside of his tin cans, except that this is what happens when you take fashion advice jointly from Superman and the Hulk.

UPDATE: Check out the other 21 superheroes listed at the Indian Superheroes page including Chacha Chaudhary, Chacha-Bhatija, and Supremo. [I should have mentioned Chacha Chaudhary, but had no interest in any of the live action superheroes being discussed.] You can also go straight to the Raj Comics and Diamond Comics websites. There you can indulge in your Chacha Chaudhary nostalgia for RS 15 per comic.

Ultraliberal ‘toonista Ted Rall asks what a Parsi America would look like. Actually, that’s not really what he’s saying at all, but it’s fun to imagine a President Politicswalla.

Click here to read the whole thing.

Poon-jab? Can you say ign’ant throwback? This guy’s supposed to be some kind of Arab genie? And where’s his beard? It’s like some bad Borat sketch, only it’s syndicated throughout America. Today. In 2005.

Yeah, the Annie strip is retro, but so is Little Black Sambo.

Spiderman isn’t the only heeero taking a Bombay local to browntown. Two veteran comic book artists have launched a new comic called Vimanarama about a British Muslim from the tinderbox formerly known as Bradford (via Desi Flavor).

The fashionably-tousled Ali is slouching toward his inevitable arranged marriage, but his retro-hip persona perks up considerably when he finds that bride-to-be Sofia is a babe. Meanwhile, toddler Imran accidentally unleashes the Forces of Darkness, and not just in his diaper; it’s up to jolly Ali to save the world. It’s all very soapy, if not so very Lollywood.

Never letting cultural accuracy get in the way of the almighty pound, the artists are watering down the Muslim angle:

Although his research into the religion was extensive, the author says this won’t be evident in the comic, as all concepts have been translated to be accessible by all audiences. So ‘Allah’ is referred to in the text as God and ‘Hajj’ as pilgrimage… “Islam frowns on representational art and I’d imagine that for some sects comics are possibly the most blasphemous art form imaginable”, the Glaswegian told Newsarama.

Translation: I’ll take one hit comic, hold the hitman — make my just desserts fatwa-free. The comic fuses religions with a title from Hindu mythology and a lotus-and-multiple-arms motif on the first issue’s cover. The arms evoke Doc Oc, The Matrix and Japanese tentacle porn (or so I’m told), and the beetle-browed protagonist has a Gorillaz scowl. It’s a masala comic — they’ve outdone Lahore.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; and let’s not forget the comic book-inspired, unintentionally hilarious Lollywood effort International Gorillay.