Last time we talked about independent comics was in October 2017 when Puncher Press, a comics collective, put up Zine Factory workshops during the sixth edition of Festival of Stories by Art In Transit. It invited artists to come, create and sell independent comics. Six months later, Bengaluru is hosting its first ever independent comics festival - Indie Comix Fest. The day-long event will see participation from 21 artists creating independent comics in and around the city. “We are going to talk about the art of comics along with its commerce. So, there is a platform for someone who approaches comics like an artwork,” says Amitabh Kumar, artist and faculty, Srishti School of Art and Design and Technology.
Puncher Press was floated jointly by Kumar, Madhav Nair and George Mathen (well-known graphic novelist best known as Appupen). “We also want to initiate a dialogue between comics and other disciplines like comics and gender, comics and politics to probe in which all contexts comics can exist in. It will be interesting to see a comic artist in collaboration with a musician, a theatre artiste. This time, we are launching an EP along with a comic,” emphasises Nair, also known as Dead The Duck.
CHENNAI,17/02/2013: Appupen at the LIT FOR LIFE programme on Sunday.Photo:R_Ragu
Indie Comix Festival aims to be a platform for independent comic artists creating comics on small scale. According to Nair, there is a need for one despite the presence of a full-fledged travelling comic festival, Comic Con. “It focuses on mainstream comics lot of which comes from outside. I am not saying that it is bad but what happens to the home-grown content? There is also very little awareness about comics in India so we are also trying to build an audience for it.”
Artists at the event
Panel discussions, launches, display and sale of comics by artists like Anpu Varkey, Sharan Kumar, Subodhika Malhotra, Nived , Sumitro, Sruti Menon, Praveen Yarramilli, Falah Faisal, Rahul Bhandare, H.A.N.D. Collective, Roshan.k, Boopathy Srinivasan, BlueJackal, Pith Bull, Dhruvan Gautham, Pagal Canvas, Nethra, Bharath Murthy, Dead the Duck, Vasvi Oza, Appupen and Rahil Mohsin. The money generated through sales will entirely go to the participants. Pagal Canvas is a collective of comic artists from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath. Coming to discussions, Garima Gupta from Kadak Collective - a group of eight graphic women artists from Bengaluru, Mumbai and London will talk about the collective preoccupation with gender. Padmini Ray Murray’s talk will focus on comics in digital space. Padmini is a faculty member at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology.
Karnataka : Bengaluru , 18/10/2016 . Artist Anpu Varkey in Bengaluru on October 18, 2016. Photo Bhagya Prakash K
The first Indie Comix Fest (ICF) was organised by Bharath Murthy in Mumbai last year which has now started to travel to other cities like Delhi and Bengaluru. Here, the ICF has collaborated with The Art in Transit project under Srishti Institute of Art Design and Technology, which has organised the festival.
Launch of anthologies
Two anthologies will be launched on the occassion — one on Cubbon Park and another on Bangalore. “Cubbon Park will have six to seven comics made during an Art In Transit edition and Bangalore is a compilation of stories we have collected about Bangalore,” says Nair.
(The Indie Comix Festival will take place at Rangoli Metro Station on May 20 from 10 am to 7 pm)
