Reading comics can be aardvark

Now, there aren’t too many comics that can claim to be parodies, especially of themselves

One of the longest running serious graphic novel series—as opposed to those of the superhero variety, though some of those are serious too—was Dave Sim’s Cerebus, which ran between 1977 and 2004.

The comics, collected in so-called phone book versions and independently published, are hard to come by—I have seen none in India and my copies were bought on Amazon many years ago—and while they are truly high-literature, the reason for their appearance in this column is a minor tale in itself.

I had originally planned to write this edition on the Hindi editions of Tintin—I have mixed feelings about these. One of the reasons I don’t particularly like the Hindi version of Tintin (disclaimer: I can read Hindi but it isn’t my favourite language and I have never ever read a work of fiction in Hindi unless you can count the Adventures of Prakash the Satrangi Peacock, a book I am currently reading out to my son so as to improve his Hindi) is because I think the effort to translate some of the things that I think untranslatable makes these comics look like parodies of themselves. Again, there are reasons I like the Tintin-in-Hindi books, but more on this in a later edition.

Full report here Mint