Fun is in the details – Shailaja Tripathi,THE HINDU

The independent comic scene is looking up in the city thanks to the efforts by artists. A slew of events, festivals and enterprising artists are providing a platform to those who want to connect with the audience. Mohit and Anand, tell us how they enabled creation without the pressures of the market, and pushed the boundaries of publishing, through Pagal Canvas, an independent comic collective. Edited excerpts from an interview:

On how it started

We started when Mohit and I were in the final year of BFA in a college of fine arts in Bangalore. Our main aim was for people in our college to have a source of communication, know what others are practising, and develop a habit of collaboration and book production. The quality of the produced books was quite good, and we decided to expand distribution. We now have our books in Bangalore and Delhi bookstores and other independent comic festivals.

The artists involved

As a collective, people who are involved in curating, designing, promotion and execution are Hrishitonoy Dutta, Bhuvana Vasanth, Anusha Vikram, Alok Ranjan, Prakruti Maitri, Mark Mathew, Siddhi Bapat, Samah Ayesha, Sidharth SN and Abhit Hegde.

The plan ahead

Right now we want to make Pagal Canvas a proper public art collective which works around stories, narratives and visuals and their development. We have science fiction stories where we are producing books, which are collaborations between writers and artists. Also, we regularly publish books in which we try to explore and develop visual storytelling. Our recent project was the postcard project, in which we had 22 artists, making five postcards each.

To make it accessible

We published our 21st book recently which was priced at ₹ 20. Our pricing is almost a part of our manifesto, which states that we only charge a small margin of our production cost, and use that amount in the production of another comic. So we never charge more than ₹ 10 or ₹ 20 of the original cost of printing. This way it is affordable for a variety of audience, and also makes our own printing practice experimental, in terms of how we can create better, yet cost effective comics. When we made Be Kind Rewind, our nine-foot long scroll comic, our cost went high so we did crowd funding. Now we still get to sell it at a rate which is affordable for students.

Subjects and style

We don’t have specific subjects or any style actually. Our main objective is to publish or work on ideas that have grown out of research, which have images with a unique identity to them, stories which are approachable and have a sense of accessibility, and if it offers a possibility for collaboration. We want to print books without any set approach and throw up a challenge of coming up with unique ways of printing and circulating.

In the pipeline

Currently we have a science fiction project, where we are curating collaborations between writers and artists, and going back to basics of photocopying comics, and trying to get circulation in markets of Bangalore, such as KR market and Chickpet. The works will also be translated into Kannada, Tamil and other languages spoken in the city. We are trying to get our comics to go beyond comic festivals and select bookstores.

(Pagal Canvas books are currently available in Goobe’s bookstore on Church Street, Bengaluru; Midland bookstore in Delhi; and the Indie Comix festival, a bi-annual comic fest for independent comic artists. Also, DM @pagalcanvas on Instagram to order.