BENGALURU: Rahil Mohsin is sure living his dream as a comic book creator. After having spent his childhood watching and drawing cartoons, nothing much has changed for him since he continues his hobby and even publishes it for others. The journey began with him being an avid comic book reader as a child, which led to a BA Honours in Animation later. Today, he has been a comic book creator for eight years and is all set to launch his fourth book, a comic series called Catdad & Supermom. The first issue of the same will be launched at Bengaluru Comic Con this year.
Looking back at the initial years, Mohsin recalls how in 2011 he was approached by Sufi Studios, a city-based Indian comic book publisher, with whom he went on to illustrate three graphic novels. Later, he moved to self publishing to create his own content and was successful in publishing his three one shots, called The Big Sheep, Kiss Kiss Blam Blam and Blame it on Rahil, respectively. “I realised that being an artist for hire wasn’t that difficult. But once you start publishing by yourself, there’s business along with promoting, printing and marketing at different conventions,” he told CE at Champaca Bookstore, Library, Café, where he conducted a creativity and imagination workshop for children.
His latest work, Catdad & Supermom, is a creation of Mohsin’s friend, a Florida-based independent comic book publisher named Robert Gregory. Ask Mohsin to describe the work and he says, “A group of silly superheroes with wholesome family entertainment where we teach kids about serious topics.” Entertaining and educative, the first issue of the series deals with the concept of bullying and how a kid imagines superheroes who teach them how to stand for himself and help people who are in need. “The characters were created by Robert Gregory and I have designed the characters artistically, and I also wrote the story and drew it in a comic format,” he added.
Comics are generally assumed to be targeted at teenagers and young adults. And as someone who ‘grew up on comics’, Mohsin knew he too wanted to work on comics for the same age group. “Since I am Bengaluru-based, I used to frequent the many second-hand bookstores of the city to buy my comics. Once I grew up, I realised most of the content was not kid-friendly. This is close to my heart as I used to work with kids as a schoolteacher before I started making comics. I wanted kids to have entertaining stories with superheroes and a lot of comedy in it; they also need to take something home it shouldn’t be just about entertainment. They need to have a message to carry along with them,” he explained.
Though he has just released a new book, Mohsin is already working on his next graphic novel series, a science fiction set in ’90s, with the working title of E.T Club.