Having grown on a staple diet of Archies, Superman and our own Indian comics like Tinkle and Chandamama, many of us might have rued the paucity of desi comics for adults. Not anymore as Level 10 Comics, a Mumbai-based publication, has been doling out Jump, India’s first monthly comic anthology, since August. “As in Tinkle, we have created storylines and characters and have chapters on them,” begins Shreyas Srinivas, co-founder. Started in May 2010, Jump is targeted at 18-30-year-old men. Suhas Sundar, co-founder says that it’s not that they have consciously ignored the needs of the fairer sex. “Traditionally comics have been sought out only by men and hence this decision to customise the comic that way. We would only love it if women too like our offering,” he adds.
Stories on the following characters have graced the comic mag so far — Rabhas Incident (horror), Shaurya and Yumi (super heros), Batugaiden (folk), Daksh (dark hero), Odayan (martial arts) and Northern Song (fantasy). Priced at `100, the comic is also available in a digital manner, which can be downloaded from www.level10comics.com. “We plan to bring down the price and also circulate it in other cities, in order to make it more popular. For now, the comic in print form is available in Mumbai and other north Indian cities only,” says 28-year-old Srinivas. Jump can also be enjoyed via an app available for Vodafone, Tata Docomo, Apple and Nokia Ovi enabled mobiles.
Praises for the duo has been lavish — they won Bloomberg UTV’s The Pitch-The `5 Crore Challenge for the next big idea and tied with Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, for ‘Emerging Company of 2011’, organised by Indus Foundation. Level 10 Comics has a fully fledged in-house team that comes up with original themes and storylines. Agreeing that creating awareness about Jump forms a major chunk of their challenges, 29-year-old Sundar opines that new characters need a lot of patience and time to get there, especially considering that they are attempting something no one had dared to before. Relying mostly on word-of-mouth publicity, Jump has a strong presence in the social media networks like Twitter, Facebook and Orkut. “Fans only seem to be growing day by day,” beams Srinivas.
Having invested around half-a-million US dollars, thanks to angel investors Seedfund and Mumbai Angels, they are a long way from breaking even. Level 10 Comics currently has a team of 14. Right now they are working on a new fantasy theme titled ‘8 Metal Throne’, which will also be a video game. In the words of a fan, Subrato Baul, “The stories stay with you long after you finish reading.
— shilpa.vasudevan@newindianexpress.com
