Comic Con Special Review : Daksh 1-4

Courtesy the fine people at Level 10 comics, the Indian comic book geek finally has something to hand the irritating buggers who follow the retarded notion of comic books being for kids. After the success of the first issue in the independent creator-owned edition of the Comic Jump anthology, and the subsequent excellent fan reception of the second issue, we now have our hands on the first four issues, thanks to the launch of the Daksh Graphic Novel at this year’s Comic Con India.


Without venturing into spoilers, the basic premise of Daksh can be described as that of redemption for the titular character, which sets up a nice personal struggle and opens the door for emphasis on character between all the high octane action and badass one-liners. Writer Shamik Dasgupta shows does appear to have a great vision for the world he has created with his co-collaborators. The introduction to hell and the basic origin story of Daksh remains one of the best sequences seen so far in Indian comics.

Birthed by the God of death Yama with a mortal woman, the character struggles to come to terms with his humanity, which leads him to fall in love with a human woman in hell, distracting him from his responsibilities as gatekeeper of hell and allowing a bunch of inmates of the likes of Stalin, Hitler and Nathuram Godse to escape to Earth. Exiled by Yama, Daksh seeks to seek out all the escaped inmates with the aid of hell escapee Junglee B and bring them back to hell.

The series has a very dark tone overall, and the ‘For Mature Readers only’ specification gels very well with the story. Some very mature dimensions of evil are explored, and without any of it looking shoehorned into the story. One criticism I personally had with the first two issues was the lack of character development, especially with Junglee seemingly acting more as a plot device than an actual character. All those apprehensions, however, do come to rest with the next two issues, where Junglee matches Daksh quip by quip. Another improvement with issues 3 and 4 is that we see the beginning of a build-up of sorts for a long-form overarching plot, which helps in adding a fair bit of continuity to the done in one stories the series has so successfully pulled off. The villains are handled very well, and no punches pulled while exploring all their dark twisted minds.

Handling art duties for the first issue, Biboswan Bose gives us a very fantastical look at hell, but leaves the Earth-based scenes in want of a little more bold lines. However, with Devmalya Pramanik taking over 2^nd issue onwards, brings plenty of grit into play, complimenting the tone of the script well. In my humble opinion, Calling Pramanik’s art style a grittier version of Carlos Pacheco’s would not be too much of a far cry.

With plenty more still to come, Daksh remains one of the most promising series the industry is putting out today, and can be seen as laying out the path for more mature content overall.

SCORE : 8.6 / 10