The
Ramayan is probably the first Indianized/desi superhero/superhuman
story we listen to or read in the early stages of our lives, a story
which instantly burns a long lasting circuit in the cache-memory part
of our brains. I guess the stellar significance of The Ramayan can be
felt by the fact that most of us develop the sense and the ideology
of right and wrong, good and evil, kind and cruel via The Ramayan and
throughout our lives we keep referring to these ideologies and
changing them according to our needs and demands, either consciously
or subconsciously.
Now
why I mention this very trivial information is to emphasize the level
of creativity and innovation that the people at Holy
Cow
have used while concocting RAVANAYAN. I mean they have taken probably
the most popular Indian reading material and completely changed the
position of the pieces to create an entirely new and extravagant
viewpoint. Truly Holy Cow has shown us the other side of the coin.
And with chapters 5 and 6, Ravanayan has reached a different level of
awesomeness altogether - both in terms of writing as well as the
artwork.
Now
getting down to business!
Chapter 5 begins in an auspicious sort
of way, bearing the image of the great Amaravati,
city of the omnipotent gods. The very image of the city signals that
a great battle, one which is on the lines of legendary battles like
“Perseus vs the Olympians”,
is about to commence. Thus a unique battle does take place, one where
the motive of Ravan is not to win, but to give the living and
immortals alike a glimpse of the power and the resilience of the
demon king and by doing so fulfilling an ulterior motive of making
friends who would eventually play their role in the fight against his
ultimate enemy. I felt that some more pages/panels showing Ravan
fighting and agitating the gods would have done a little more justice
to the whole point of depicting Ravan as the pain in the demigods’
asses, which couldn’t come across that well.
Where
one battle finishes another one begins - in the red corner we have
weighing in at 550 pounds, the son of Tadaka, the heinous demon:
Mareech!
And
in the blue corner, with a combined weight of 500 pounds we have the
young and restless, the brave and courageous, the vulture warriors:
Sampadi and Jatayu!
What
looks like a battle of mammoth proportions is cut short by the sudden
appearance of the dark lord himself. Here I have to mention that the
portrayal of Ravan is probably the best portrayal of the Lanka King
on paper that I have ever seen. It is diabolically beautiful and the
whole artistic interpretation is just epic. In fact all the artwork
in this issue is quite phenomenal and each and every character in the
Ravanayan universe has been interpreted in such a manner that all of
them really look cool, having the right modern touches and at the
same time not compromising on the usual motifs that help us relate to
them.
Now
what can I say about chapter 6, it has to be the best Ravanayan
chapter in the entire series. Each page of this chapter is a
masterstroke by itself. Starting with the gruesomely attractive
Kalkeya wars, the plot eventually trickles down to drawing a
brilliantly written and illustrated parallel existing in the
relationship between King Dashrath and Prince Ram, and between Ravan
and his son. The way in which this strange apparition has been
explored is just amazing and is the kind of stuff that makes a comic
geek’s day. Also the whole portion depicting the anecdote of Daanav
Maya is something new and certainly adds a great degree of freshness
to the issue.
At
the end it is very clear that Ravan is building his chess set and is
determined to play each move right whatever the cost may be and it is
here that I have a little issue with the writers. Now what started as
a different look at a classic tale has gradually inclined towards
just overly justifying Ravan and his actions and this I feel has
taken away a little from the basic premise of Ravanayan.
In all issue #4 was a great read having the almost perfect equilibrium of good plot and artwork. It deserves nothing less than a 9/10.
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