Meeting Maniacs: Yogesh Chandekar and Saumin Patel (a.k.a masterminds of The Jungfrao Encounter!) + Preview Artwork!

Vinod... Agent Vinod.

We have a very special treat for you today everyone!

A one-on-one session with the brilliant creative team behind the awesome new The Jungfrau Encounter: An Agent Vinod Graphic Novel, which is a killer idea in that it does not tie-in directly to the movie but is an adventure all its own – a potential new side to franchising a character? We think it could be, so along with the interview we were lucky enough to get some brilliant art samples from the book.

(Yogesh Chandekar is the writer who cooked up this mad adventure and Saumin Patel is the brilliant artist who has so vividly brought it to life!)

1. Before we dive into the big comic news for which we're here today – would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you found yourself working in graphic story-telling and comics?

Yogesh Chandekar (Y.C) : I’m an ex-advertising professional who simply got bored and left the field in 2007 to join Virgin Comics. Six months later, Virgin shut shop abruptly leaving me without a job. I had no intention of going back to advertising, so I did some freelance writing for a

Meeting Maniacs: Bhanu Pratap!

First of all, a real thanks for taking out time and doing this interview. Being a hardcore fan, I'm just gonna hop on to my mission rather than being all gabby.

COMIC ADDICTS: I know many of our readers want to get right to questions about 'Munkey Thugs' and 'The Damned Book', but I think we should start by you telling us a little 'bout yourself.

BHANU PRATAP: Hey Anupam and Comic addicts, thanks for this interview. I am already feeling like a celebrity( I hope to make this interview controversial enough). But really, I am glad that you guys are making a platform as cool as this available to us, as creators and fans of the comic book medium.

Ok, I am Bhanu Pratap, a painter, comic book artist/writer, or cartoonist. I was born in Una, Himachal Pradesh, but brought up in Delhi. I am currently working out of New Delhi, working on a few group art exhibitions, and two- three comic projects(not counting the thousands I conjure up in my head everyday). And I do plan to do a lot of things in these mediums in the foreseeable future as well.

CA: You are both a writer and an illustrator. So with this in mind: who have been the major role models of your life?

BP: Is this the question where I get to totally be a fanboy and name all the artist heroes I have? Yes!!!

Well I can’t name them all here, can I?

Let me just try to name all the people who have helped me get to this point in life and as an artist.

First role model would be my elder brother, who inspired me to pick up pencil and draw Jambu (an old Indian robot superhero). Then artists/painters like Phil Hale, Francis bacon, Egon Schiele, Ashley Wood, Kent Williams, Euan Uglow, Andrew Wyeth, N.C. Wyeth. Mangakas like Naoki Urasawa, Katsuhiro Otomo, Taiyo matsumoto, Junji Ito, Atsushi Kaneko, Jiro Matsumoto (NSFW), Okama (NSFW). Paul Pope, Alberto Breccia, Hugo Pratt, Jose Munoz, J P Leon,

(Click to enlarge)

THE ALEX TOTH and THE JACK KIRBY, Moebius, Nicolas De Crecy, Nicolas Nemiri, Jason, DAVID MAZZUCHELLI, Guido Crepax (NSFW), Al Columbia... Damn it, the list goes on… maybe I can make a list and then you add it to the end note?

There are so many awesome inspiring artists/writers/ demigods out there waiting to be discovered by more and more comic book fans, and I would implore anybody who reads this to know about all these stalwarts of art history.

Oh and I would also like to point attention to sites like drawn.ca, conceptart.org and others like these as great places to find hidden gems of the art world.

Meeting Maniacs: Harsho Mohan Chattoraj

 ComicAddicts chats with H.M.C

(Click to enlarge the awesome-ness!)

So Harsho, tell us a a little bit about yourself.

Let’s see – I’m a comic book artist ( well, I fancifully refer to myself as a graphic novelist at times ) based in Kolkata. I’ve worked in other fields too, and still continue to do so, albeit to a lesser extent these days, as I try to give most of my work energy to my comic projects. I love watching movies and TV serials, listening to music and reading books ( my favourite authors would be Stephen King,. P.G.Wodehouse and John Mortimer ), and let’s not forget comics – I prefer them to books, actually.

The man himself.

How did you get your first break in this industry?

The first break in the comic strip zone ( and they’re the strips in the newspapers, not to be confused with comic books ) came pretty early for me – I had a cartoon column and a comic strip column in 2 supplements of ‘The Statesman’ newspaper in Kolkata. That was around 12 years back, if memory serves me right.

And my first comic book break was a project for a US-based client. The comic’s name was ‘GunMetal Blues’. Strangely enough, that 80-pager is yet to be published, whereas the ones following it got published rapidly, almost immediately after creation.

Can you share some of the biggest influences on your life?

I suppose you are referring to the influences on my life in the comic world… so lemme see – Mike Mignola , Lee Bermejo, Stuart Immonen, Tony Harris, Jae Lee, J.H.Williams III , Leinil Francis Yu . The list goes on and on, but these would be the toppers any day.

What first made you want to not just be an artist, but a comic-artist?

Yes, at the start, and till around 4 years back, I preferred to be a jack of all trades, but comics had been my mainstay always, even among those other ‘trades’. And 4 years back, when I returned to my home in Kolkata from my sojourn in Bangalore, I focused primarily on comics, trying to get better at it.