Scribbled Sarcasm

Both artists are part of the growing culture that using the internet to express their cynicism and opinions about everything. The concept of creating comic strips online is not a new phenomenon worldwide. American web strips like xkcd and explosm have cult followings throughout the world. Since they all talk about US issues,Indian artists and writers realised that they need a space to satirise Indian topics too. Here,comics have been confined to columns in the newspaper and created by famous artists. Now,everyone has a say and the popularity has grown to an average of 30,000 readers per month for each of them.

Saad Akhtar began Fly You Fools,a hilarious Indian web comic,last year and is now a minor celebrity online. “People love to read mockery of everything around us,especially current issues and random situations that they can relate to,” says the 30-year-old.

While sarcastic remarks on current issues bring in a steady flow of viewers,it can also get you some violent reaction from the so called moral brigade. “I do get a lot of complaints from people who don’t like it if there’s foul language. But that’s how we talk and the internet has no censor board,” says creator of Brainstuck.com,Anshul Maheshwari.

Another artist to get criticised for one of her strips was Sapra,“When I created a comic about Baba Ramdev’s views of homosexuality,a lot of people got offended. At the same time it was also then that the popularity of the site grew,” says one of the few girls to have a strip lifeisacomicstrip.blogspot.com.

There are many ways to create a web comic,while some like Sapra use readymade software available online,Maheshwari actually draws them by hand and Akhtar uses a photo collage. With mediums like wordpress,maintaining a site is almost free,though it might be a while till they actually start getting some revenue. “To some extent we can say that Indian web comic people are celebrities already. When you hear the news of a popular Indian web comic being banned in an organisation because employees spend a lot of time there,you feel smug and happy,” Adhicary says.

Tinkle,Phantom and Archies are now passé. With an increasing amount of youngsters taking to the keyboard,mouse and Photoshop,it looks cynicism in images is here to stay.