Messrs. Blink and Wincent are the new detectives in town, complete with fedora hats and trench coats. What’s interesting is that the quirky comic book sleuths, a la Dasan and Vijayan [of Nadodikattu and Co.] and Thomson and Thomson [of Tintin comics], can solve the mystery of the ‘eyes’ that have been watching a paranoid eye doctor, only with the help of the readers.
This one-of-a-kind ‘interactive comic’ in English, tentatively titled Blink and Wincent , is the brainchild of maverick, city-based graphic artist and animator Anand Sudheer Babu. “I have always been interested in comic books of the likes of Mickey Mouse and Friends and Amar Chitra Katha , and later, Japanese anime and manga comics with their varied content, which first opened my eyes to the possibilities of comics. As it is, I am a huge fan of animation, graphic arts, painting and sketching since my childhood days and I always had a dream to develop a comic of my own,” says the 25-year-old, who was, until recently, a director with a leading animation company in Technopark.
In fact, he was so enamoured of animation and creative arts that he made an animation movie when he was in class eight! And then shortly after he finished his schooling from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pattom, Anand plunged straight into doing what he loved, eschewing formal training. For the past several years now, before he moved on from the company, he had been developing a direct-to-television 2D animation movie themed on Kalaripayattu that has been picked up by Cartoon Network.
“Actually, the main idea behind Blink and Wincent is to attract young readers back into the world of print. It’s despairing to see them being constantly whisked away by digital books and gadgets,” says Anand.
Perhaps that is why Blink and Wincent is more than just a comic. Even as portly Wincent, his Mexican moustache twirling, and lanky Blink go in search of the mystery man, the readers can take part in the case too and literally investigate the ‘crime scenes’ along with the duo, i.e. open doors and cupboards for clues, pull down flaps, peek through secret windows... “There are umpteen interactive books online, but in print I’ve only seen such interactive stuff as flaps on birthday cards or books with foldable covers. I thought it would be interesting to make a printable comic book on those lines. On that note, the comic itself is inspired by moving images and the interactive nature of apps. Also, the only reason that the comic is in English is because that’s the language of comics that I am most familiar with,” says Anand. Therefore, on each panel on each page the readers have something to do, which carries the story forward. “It’s a fun, silly story, really; a sort of a teaser to a larger story that is in the works. Unlike Dasan and Vijayan or Thomson and Thomson, who all bumble along in a serious world, Blink and Wincent – the name is a play on the word ‘wince’– are clumsy sleuths in a whimsical world,” he adds.
Right now, Anand has printed just one sample copy of the comic.
“The concept of an interactive comic is all fine and dandy but there was also a question of whether it would work in mass print. All the flaps and cut outs, for instance, have to be attached or done by hand. It’s a time consuming process. A few publishers have already evinced interest in the project,” he says. This is only the first chapter of the story…
