The Skull Rosary, a graphic retelling of Shiva’s darkest stories, whizzed past me in between the launch of The Ghost Hunters of Kurseong and completing Cult of Chaos. I couldn’t even tell my friends about it much, or think about how lovely the book turned out to be. I still quote it every now and then, because I experimented so much in that book and had such a great time creating it. (It also surprised me by winning a nomination for Best Writer in Comic Con India)
So it was great to be tagged to an article from King Viswa who writes for the Tamil edition of The Hindu. He compiled a list of top-ten graphic works in English and Tamil and claimed the graphic novel to be one of them. Over to him.
=========
The Best of the best: 2014’s Top 10 Sequential – Digital Graphic Novels and Sequential Art
Dear ComiRades,
Last Year was a fantastic one. Was reading so many lovely books.
When The Hindu (Indian Daily News Paper) proposed an idea about listing out a Top 10 Comics / Graphic Novels of the Year, I jumped up and agreed immediately. However there was a rider. Since the list is made in Tamil Nadu, we must have only Tamil & English books in the List. Since the List has to be published in the last Friday of 2014, we must get the list and the article well before Dec 20. Which meant that the books which were launched in the Mumbai Comic Con must be left out. So, we decided that the time frame must be set as Dec 2013 to Nov 2014. I have read more than 250 books and was helped by my friend’s brother (UK) and my college mate (US of A) to source out the books from the respective countries.
So, here is the List:
1. Tamil – Tex Willer – Italian Translation – Nil Gavani Sudu (Boselli + Mastantuano)
2. Tamil – XIII Mystery series – Franco Belgian – Viriyanin Virothi (Dorison Xavier + Ralph Meyer)
3. English – Indian – The Skull Rosary – Holy Cow Entertainment (Vivek Goel + Shweta Taneja)
4. English – Indian – World War One – Campfire Books (Alan Cowsil + Lalit Sharma)
5. English – Japanese manga – All You Need is Kill – Viz media (Hiroshi Sakuzasaka + Takeshi Obata)
6. English – Japanese Manga – Brave Dan – Digital Manga Guide (Osamu Tezuka)
7. English – British – Butterfly Gate – Improper Books (Benjamin Reed + Chris Wild goose)
8. English – British – Good Cop & Bad Cop – Rough Cut Comics (Jim Alexander + Luke Cooper)
9. English – American – The Sword & The Butterfly – Razor Wolf Entertainment (Mathias Wolf + Jim Jimenez)
10. English – Amercian – The Late Child & Other Animals – Fantagraphics (Marguerite Van Cook + James Romberger)
As this is the first year of doing the top 10 listing, there are no prizes. From next year onwards, will work out something memorable.
(This is prize enough, Viswa! Thanks.)