Comics on your phone

Revisiting mythology is now cooler and easier. Just press a button and voila! There it is, flashing on your mobile screen.

Revisiting mythology is now cooler and easier. Just press a button and voila! There it is, flashing on your mobile screen. Vimanika Comics has already combined Indian mythology with a snazzy graphic novel format. To make these stories popular among youngsters, the graphic novels will now be available on mobile phones.

All of Vimanika's three titles can be downloaded — The Sixth that talks about the legend of Karna who returns as a business tycoon; Moksha, about Hanuman and Parashuram; and Dashaavatar that shows the 10 avatars of Lord Vishnu. Karan Vir Arora, managing director and editor-in-chief of Vimanika Comics, says, "We've tied up with this company called Zero Sum, which has made this possible. All the leading mobile service providers will enable their users to read the comic books on their phones."

He explains how it works: "You can get an application called Chhota Comics on your phone and download the entire comics for only ₹15." Once it's downloaded, one can save it on the application to read it whenever one wants to. "It works the same way as an online email account does. You just sign an account to stream the comics all the time, so it's there in your account. The data remains saved," says Arora.

The idea is to make it accessible to mobile users across India. "People who are on the move, and don't have the time to buy and read a book, should be able to read it on the go," reasons Arora. Vimanika will also start a webcomics soon.