In many ways,
Tinkle, the children's comic from
India at which we've been peeking, reminds me of old
UK children's comics. The mix of fables and adventures with history and science strips felt quite familiar when first encountering the magazine. Beyond the folk tales mentioned earlier, they also often touched on things close to me in some way, like one of my heroes growing up -
Benjamin Franklin...
Have i babbled on about
Sun WuKong at all yet? Even those not fans of his tales are likely somewhat familiar with
The Monkey King with all the movies that have been made touching upon the legends. (He was even the focus of the movie that brought
Jackie Chan and
Jet Li together.
(And the character played by Jet))
But if you're a fan, before too long you're likely to encounter
Hanuman. Hanuman came first, and it is said that Sun WuKong is a later incarnation. So before you go bury yourself in
Journey To The West, maybe take a look at the roots of The Monkey King. And here, we have the roots of Hanuman himself, with
Ram Waeerkar back once again for the artwork...
As mentioned above, Tinkle included comics featuring history and science - and sometimes both combined...
In the early days, Tinkle had a regular feature i enjoyed called
Meet The _______. Each strip focused on a different animal, or sometimes even a plant. They ran from 2-4 pages, and covered a wide variety of creatures, ranging from Chickens and Worms to Pangolins and Tigers.
Here's a sample with
Meet The Tiger...
We'll be back this afternoon with more Meet The _______ comics from Tinkle.
See you then.
page art by Pradeep Sathe and Ram Waeekar from Tinkle #s 4, 5, 13, & 14 (1981, 1982)
