The Adventures of Mr. Lal
The History
In the summer of 1988, I created a comic book with great enthusiasm. I was a little over 12 years old, I loved comics, and was very impressed with the likes of Asterix. I wanted to come up with something of my own from scratch. Not knowing who to ask about what materials to use (remember, this was long before the advent of my Internet days), I went to an art material shop and told them that I wanted to buy everything that comic book artists use for creating comics.
They were amused indeed, very much so. They sold me "everything" nonetheless (of course). With some trial and error, I figured out what I thought would be the optimal way of employing those materials.
I used black waterproof ink on white ivory paper (which turned out to be an expensive proposition for me in those days). I colored part of the book with "folio" colors (transparent water colors that came as leaflets of paper that you tore off and soaked in water: ancient photographers used them to colorize black and white photographs).
I was interested primarily in creating something that looked nice, so I "came up" with a story as quickly as I could. Consequently, I don't think story line is the mainstay of my comic. It was all done in a little over two weeks - not too surprising once you realize that working on this comic was the only thing I did during that time.
Once finished, I was reasonably pleased with my creation. I wanted to get the thing published somewhere, and surely I did walk into a reputed comic publisher's office. They would not even see what I was talking about (they did offer me a soft drink — I have to give them that), and my being a cocky 12 year old didn't help at all! My self-esteem hurt sorely, I went home and threw the comic away in the attic.
Ten years later, in 1998, I decided to scan the entire comic, hence this page.