Ten animal comics I grew up with

Off the top of my head, these are some of the animal comic books that I read as a kid, and still do, as one who has never really grown up. I've left out many such as Jughead's old English sheepdog, Hot Dog, which I don't recall reading as a separate comic. 

Then there is Tintin's terrier, Snowy, and Obelix's Gaulish dog, Dogmatix, in Asterix comics, but they didn't have comics of their own. Come to think of it, Dogmatix did have a small comic book of his own.

I have left out animals from comic strips like Fred Basset, Marmaduke, Hobbes, Garfield, and Dennis the Menace's Ruff, perhaps, in another post.

I can't help thinking I've left out some obvious names. If you can think of any, let me know.

Racism in Phantom and Mandrake comics

I offer this post as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books which Todd Mason is hosting at Sweet Freedom in place of Patti Abbot who usually does the honours at her blog Pattinase.

A childhood without comics is like a newspaper without the comics page.

Phantom—The Ghost Who Walks, The Man Who Cannot Die and Guardian of the Eastern Dark—and Mandrake the Magician—who gestures hypnotically—are considered racist comics by many and for more than one reason. Personally, I've never read them with prejudice. To me they're just comic books, to be read and savoured.

I'm sure Lee Falk, the American writer, director and producer who created the famous heroes, never meant the comic strips to be racist. Mandrake first appeared in 1934 preceding Phantom by two years. I think he wanted both the strips to be original and appealing and popular, which they have been over 70-odd years of their existence. Over the years the comics have gone through a few changes.

However, the racist implications in both the comics are unmistakable. 

The Phantom reads out to Guran. I have no idea what.

Initially, Phantom’s abode, the Deep Woods, was located in Bengali, probably a reference to Bengal in eastern India. It all started when a band of pirates called the Singh Brotherhood attack the ship captained by Christopher Walker’s father somewhere in the 16th century.

The 20-year old lad witnesses his father’s brutal murder by the pirates in the Bay of Bengalla (which, I think, is Bay of Bengal) and takes an irreversible oath on the skull of the killer-pirate.

"I swear to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice, in all their forms! My sons and their sons shall follow me."

Christopher Walker thus became the first Phantom. We are now reading the adventures of the 21st century Phantom, known to us as Kit Walker, married to Diana, who works for the UN, and with twins, Kit and Heloise.

The portrayal of the Singh Brotherhood (not that it exists) as thieving and murdering pirates raised objections in India, prompting Lee Falk to take Phantom out of Bengali and transport him to a far-away jungle near Denkali in Africa. I don’t know how far this is true. I believe Bengali (originally Bengalla) was supposed to be a fictional country located near India, but the similarities between the two are all too obvious.

The racist charge doesn't end there. The young Christopher Walker, the sole survivor of the pirate attack, is washed ashore on a Bengali (or Denkali) beach and is saved by pygmies of the dreaded Bandar tribe, the poison people, who nurse him back to health. Now the pygmies are the only people who know that The Ghost Who Walks is a mortal with a long line of Phantom ancestry. Believing him to be the Man Who Cannot Die, the other jungle tribes worship the masked hero and even bow before him. He is treated like the lord of the jungle. He is their messiah, their saviour, their guardian. His every word and wish is their command. Phantom, of course, treats them with respect and kindness. 

Mandrake and Lothar

Lothar, the black prince, is to Mandrake the Magician what the Bandar tribe and its present-day leader, Guran, are to the Phantom. Lothar, a classic image of Mr. Universe, is Mandrake’s man Friday, sidekick, bodyguard, and troubleshooter. In reality, he is the magician’s best friend and confidant. A quiet man with impeccable integrity, Lothar does what Mandrake tells him to do, including thumping the bad guys when the need arises. He lives with Mandrake in his high-security mansion, Xanadu, and their respective girlfriends, Princess Narda from Europe, and Princess Karma, a black African model.

I first read Phantom and Mandrake comics in school. At that time it never occurred to me that both the crusaders against crime were white or that their friends were black. I read the comics in all innocence. I still read comics except now I also see them through tinted eyes. I don't let it bother me. I read comics because I love reading them.

Books I read in the first quarter

The first quarter results (April to June) of books I read indicate an average of five books a month, not exactly a healthy balance sheet. During the period I read a total of 17 books. This included five non-fiction. I also read many comic books.

In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect by American journalist and author Ronald Kessler was particularly fascinating.

It offered an inside look at how the Secret Service—the men who would take a bullet for the President—functions in every department starting with its origins under the Department of the Treasury more than a hundred years ago to its present-day avatar under the Department of Homeland Security; the rigid ways of the USSS management, the surprisingly high attrition rate within the ‘force’ and the reasons for it; the protection of America’s first family as well as other important dignitaries and what it entails in terms of mind, men, money, and machinery; and hundreds of interesting anecdotes and juicy tidbits about Presidents and their families from JFK downwards. There are too many to mention here.

But guess which two Presidents were most popular with Secret Service agents? The two Bushes and their wives, Barbara and Laura, who treated the wired men in dark suits and dark glasses with respect and understanding.

In the President's Secret Service told me two things: in spite of being an elite security force, the Secret Service cuts corners that puts the President and other protectees at risk and the job of a Secret Service agent is by no means glamourous as one might believe it to be. The book engages as well as entertains the reader even if its contents can be interpreted as being highly contentious.

Elsewhere: I was disappointed with my reading in two areas: classics and detective-mystery. I read only one of each in the entire quarter when I hoped to read two of each every month. I still have three quarters to try and make up. I also plan to read more humour than I do beginning with James Thurber’s wit.

Here then are the 17 books I read in the last three months. Only 10 of these books, including Kessler’s, have been reviewed or written about in this space.

Fiction

General
01. Tales From Firozsha Baag, a collection of 11 short stories about the ethnic Zoroastrian (Parsi) community in Mumbai, by Rohinton Mistry, the award-winning India-born Canadian writer
02. No Comebacks, a collection of 10 short stories with a twist in each plot, by Frederick Forsyth

Spy Thriller
03. The Athena Project by Brad Thor
04. Chameleon Kill, the fifth novel in the The Terminator series, by John Quinn
05. The Iron Tiger by Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson)

Western
06. Hard Texas Winter, a western by Preston Lewis
07. Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean

Crime

08. In the Heat of the Night by John Ball
09. The Snake by Mickey Spillane

Classics
10. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Detective-Mystery
11. The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

Humour
12. The Man Upstairs and Other Stories by P.G. Wodehouse


Non-fiction

13. In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect by Ronald Kessler

14. The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, the renowned Buddhist monk and author

15. Renewal: A Little Book of Courage and Hope by Eknath Easwaran, spiritual teacher who founded the Blue Mountain Centre of Meditation in California

16. India To-day (1913) by Oliver Bainbridge, an author and lecturer from Australia

17. Rediscover the Power of Positive Thinking, a revised version of The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale, minister and author

No salt in Salt (2010)

The White House has unimaginable layers of security with Secret Service personnel trained for nothing short of a war guarding it from both within and outside. Yet, “rogue” CIA agent Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie), disguised as a male Russian army captain, walks into the world’s most famous residence like she was walking into her own house, shoots her way through the seemingly impregnable fortress, and manages to go down to the bunker where agents are guarding the President. In the bunker, her boss Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), who is the real spy, knocks the President unconscious and uses his hand to try and activate the codes that will launch nuclear missiles in the Middle East. Jolie and Schreiber spend several minutes having a tête-à-tête and fighting and shooting each other, even as the President lies comatose on the floor and elite commandos try to blast their way into the bunker. All this happens in the bowels of the White House.

I thought the entire scene, in fact the entire film, in spite of the slick production and death-defying action, was silly and over the top and not even remotely realistic. Besides, I couldn't figure out whether Jolie’s character was a good guy or a bad guy. Nonetheless, with women like Salt, you don't need superheroes.

Salt reminded me of another technically-brilliant film with a more or less similar theme: the Mission: Impossible series, especially Ghost Protocol (2011), which I saw with some disbelief last week.

I have seen only three films of Angelina Jolie including the equally silly Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) and The Tourist (2010), the latter mainly for Johnny Depp, and heard her voice in two others, Shark Tale (2004) and the Kung Fu Panda films. I watched Salt on cable because nothing worthwhile was going on. I didn’t realise it would be as insipid as the rest of the fare going on at the time.

The temptations of an e-reader

I finally succumbed to the temptation of buying an e-reader. I didn’t buy a Kindle or a Nook as neither is sold in a big way in Mumbai. I have seen just one Kindle model in retail stores and not a single Nook tablet anywhere. Amazon has now formally entered India and it remains to be seen what the world’s largest online retailer has to offer to probably the world’s most e-gadget obsessed nation.

At first, I thought I’d buy an inexpensive tablet without a “phone” or “calling” option because all I wanted was to read ebooks. I went through the lineup of tablets like iball, Dell, Sony, and Acer with 10-inch screens, selling for anywhere between Rs.5,000 and Rs.10,000 ($83 to $166). The dollar recently bummed Rs.11 ($.50) off the rupee.

Unsure of just how good these tablets were, my son convinced me into buying the popular Samsung Galaxy Tab2 with 7.1-inch screen, 16-GB built-in memory, and a calling option. He said it cost more (Rs.16,000 or $320) but it was more reliable than any other tablet on the Indian market with excellent after-sales service. I’m glad I heeded his advice. 

An illustrative picture of an
Aldiko book shelf

The tablet, backed by lots of free and exciting stuff from Android, has plenty of features that I haven’t explored yet. The first thing I asked my son to do was to download a simple but efficient ebook reader from Android and he showed no hesitation in choosing Aldiko for my proposed ebook library. It’s a terrific application and I couldn’t have asked for a more uncomplicated reader. I have now stacked up the “book shelf” with lots of copyright-free ebooks across categories I like reading, including non-fiction.

I also downloaded a couple of apps for my trivial pursuits like chess and scrabble. I haven’t played either of the two yet and I still have to get around to films and music.

An e-reader has lots of advantages and almost no disadvantages that I can think of. If there is one, then it is choosing between a real book and an ebook to read. I often find myself putting away a torn and tattered book midway for the pleasure of reading an ebook on a sophisticated device. My books in the real world are crying out to be read.

Peace amidst pandemonium

Photo courtesy: www.ibnlive.com

When it rains, it really pours. Flash floods caused by unprecedented rainfall at this time of the year have taken a heavy toll on god and man alike.

Hundreds have died, thousands are homeless and missing, and an equal number, mostly pilgrims, are stranded in the North Indian states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, geographically, located at the foothills of the mighty Himalayas. Hundreds of houses, schools, hospitals, temples and shrines, and entire infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, and railway tracks, have been destroyed or washed away by the monsoon fury. The destruction of over two-dozen bridges has cut off access to hundreds of villages across the two states.

Photo courtesy: AFP

Some of the worst-hit areas were the revered temple towns of Kedarnath and Rishikesh in Uttarakhand where most of the pilgrims are stranded. Mud and slush, caused by overflowing rivers, submerged several temples and shrines and the deities they adorned. The pictures show a submerged statue of Lord Shiva, one of the Hindu Trinity, in Rishikesh, which bore the brunt of River Ganga’s fury.

The central (federal) government has ordered its disaster management authority to carry out relief and rescue operations on a war footing. The army and air force and paramilitary forces are already assisting the respective state administrations in conducting search and rescue missions. Whatever they do, it'll never be enough.

In decades at least, neither has India’s annual monsoon struck with such ferocity nor has it rained so terribly in the month of June. With the rains usually stretching to September, people living in rural areas and along the cyclone-prone coastlines are joining their palms in silent prayer.

Will Lord Shiva open his third eye (or inner eye) located in the centre of his forehead and bring succour to the hopeless millions?

MUSIC & LYRICS

Believe by Cher (1998)

A musical treat this Tuesday for Overlooked Films, Audio and Video over at Todd Mason's blog Sweet Freedom.

“Do you believe in life after love

I can feel something inside me say

I really don't think you're strong enough, now”

Did you know that Cher released three films in 1987? They were The Witches of Eastwick, based on the novel by John Updike, Suspect, and Moonstruck. Did you also know that the American pop diva has acted in more than a dozen films and television series? I didn’t.

I haven’t seen Suspect which sounds like a good crime thriller with Cher playing a lawyer. Dennis Quaid and Liam Neeson are in the film too.

I liked The Witches of Eastwick mainly on account of Jack Nicholson and Susan Sarandon. The latter with Cher and Michelle Pfeiffer made three fine witches. Moonstruck almost put me to sleep. I prefer Nicholas Cage as a much older actor in his latter films. 

This post is not about Cher the actor but Cher the singer, and that is primarily what she is. A couple of months ago, we were at a mall when her hit single, Believe, played. The song sounded terrific on the hidden loudspeaker system. I wondered where I’d heard it before and then I remembered that I listened to it occasionally on my cellphone. What a difference it made! 

I cannot analyse the music behind Cher’s powerful, manly voice. But, according to Wikimedia, “Believe is a dance-pop song that incorporates elements of techno, Eurodance, and house music. It also uses heavy amounts of Auto-Tune, which has since become one of the song's most notable features.” 

Released in October 1998, Believe is the lead single from Cher’s twenty-third album of the same name and it has become one of the best-selling singles of all time.

For previous Music & Lyrics, see under Labels.