ISSUES

Vol 4 Issue 2 July-Sept 2024Volume 4 Issue 2

Cupid’s Crime is based on the harrowing imprisonment of a young man wrongly accused by his girlfriend’s parents in a bid to keep them apart. Silent Revelations narrates a childhood incident that shaped a young man’s career choice to fight for justice. Whose Crime Is It Anyway? explores the human-animal conflicts that arise when a tiger is forced to wander too close to human habitation in search of food and space to survive. Jellibeen Jeopardy is a courtroom drama that adds an intergalactic twist to the notion of the absurdity of some laws. If You Kill is a poetic alarm call about our crimes against the environment. The Darogha’s Soul is a tale about a guard who dies in the line of duty only to be forced in the afterlife to examine his actions in blindly following the law of the land.

Vol 4 Issue 1 Apr-Jun 2024Volume 4 Issue 1

Titled ‘The Fellowship of Food’, this issue offers diverse perspectives on food and its inter-connectedness with culture. In the comic Ukai, a boy’s experience with the tradition of cormorant fishing in Japan obliges him to re-consider its relevance in modern times. Eating Saraswati’s Bahon takes us to Assam where a young girl faces a conflict of food choices influenced by religion and culture. In Hunger, a driver struggles to survive on a meagre salary until he discovers the langars of Delhi. In the comic Inimitable Wazwaan, a chef is mystified by this wondrous celebrated cuisine of Kashmir. The Tell-tale Tails is set in Sikkim and is about a young boy’s adventure into the mystery of folklore and food.

Vol 3 Issue 4 Jan-Mar 2024Volume 3 Issue 4

This issue titled ‘Living Colour’ offers various interpretations of the visible spectrum. Skin Deep is a sensitive story of a young girl coming to terms with the colour of her skin. Emerald Apsara is a wordless comic about the adventures of Professor P.R Mazoomder. The spy story Kamma Chameleon is about a chameleon on a secret mission. The inter-generational concepts of hair dyeing are brought to life in the comic True Colours. The final diptych comic explores two aspects of indigo in history. The Invisible Colour is a humourous take on how Newton might have defined the colours of the spectrum as we know them, while Indigo Nation focusses on Gandhiji’s first Satyagraha, deployed amongst the indigo farmers of Champaran in Bihar.

Vol 3 Issue 3 Oct-Dec 2023Volume 3 Issue 3

The stories in this issue delve into some aspects of our technological life. Love Again narrates the story of the unusual dilemma a man faces after responding to an invitation online. Welcome to Imaginari takes us into a parallel world where some strange shenanigans are at play. Touching Grass suggests ways to get back in touch with reality if you’re too deeply immersed in the virtual world. Real Art queries the future of art in the face of generative AI programmes. Exploring the role of AI in a more personal manner is What I Learnt About Myself on ChatGPT. In Goodbye GPLO, a young man’s struggle with grief, prompts him to sign up for a new app.

Vol 3 Issue 2 July-Sept 2023Volume 3 Issue 2

This issue explores variations on the idea of performance. In The Poet and The Prisoner, a researcher and a single-cell organism team up to free a prisoner from an AI-controlled city. Along Came a Spider takes a peek at the courting rituals of the tiny peacock spider. In the story Behind the Scenes, we glimpse the early years of Leonardo da Vinci’s theatre work and its creative impact on his most famous paintings. In the humorous comic, Anybody Can Dance, a plus-size girl takes a chance with dance lessons. Death Zone examines the athletic prowess of Sherpas who assist climbers to summit mountains. In The Mudmen of Asaro, a teenage visitor stumbles across two feuding groups with competing stories to tell.

Vol 3 Issue 1 Apr-Jun 2023Volume 3 Issue 1

This issue contains six stories between the real and the false. In Pseudonym, a cartoonist is faced with a dilemma that pits his work against his identity. In My Fake Boyfriend, a young girl struggles with having to lie to live life on her terms. In Ubumuntu, we witness how Sula Karuhimbi used deception to save lives during the Rwanda genocide. Muhnochwa is a fictionalised story based on the infamous monster mania that gripped parts of Uttar Pradesh in 2002. The Sale follows the hopes and fears of a farmer couple and their barnyard animals as the former contemplate a life change. Behroopiya is the real-life story of Nain Singh, who assumed multiple disguises in the service of the Great Trigonometrical Survey.

Vol 2 Issue 4 Jan-Mar 2023Volume 2 Issue 4

This issue contains seven stories emerging from diverse flowing streams. Dreams of the Sky is the true-life story of a remarkable aviatrix, Bessie Coleman, who soared above racism and gender discrimination to achieve her dream. Red is an illustrated poem that touches, tenderly, upon the difficult topic of menstruation. The Daughters of Relu is a mythological story on the origins of the sister rivers Ganga and Jamna. The fantastical story is an extract from ‘River of Stories’, considered India’s first graphic novel. Forest Bathing is a sensual walk through the cycles of flux in a forest ecosystem. The Ferryman is an adaptation of the Greek myth of Charon, the ferryman of the underworld river Styx. Suli tells of a little girl who loves to run with her hair free, but grandma believes otherwise. A River Runs Through It is an adventure fantasy set in the future in which a young girl risks her life to save her ‘sick’ baby brother from the clutches of an organ harvester.

Vol 2 Issue 3 Oct-Dec 2022Volume 2 Issue 3

In this issue, the stories reflect facets of serendipity in which the coming together of random chance and human agency can lead to outcomes that are funny, adventurous, mysterious—or just ordinary. The fantasy Homebound is a tale of strange interspecies friendships that flourish after an unexpected manmade disaster. Mother We Will Eat The Satphool is a delightful story where the cancellation of a school play ignites the imaginations of the child actors determined to act out their scenes in real life. Kolynos Thankaraj is an angry forest guard who on his retirement day finds himself caught up in an inexplicable sequence of events. Mynatai Lonkar is set in the time of Mumbai’s textile mill strike that brought misfortune to some and opportunity to others. The Discovery of J. Baret is the true story of a woman whose chance encounters led to her becoming a botanist and the first woman to circumnavigate the world.

Vol 2 Issue 2 July-Sept 2022Volume 2 Issue 2

In this issue, we attempt to capture the many worlds that music conjures and inhabits. In Bone Music, a craving for groovy beats sparks innovation and quiet rebellion, engendering its own act of protest. Here I Like the Sounds delights in the sheer delight of hearing. Jaane Wale Sipahi is a powerful account of how a well-timed song quelled the nerves of a crowd on the cusp of violence. Lockdown Fugue shows us how for brief moments—outside the realities of pandemics and privilege—music can be a common denominator between people, creating room for a little joy in everyone’s hearts. In New Wave, the subliminal powers of music brew a cosmic revolution (sadly, this one’s a fictional account). And finally, in The Legend of Tau Moe, we encounter the improbable but true story of a family that introduced the Hawaiian slide guitar to India and the world.

Vol 2 Issue 1 April-June 2022Volume 2 Issue 1

In this issue, read about an arduous passage two brothers are forced to take through the mountains of Kashmir to Gilgit in Suffernama; a forest ranger’s quest to rescue a group of teenagers lost deep in the woods of Russia (or is it Ukraine?) in Into the Woods; a young Polish immigrant in the UK as she faces the challenges of being a foreigner in a faraway land in Take Me Home; a trader of Arab descent who discovers great food – and a sense of home! – along the Silk Route in The Travelling Thread; and the incredible winter migration of demoiselle cranes from their breeding grounds in Mongolia to a welcoming village in Gujarat in Padharo Mhare Des.

Volume 1 Issue 4 January-March 2022Volume 1 Issue 4

In the January-March 2022 issue of Comixense, a young comics creator unpacks her relationship with ideals of beauty in The Tyranny of Beauty, a yesteryears film star finds liberation in becoming invisible to the public eye in Sitara Devi, a queer man learns to accept tattooing as a beautiful art form in Tattoo, a small-town boy’s lifelong fascination with the grandeur and splendour of the Taj Mahal leads to a strange encounter with some relics of the past in Finding Mumtaz, a dog in the French countryside accidentally stumbles across a cave of many wonders in The Cave Painters, and a murder mystery in Imperial Rome unfolds around a rare and coveted colour in Died in the Wool.

Volume 1 Issue 3 October-December 2021Volume 1 Issue 3

The October 2021 issue of Comixense begins with Hum Dekhenge, where two roommates in a girls’ hostel conspire to stand up to the stifling rules of their institution. In Bond... Jamal Bond, an agent with high-flying dreams finds himself ensnared in a tale of two borders. On the House is a story about a group of young aspiring rappers who catch a ‘lucky break’ and use it to try and force their way into a more promising future. The mysterious Ahmad ibn Majid helps guide Vasco da Gama’s expedition to Arrakis for reasons that are not entirely clear to the ship’s crew in The Fourth of the Three. We look at the ongoing government surveillance scandal in The Pegasus Affair, and explain why this breach of privacy is important for all Indians to be aware of.

Volume 1 Issue 2 July-September 2021Volume 1 Issue 2

The Adivasi will not Dance, an adaptation of an award-winning short story, fleshes out how a conflict of interest between the Santhal way of life and the government-corporate idea of development and progress stems from starkly different ways of interacting with the natural world. Playing with Bats is about an ordinary day in the life of the Ouamouno family, who live in a small village in the middle of the jungle in southern Guinea. Things suddenly take an unexpected turn. The Irritability of Plants is an introduction to the legacy of J.C. Bose, a great Indian polymath whose discoveries on plants and other natural phenomena were way ahead of his time. In ‘Making It’ Isn’t Easy, an ordinary student learns from extraordinary beings hidden in plain sight. Under the Snake’s Belly is a prose piece that comes to terms with the true origins of the giant, concrete architecture that dominate our cities. Finally, in Roots, we travel to a tiny island in Tamil Nadu where a young boy reconnects with his roots, paving the way for a new way of life in the process of doing so.

Volume 1 Issue 1 April-June 2021Volume 1 Issue 1

The Plague Doctor’s Apprentice harks back to 17th-century Italy to comment on our 21st-century pandemic. Love for Dummies toys with the notion of what happens when AI-powered dummies have thoughts about art and love. The inhabitants of the City of Astronomers ponder the universe. We contrast two hospital implements – one much-lauded and one often overlooked – in The Razor and the Scalpel. And finally, The Captain takes you into the innards of a fishing boat in Kerala and the inner life of its skipper.