Chakra The Invincible: Free Comic Book Day Special

Title: Chakra The Invincible: Free Comic Book Day Special
Publisher: Graphic India, Stan Lee's Pow Entertainment
Date: 2013
Writer: Stan Lee, Sharad Devarajan, Gotham Chopra, Ashwin Pande, Jeevan Kang, Scott Peterson
Artist: Jeevan Kang, Ashish Avin
Letterer: Aditya Bidikar
Editor: Ashwin Pande

An old-fashioned superhero story set in Mumbai, with no less a personage as Stan Lee co-credited as creator. Chakra the Invincible is a super-powered teenager protecting the city of Mumbai from crime and supervillains.

The story, or rather, what little of the story we get in this special, is pretty familiar stuff. It's hinted that protagonist Raju Rai gained his chakra-based energy powers in some sort of scientific mishap. Raju is written as a young Peter Parker type character. Orphaned and raised by his older brother, he keeps his powers a secret while he and his brother struggle to make ends meet. But at night, Raju defends the city as Chakra.

Jeevan Kang does a very nice job with the artwork, especially with the effects around the chakra energy powers. Chakra has super strength and flight, and his energy projection abilities give a bit of a Green Lantern flavor to the action scenes. The drawing style reminds me of the DC Animated Universe comics.

The use of Indian culture in the story works well. It's not over-explained, but there are tons of little setting and culture details in the background that help give a bit of flavor to a story that feels fairly familiar.

Although the stories presented in this issue are very introductory, I was impressed with the look of the book and the general positive vibe of the storytelling. This is a nice start for Stan Lee's collaboration with Graphic India.

Rating: 7.5/10

Dan Dare / The Stranded / Ramayan 3392AD Reloaded

This is a 2008 Free Comic Book Day promo that I picked up at this year's FCBD.

Title: Dan Dare / The Stranded / Ramayan 3392AD Reloaded
Date: 2008
Publisher: Virgin Comics
Writer: Garth Ennis, Mike Carey, Shamik Dasgupta
Art: Gary Erskine, Siddharth Kotian, Jeevan Kang
Inker: Jyotsna V. Domse
Colorist: Parasuraman A., Anand Balusamy, N.S. Sathish Kumar
Letterer: Rakesh B. Mahadik, Sudhir B. Pisal, B.S. Ravi Kiran
Cover: Bryan Talbot, Marc Silvestri
Editor: Charlie Beckerman, Stuart Moore, Ron Marz
Dan Dare Created By: Frank Hampson
Ramayan 3392AD Reloaded Created By: Deepak Chopra, Shekhar Kapur

Flip book, plus an extra story in the middle.

Dan Dare arrives with a crew of marines on a colony world where a series of grizzly killings has taken place. The monster responsible conveniently shows up about two minutes after Dare sets foot on the ground. Unfortunately for our heroes, this beast isn't alone. The plot appears to be Aliens with a much less interesting adversary. Still, the pacing was good, and there was enough intrigue going on to keep things interesting.

Flip over the book and you get The Stranded, which appears to be about superbeings secretly living among us. Some of them are fully aware of who they are and are equipped with an array of super-high technology, while others are "sleepers" with no knowledge of their true nature. The opening bit focuses on a pair of human characters, and I'm assuming that at least one is a sleeper, but there's actually very little plot that occurs. They're just established as the bookish guy and the athletic and aggressive girl who are engaged. The action then abruptly moves to a woman of the other group (the ones who are aware of what's going on). She's chatting with a former mentor, now reanimated in a rat body. They establish that someone is killing sleepers, but are interrupted by a team of bad guys and it turns into a running fight for the remainder of the story. The best aspect of this was the alien/futuristic technology, which had a great look to it. Story and characters came off as generic.

In the middle of the book is Ramayan 3392AD Reloaded, one of a series of titles from Virgin comics that (loosely) adapts Hindu mythology. This features a pretty standard gladiatorial combat scenario with a rather non-standard opponent. We only get a couple of pages here, but it looked like an interesting change of flavor from some of the more western-based fantasy.

Rating: 6.5/10