‘Sivappu Kal Mookuthi’ India’s first Tamil digital comic

Who doesn’t enjoy flicking through the pages of a comic book?

Remember those comics of Amar Chithra Katha, Asterix, Archies and Phantom that we grabbed in our childhood days?

Now, with more reading happening online, it’s the age of digital comics.

Sivappu Kal Mookuthi, a digital comic in Tamil, has arrived at the right moment.

Authored by Tamil filmmaker, J.S. Nandhini of Thiru Thiru Thuru Thuru fame, this is a first of its kind.

“Sivappu Kal Mookuthi is a horror/thriller,” said Nandhini, a gold medallist from the Film & Television Institute of Tamil Nadu, Chennai.

“One of my films got dropped. That is when I thought I must do something to reach out to people. Several comic books have been made into films in Hollywood, but not here in India.”

Nandhini wrote the story as a screenplay first and then thought of making it into a digital comic novel.

Sivappu Kal Mookuthi is about Varun and his wife, Maya, who are visiting a mountain resort. What happens to Maya after she finds a red stoned nose ring and decides to wear it?

With elements of supernatural powers woven into the story, Sivappu Kal Mookuthi is gripping as Varun tries to rescue his wife from the clutches of a ghost.

For Nandhinee, working in a new medium that has not been explored in Tamil was a challenge. Sivappu Kal Mookuthi was in the making for the past year-and-a-half. The illustrations done by Magesh R and Sainath B are not caricatures but images representing real-life characters, which makes the story appealing.

Sivappu Kal Mookuthi is available at http://www.mbcomic-studio.com in easy-to-download formats such as Digital Flipbook versions for PC and Mac and Comic Book Zip versions for reading on computers, tablets and smartphones. A Kindle version is also available. The English version of this digital comic, titled Girl With a Red Nose Ring, is also available.

Nandhini, in association with her husband, Shukdev Lahiri, runs Make Believe Productions, an advertisement film company. From making films for corporates, commercials, documentaries and music videos, Sivappu Kal Mookuthi is their first step in creating comics for the digital medium.