|
Amar Chitra Katha ("Immortal Captivating (or Picture) Stories") is one of India's largest selling comic book series, with more than 90 million copies sold in 20 Indian languages. Founded in 1967, the imprint has more than 400 titles that retell stories from the great Indian epics, mythology, history, folklore, and fables in a comic book format. It was created by Anant Pai, and published by India Book House. In 2007, the imprint and all its titles were acquired by a new venture called ACK Media. On 17 September 2008, a new website by ACK-media was launched.〔(In India, New Life for Comic Books as TV Cartoons ) ''The New York Times'', 19 July 2009."... sells about three million comic books a year, in English and more than 20 Indian languages, and has sold about 100 million copies since it inception in 1967"〕 ==Creation and creators== The comic series was started by Anant Pai in an attempt to teach Indian children about their cultural heritage. He was shocked that Indian students could answer questions on Greek and Roman mythology, but were ignorant of their own history, mythology and folklore. It so happened that a quiz contest aired on ''Doordarshan'' in February 1967, in which participants could easily answer questions pertaining to Greek mythology, but were unable to reply to the question "In the Ramayana, who was Rama's mother?".〔(Now, Amar Chitra Katha gets even younger ) Vijay Singh, TNN, ''The Times of India'', 16 October 2009.〕〔(The World of Amar Chitra Katha ) ''Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia'', by Lawrence A Babb, Susan S. Wadley. Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1998. ISBN 81-208-1453-3. ''Chapt. 4, p. 76-86''.〕 The above is an oft-told story of how ACK was founded beginning with 'Uncle Pai', in Mumbai in 1967. However, Outlook Magazine has this article about the genesis of this popular comic series: The idea and proposal for Amar Chitra Katha was made by a Bangalore book salesman called G.K. Ananthram which led to the first Amar Chitra Katha comics being produced in 1965—in ''Kannada'', not English. "The English ACK titles begin from number eleven because the first ten were in Kannada," clarifies Ananthram. To Anathram's satisfaction, the 1965 Kannada ACK venture was a great commercial success which lead to Mirchandani in the head office in Mumbai pursuing the Amar Chitra Katha idea in English diligently, and the rest is history. "They brought in Anant Pai" says Ananthram. "And he built a wonderful team and a great brand." 〔(A Pandit Had A Dream ... Outlook India Magazine, 21 March 2011. Retrieved 17 September 2011 )〕 Writers like Kamala Chandrakant, Margie Sastry, Subba Rao, Debrani Mitra and C.R Sharma joined the creative team of Amar Chitra Katha, with Anant Pai taking on the role of editor and co-writer on most scripts. The notable illustrators were Ram Waeerkar, who illustrated the very first issue of Amar Chitra Katha, ''Krishna'', Dilip Kadam, C. M. Vitankar, Sanjeev Waeerkar, Souren Roy, C.D Rane, Ashok Dongre, V.B. Halbe, Jeffrey Fowler, Pratap Mullick and Yusuf Lien aka Yusuf Bangalorewala. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Amar Chitra Katha」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|