Comic Con India, says its founder, is whatever you want it to be.
Jatin Varma is a geek.
The 28-year-old believes that comics are a lifelong investment, recognizes how large events help pump dollars into the studios of small artists and appreciates February in Delhi. Delhi is so lovely, in fact, that he surmised there could be no better place to host the first-ever Indian comic convention.
“We didn’t really have any event experience,” Varma says, “but we thought, ‘Why not experiment? Let’s try and put this together.’”
Comic Con India arrived in February 2011 with great fanfare and under the banner of Varma’s Twenty Onwards Media. The inaugural event saw 50 exhibitors, 15,000 fans and almost US$50,000 in sales in just two days. Since then, the event has exploded with annual events now planned in four cities across this emerging market.
Batman and Superman have long been beloved in India, but Super Kudi (Super Girl) and Pavitr Prabhakar (Spider-Man’s alter ego in India) are claiming their space in the market, too. In a country already crowded with a multilingual fantasyland of themes ranging from mythology to humor to horror, Varma’s genius has been in appealing to the Westernized Big Bang Theory fan base as well as keeping true to local Indian artists.
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