Создатели серии «Майтили и Минотавр» рассказали о создании индийской фэнтези-комиксов

C.G. Salamander is a writer and editor who splits his time between Chennai and the Netherlands. He’s one half of the Maithili and the Minotaur series, the Nisha Small books, and the Lost Creatures picture book series. Rajiv Eipe is an animator and an illustrator. He has worked on children’s books with various publishers and has animated short films for television, film and streaming platforms. He lives in Bangalore with his family of two cats, one dog and one (other) human. Salamander and Rajiv have collaborated on the thoroughly entertaining graphic novel series for children, revolving around a young girl called Maithili. So far, four books in the Maithili and the Minotaur series have been published. These are: Web of Woe, Forest of Forgotten Fears, Dolls of Despair and Isle of Insanity. The books have been published by Puffin India. An outcast to the world of humans, Maithili lives in the outskirts of a magical wilderness. But as she makes new friends in the realm of monsters, she must learn to be careful. Because some monsters are just like humans: mean, nasty and out for blood. The following interview was conducted via email and has been lightly edited. Salamander How and why did you devise this series? Why a monster town?I've always liked the idea of working towards writing fantasy that is uniquely Indian, by which I mean a world that is removed from western traditions of fantasy (from the story structure to the character archetypes -- elves, dragons, dwarves, and wizards). But this is a fairly large undertaking... I would have to collect and catalogue different creatures and beasts from various Indian mythical and literary traditions to populate my world; social structures like serfdom need to be replaced by something that's closer to home; the way magic works needs to be in line with our traditions of magic. The Maithili and the Minotaur series is a step in this direction, it still borrows myth from other western and eastern traditions, but as the books progress, they become more culturally rooted. It also helps that I can build all these different worlds with Rajiv, and it's a lot of fun figuring them out together. But ultimately, we wanted to create a fun story that children would enjoy; a story that would be familiar to them, and one where they could see themselves in. Monster town because it borrows from Buddhism, namely the six Realms of Samsara — a realm for the gods, the demi-gods, the humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell. Illustrations of Salamander (L) and Rajiv Eipe (R) Cultural fusion is fascinating. Did it happen of its own accord or did you work at figuring out the twinning: such as, "Madam Rakamma's Jallikattu”?I'm influenced by Japanese manga, and I really like the way manga incorporates Japanese cultures, traditions, folklore, myths and jokes with little to no explanation. The Japanese way to do it would be by being unapologetic, irrelevant and unbothered by how an outsider consumes or perceives their culture. If a reader doesn't get it, that's okay, it's not integral to the story, and if the reader gets it, they've been brought in on an inside joke. With Madam Rakamma's Jallikattu the obvious reference is a little side show where the circus master tries to make the Minotaur the star of a new attraction, but the underlying joke is that it sounds like Ilaiyaraaja's Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu (two people have asked me if it was referencing the song, and so it's a joke for those two people). But it doesn’t need to always be obscure and esoteric, I also like mixing fantasy with well-known traditions and lore that are uniquely Indian. But what makes our fantastical worlds so culturally rich and identifiable is the fact that Rajiv is a master at taking everyday observations and lived experiences and applying them to our fantastical world -- the way people interact in a crowded Bombay train is the way the monsters in our book deal with crowds. Why tell a story from the POV of a marginalised and ostracised girl? It makes her an outcast twice over because of her gender but she is a determined and feisty little child. Before Maithili and the Minotaur was a book series, and even before it had become the first book, it was a collection of one-page comics made periodically for Jellyfish Monthly, a children's magazine. Most of the magazine's readers were girls (around 80% if I remember correctly) and so most of my characters were feisty little girls roughly around the age of our readers. Being shunned by her village, Maithili was always free to embark on her quest to find her missing mother--something that's harder to do when you can ask the question 'why is no one watching this child?' A lot of children's books make their main characters untethered orphans, but I opted to ostracise her instead. Then there are questions about why she's being shunned by her village? And why is she being ostracised? They make for deeper themes to be explored within the series. For a children's graphic novel series, to opt for these bleak colours as in Maithili and the Minotour: Web of Woe is curious. More so, for you, whom I have always associated with pure bright colours. So why this choice? Or is it a joint decision that Rajiv Eipe and you made?I think this should be covered by Rajiv's question 5. Is Mr Puu a carryover from your wonderful children's picture book of the same name — Puu? Mr. Puu is short for Mr. Poochandi, a boogie man like figure used to scare naughty Tamil children. Interestingly enough, when reaching for my book Makarras to Manticores: Around India in 100 Mythical creatures, I found that this character was ubiquitous across Indian states as well as different countries, where they take on several different names. But I do think about my book Puu whenever Mr. Puu appears. Rajiv Eipe How did you set about these series arc? Did you have an illustrator's briefs or did Salamander and you brainstorm collaboratively? As Salamander mentioned, this began as a series of episodic, two-page comics in the monthly children’s magazine, Jellyfish. I think he planned it to be 10 episodes or so, but once we got to the last episode, we felt that this could possibly be a book by itself, with a few extra pages added for continuity. I don't think there was an illustration brief as such, although Salamander’s scripts are fairly detailed and descriptive. I began the illustration process with many rough sketch explorations of some of the main characters. We’d then discuss which ones we thought worked best, and I’d finalise the designs. Some of the extras - background characters that we thought looked interesting in some of the early episodes - developed into more central characters as the series developed. Once we had our characters down, we slowly built the world they inhabited, combining familiar elements from our own memories of school and childhood - tiffin boxes, uniforms, etc. with the weird and fantastical elements of monsters, myth and magic. How did the two of you figure out your synergies to ensure that you adhered to your core responsibilities of being a storyteller and an illustrator? Or did you provide friendly constructive advice to each other as the books progressed? I think we discovered a nice comfortable style of working together right from the beginning. For the most part, Salamander takes care of the writing, and I make the art. We will sometimes discuss ideas and respond to each other’s text or art with honest feedback. I find, particularly with comics, that it’s useful to be able to go back and forth between the writing and illustration processes. Salamander puts down a pretty detailed script, I respond to this with very scribbly thumbnail panels and character sketches. Seeing the entire book laid out in thumbnails gives us a sense of how the story is working (or not). We’ll then pore over this in detail with our editor Smit Zaveri and figure out ways to make fixes to the plot, dialogues, pacing, character designs, costumes, environment, palette, etc to make the story work better. Once this is figured out, I disappear for a few weeks or months to make the final drawings before some final edits and proof reading and then the book is off to print. Do you first start with hand sketches or is it straight to the computer to draft? Yes, the drawings are made on paper, then scanned into a computer and then coloured digitally. How did the artwork find its personality? The characters, plots and descriptions in Salamander’s scripts are usually replete with a heady mix of weirdness, darkness, humour and drama, bursting with imagery. This is a fantastic starting point for an illustrator, and the art evolves over the process described earlier. Why is each story dominated by a single colour? To your mind what does this association of colour and storyline denote? When we began (with the episodic pages for the magazine) I chose to use a limited palette of two or three colours (blue, a dull yellow, and occasionally, red). This was intended to give the pages a sort of homogeneity — a way to recognise these comic pages across various issues of the magazine. The pages were quite dense with panels and text, we were trying to fit in quite a lot of story into each page, and I think a limited palette also helped keep the pages light - as in not too visually heavy. In subsequent books in the series, we found it possible to use shifts in colour schemes as a subtle aid in storytelling. In Forest of Forgotten Fears, for example, the pages that have an overwhelming green hue are a visual hint that the events occurring there are in another realm — an imagined nightmare that each character is experiencing. Shifts in colour could signal a change of scene, a flashback, the passage of time, a heightening of drama or tension, etc. Rajiv Eipe and Salamander The fact is that both of you are storytellers and illustrators. So, what excited you about this particular assignment?Salamander: For me it was the possibility to build a world from the ground up with Rajiv, and to be able to tell such a big story in the most efficient manner possible, i.e. by using the comic format. Rajiv: I loved the opportunity to draw these strange characters and situations, and the mad, unpredictable story. It’s oddly satisfying to depict children as (mostly) benevolent monsters. What is it about the co-existence of innocence and cruelty in childhood that seem to govern your storyline? For instance, why make the library monstrous as is depicted in Forest of Forgotten Fears?Rajiv and Salamander: The mix of cruelty and innocence is a consequence of the kind of children's books we were influenced by. In Pullman's His Dark Materials Lyra and Will adventure across parallel universes—they deal with child abductors, experience war, and go up against authoritarians. In Oda's One Piece Monkey D Luffy loses his brother Ace in the most gruesome way, Lemony Snicket's Count Olaf is a sadist. Even R. L. Styne's Goosebumps (which are campy and fun) feature nefarious endings and existential dread. I guess when a child reads Dickens, Dahl or Sendak, they subconsciously gain a deeper understanding of the world. Everyone knows that there are wolves in the forest, just not the lengths to which they'd go to eat you. With the library monster, it's a little more technical. Villains who are hostile to our main characters need to have a reason to be hostile towards them. In the case of the Forest of Forgotten fears, the Forest brings up everyone's deepest darkest fears -- with Nagesh it's losing his parents, with Wolfhound it's being punished by his father, Anjali is afraid of being hungry and alone, and Maithili relives the day her mother was abducted. The Minotaur by contrast isn't as traumatised as the others — he's fearful about returning a book late, about shelving a book in the wrong shelf, and if his love for books is leading to deforestation. The library monster is a manifestation of his deepest fears. Did you rely upon the classic back stories of the mythological creatures and cultural references and expect the young readers to make the connections? Or do you expect your readers to accept the stories, characters and names at face value?Rajiv and Salamander: Not at all, our readers can read our books with little to no knowledge about mythology. The most they'll be missing out on are a few jokes and references for those in the know. How did you come up with the titles? How many more are planned?Rajiv and Salamander: The titles write themselves. When we were done with the first book, we wanted to send our characters to Mathikettan solai (which roughly translates to the forest that spoils the mind), it's an actual forest that borders Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and it's the very same forest where my cousins and I (Salamander) got lost for an entire day... they had to send in a search party and forest officials to come retrieve us. This became the Forest of Forgotten Fears. We've also been alliterating our titles Web of Woe, Dolls of Despair, Isle of Insanity etc. and so the last books in the series will also alliterate. To answer your question, we have two more books planned, so that's 6 books in total. Incorporating folklore, fantasy, and adventure stories in the storyline and illustrations is a crackling good mix. How do the two of you ideate and figure out what to use or not?Rajiv and Salamander: We work differently on different books. With the Lost Creature Picture Book series: Song of the Asunam and Aalais like the Hills (forthcoming 2026), I draft the broader plot along with the text, and Rajiv does everything else: the pacing, the world building, the costumes, the way nature is incorporated, the pagination and the design. With our Nisha Small series, Rajiv breathes life into the books by illustrating the most vivid and joyful scenes. And with our new book series, Other Gods, we're trying to figure out what works best.For the Maithili and the Minotaur books, I prepare a very rough draft which I then share with Rajiv and our editor Smit, they then get back to me with feedback — what to cut out, what to focus on, which threads to pull on or abandon. I remember Rajiv getting me to rewrite the ending of the third book. A couple of drafts later, we'll agree on the general premise of the book, at which point Rajiv starts making rough sketches for the comic pages. This is also the part of the process where Rajiv adds, deletes, collapses panels into one or extends a panel into more, based on what's needed for the story as opposed to what was in the script. When we have the roughs, the three of us see if anything needs to be rewritten, changed, rearranged or removed, and once this is done, I start removing words that have been made redundant by the images. An iteration later, once we know that the book is there, we start to do a few read-throughs with our editor and start adding or removing jokes. These books take longer to make but are well worth the effort. Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated! Find the best of Al News in one place, specially curated for you every weekend. Stay on top of the latest tech trends and biggest startup news.