Dear Friends,
Several people were curious about how European comics are popular in for someone in India. After some thought I was thinking this could be a fun experience to share the story with you folks.
India is a LARGE country. Comics in India were primarily restricted to Tarzan and Superman with some native Indian comics. But there is the souther part of India which have the localities (State: Tamil Nadu and Union Territory of Pondicherry). They are unified in the fact that they speak the tamil language. Tamil is also spoken in parts of Sri Lanka. Most of the fans are of the fanco-belgian genre are tamil.
This is mainly because in the 1960s a small comic company started legally acquiring rights to publishing Franco Belgian comics. Their name is Lion comics. You can find their website here. You can find it hilarious to find the title you know and are familiar with in Tamil. Their website is :
http://lioncomics.in/ and if you hover over the all comics tab you can see the various list of titles.
They recently published collectors edition is:
http://lioncomics.in/1063-minnum-maranam a compilation of 13 Blueberry stories. I think the next up is a limited edition of all 18 XIII books. Not sure though. Since the 1960s they have had a loyal following an have made comics accessible to everyone speaking tamil in Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.
This was the reason why so many people like Franco-Belgian comics. As for the explanation of my username as Supermario: My youngest was keeping on playing his Supermario Gameboy without doing his homework that day and I took it from him till he finished it. So the name Supermario was stuck in my head and that is why I used it.
Thanks friends!
Cheers!
Some of the titles that have been published in Tamil as mentioned in Wikipedia are:
Barracuda & Frollo
Bernard Prince
Blueberry (comics)
Bruno Brazil
Largo Winch
Buz Sawyer
Chick Bill
Diabolik
Dr. Kildare
Flash Gordon
Iznogoud
Johnny Hazard
Johnny Nero
Lucky Luke
Mandrake the Magician
Martin Mystère
Modesty Blaise
Ric Hochet
Rip Kirby
Robot Archie
Secret Agent X-9 (Phil Corrigan)
Tex Willer
The Cisco Kid
The Phantom
The Spider
The Steel Claw
XIII (Thirteen)
Bouncer
Magic Wind
Thorgal
Léonard (comics)
Clifton (comics)
The Smurfs