He reflected the people’s sentiments and that was the time when the character really flourished,” notes Debasish Deb as he goes on to talk about the progress of the character from being simply strong to becoming someone akin to superman.
Bullets bounced off his chest and he was sought out by army generals who required his help to stop an attack. If you flip through a Bantul comic strip, you will often find him single-handedly stopping tanks and diffusing bombs. Complete with a bad-tempered uncle who often ended up being collateral damage for their many mischievous plots, and a few other scattered tertiary characters, the comic strip was a delight for both children and adults. However, by the time most of these stories ended, the former was seen in flight, as a last-ditch effort to escape punishment, unless of course that punishment had already caught up with him, in which case, the reader had the delight of watching him endure (not very gracefully, one might add), the many blows that landed on his back. Hnada, a tall, thin chap with a penchant for creating mischief, was often seen as constantly devising ways to land others, especially Bhnoda, into trouble.
Featuring two boys, one lanky (Hnada) and the other bulky (Bhnoda), the comic strips were initially sketched and inked by Debnath himself until Shuktara decided to start printing them in grayscale. It was light-hearted slapstick humour and people loved it,” observed Deb.
Here was a pair of characters, very much like the infamous Laurel-Hardy duo, who got into all sorts of trouble and very often paid the price for it. Thus appeared the very first comic strip of Hnada-Bhnoda in the 1962 June-July edition of Shuktara magazine. Despite not being very well-informed about the genre, the then illustrator decided to take up the challenge. Debnath’s foray into comics was because of an increasing demand for comic strips. “In one of the interviews that I conducted with him, he admitted that before he became a comic artist, the only comic book he was familiar with was the Tarzan comics!” recollects Deb, as he tells us how, being a well-known illustrator of the times, Narayan Debnath never had any aspirations of becoming a comic artist. Meta discussion about users, r/Kolkata and other subs aren't allowed here.Buy Debasish Deb’s Aankay lekhay chaar doshok here.If you advertise your product before asking the mods, we will consider it as spam and spammers aren't welcomed here (this includes reference code).Refrain from witch-hunting, profanity, using slurs. Users participating in political threads are being requested to be civil.Inappropriate flairs may lead to removal. Appropriate flairs are to be set for all submissions.If a submission which has no title, you should make a self post with an accurate description of the content. An original title (and/or subtitle) is the one given by the content creator. All links (articles, images or infographics) should contain its original title (and/or subtitle).Posts related to the province West Bengal are also welcome but can also be made at /r/westbengal.Posts related to India must be done at /r/india.Use Bengali or English at your discretion. Posts must be related to Kolkata/ Greater Kolkata in general.The city has a tradition of political graffiti depicting everything from outrageous slander to witty banter and limericks, caricatures, and propaganda. Kolkata has been called the "City of Furious, Creative Energy" as well as the "cultural capital of India". Kolkata is known for its literary, artistic, and revolutionary heritage as the former capital of India, it was the birthplace of modern Indian literary and artistic thought.