Pran Kumar Sharma, creator of the famous comic book character Chacha Chaudhary, died on Wednesday, a little over a week before his 76th birthday.
In the 1960s and '70s, when the Indian comic book industry was glutted with reprints of Western superhero comics, Pran’s Chacha Chaudhary stood out as an elderly man who relied on his wit, not super strength, to foil criminals and gangsters across India and the world. As Pran pointed out in several interviews, Chacha Chaudhary was more of a contemporary Chanakya than a regular superhero, but like any comic book character worth his ink, he managed to save the innocent every single time.
Pran’s first drawing of him was for the Hindi magazine Lotpot in 1969. He continued drawing the character for them until Diamond Comics approached him in 1981, where he worked until his death.
As interest in India’s comic book industry grew over the past decade, two documentary teams approached Pran for interviews.
Chitrakatha, about the Indian comic book industry, released a rough cut of the film in 2011. Little has been since heard of the status of the film, which interviews almost all the legendary creators of comics. In this section, Pran speaks of how he created Chacha Chaudhary.
He expands on this theme in No Kidding, a documentary by Mumbai-based filmmaker Nikhil Titus that also about comics in India. Pran discusses how and why he became a cartoonist and how the plots and characters of Chacha Chaudhary adapted to the changing times.
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In the 1960s and '70s, when the Indian comic book industry was glutted with reprints of Western superhero comics, Pran’s Chacha Chaudhary stood out as an elderly man who relied on his wit, not super strength, to foil criminals and gangsters across India and the world. As Pran pointed out in several interviews, Chacha Chaudhary was more of a contemporary Chanakya than a regular superhero, but like any comic book character worth his ink, he managed to save the innocent every single time.
Pran’s first drawing of him was for the Hindi magazine Lotpot in 1969. He continued drawing the character for them until Diamond Comics approached him in 1981, where he worked until his death.
As interest in India’s comic book industry grew over the past decade, two documentary teams approached Pran for interviews.
Chitrakatha, about the Indian comic book industry, released a rough cut of the film in 2011. Little has been since heard of the status of the film, which interviews almost all the legendary creators of comics. In this section, Pran speaks of how he created Chacha Chaudhary.
He expands on this theme in No Kidding, a documentary by Mumbai-based filmmaker Nikhil Titus that also about comics in India. Pran discusses how and why he became a cartoonist and how the plots and characters of Chacha Chaudhary adapted to the changing times.
