Virgin Comics: The Sadhu #1

[OrochiNaga]

Out of all the Virgin releases so far, ive got to say that The Sadhu has been my favorite.

I just got it this morning, and read it. While Devi and Snakewoman show a lot of potential, and so ill be judging them more after a couple of issues, The Sadhu, being historical, has a good basis to work from - and has captured the era (Britian and India around the Indian Rebellion of 1857), very well, playing on real life events and fictionalising them.

It looks as though it will be drawing a lot from actual Indian mythology, history and philosophy - already the band of people that will no doubt be the focus of the comic, seem to have been drawn from the history of both Rebels and Thugs.

In real life, thuggies, where the word thug come from, were a cult of Hindu and Muslim thieves who operated as one of the world's first mafia's, scaring local authorities with deliberate use of excessive violence and fake ritualisation. The British exagerated this mafia, turning it into a real cult, and implying, though ignorance of Indian myths, that it amounted to 'devil worship', using it as an excuse to slaughter villages full of people under the pretext that they were part of this orginisation of petty thieves and murderers. This glorified version of the thuggies has stuck with their history, thus films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were unashamedly innaccurate representations of the truth, and of Indian religion.

The Sadhu seems to have taken this, removed the real-life thuggee societies's crimes, renamed them after 'dacoits', turned them into Rebels against the British, given them proficiency in Indian martial arts like Lathi and Silambam, and is building the story around this climate.

[Indigo Al]

I'll post more thoughts later after I've re-read it, but i thought it was the best of the the three Virgin debuts thus far.

[Samurai]

I too have liked it the best, Devi not far behind, and I didn't care for Snake Woman at all.

Sadhu is incredible reminiscent of a character I created 12 years ago called the Avatar. He too was a British soldier in India during the Sepoy Mutinee. He and some other soldiers were involved in stealing antiquities from the ancient Indian temples. They eventually found a lost temple to Yama, the god of death, deep in the jungle. When they returned a week later with a cart to haul the golden statues from the place, they found that the temple was not abandoned, and a ceremony was going on. His compatriots wanted to simply kill the worshippers, but he refused... he was a thief, but would not commit cold-blooded murder like that. They fell to squabbling, which the worshippers overheard, and came to investigate. His fellow thieves turned their guns on the investigating natives, and began killing them. He ordered them to stop firing, but they refused, even when he pointed his own gun at them... they instead turned on him! In the end, he killed all of his fellow soldiers, but was mortally wounded himself in the process.

Whether it was the natives' ceremony, or the multiple deaths, the god Yama appeared and asked what had happened. The natives told him how he had turned on his own men and killed them to prevent the massacre of all the people there. They had been trying to summon Yama to help them in the fight against the British, but he told them he was forbidden from interfereing personally, as all the gods were. However, he could imbue a champion, an Avatar, with immortality and great power, and he could help them. All of the young men had been the first to investigate the disturbance, and had thus been killed, so the dying British soldier who had risked his own life to save the Indians was offered the chance to become the Avatar. He agreed, and ever since then, he has been a protector of humanity, both from human brutality as well as all manner of supernatural threats.

His powers were immortality (nothing could kill him, and he would regenerate quickly), mildly superhuman physical abilities (lift about 1 ton, move about twice as fast as normal, etc), the ability to read a person's aura, especially when and how they are destined to die, and finally, he had a superhuman knowledge of pressure points, such that he could paralyze or even kill someone with the proper touch!

I had created him for the DC Heroes roleplaying game, drew him in pictures, including fictional comic covers, etc. Just one of many characters I had created when I was younger... so Sadhu is eerily similar, and I'm finding it very enjoyable to finally see something like the idea I had in print!

[OrochiNaga]

I can understand how two groups would come up with a similar concept though - it fits many Indian themes, like avatars, the 1857 rebellion, etc :)

Ive always thought about incorporating Yama into a manga or something if I had chance too - Yama is known as Yanlao in China and Enma-O in Japan, and has appeared in a lot of anime and stuff.

But then again, Kali, already famous from stuff like Indiana Jones, and who has one of the most interesting personalities, is great. A female god, a feminist icon, who refuses to clad herself in clothes because she represents the destruction of ignorance, and thus they are a shield upon the truth of sexuality, etc...

[OrochiNaga]

A lot of people reviewed Devi and Snakewoman, but ive only seen one Sadhu review so far by a website - and it was also posetive:

http://www.brokenfrontier.com/reviews/details.php?id=927

On a aisde note, ive discovered you lucky mofos in the US can get them way cheaper than over here:

http://www.comichole.com/category/Virgin_Comics

Only $1.79, when list price is $2.99, and they have such good quality paper and art...

[Mo S.]

Definitely my favorite of the bunch so far (though I thought Devi picked up a bit with the second issue, and I liked the art on SNakewoman but felt it spent too much time rambling around).

My short opinion:

Sadhu #1 (Chopra/Kang; Virgin). My favorite of the Virgin crop so far. A nice bit of foreshadowing in the beginning and then a tale of two mid-19th-century troubled dock-worker brothers, eventually split (with somewhat heavy-handed foreshadowing in the first-person narration) as one brother enlists and goes off to fight to uphold the British Raj, packing up his pregnant wife and sailing away to fame, fortune and adventure - and then appearing to live off in a cottage in a jungle for a bit. The story loses a bit of steam toward the end, but the basic setup is there and the artwork is gorgeous, if a bit stiff in places. London is suitably grim and smoky and grimy and subdued, but I expected the colors to pick up life as the scene shifted.

[OrochiNaga]

I think Devi's weakness so far has been in the writing - so I was glad to hear off wikipedia that Samit Basu, an Indian fantasy author known for humor and liberal use of pop culture references, was gonna be taking over the story from issue #3 onward. I have a felling its gonna pick up from then on.

I hope Ramayana Reborn does justice to the epic when its released.

[Zakuraba]

Strange that everyone here seemed to like Sadhu the best. Personally it was my least favored of the 3, although that is no insult, as I thought all of them were thoroughly enjoyable. Personally my favorite was Snakewoman. Seems I'm in the minority on that one.

[OrochiNaga]

Strange that everyone here seemed to like Sadhu the best. Personally it was my least favored of the 3, although that is no insult, as I thought all of them were thoroughly enjoyable. Personally my favorite was Snakewoman. Seems I'm in the minority on that one.

Although Snakewoman wasnt my favorite, I dont agree with some of the things that people have said about it - a lot of reviews said it was slow paced, didnt reveal enough, etc - but ive read manga before that dosent even reveal anything for the first five issues, and is still a masterpiece by the end.

EDIT: as it happens, Broken Frontier just put up a preview of Snakewoman #2:

http://www.brokenfrontier.com/headlines/details.php?id=1726