Over the past five years I've been amassing an eclectic collection of cheap used books on my trips to Bombay. At Rs.10 apiece (around $0.25 US) they aren't expensive or significant (most of them are, in fact, the very opposite), but they are valuable to me, insomuch as they are weird -- and I love weird. I have read very few of them; Of the hundreds (and by now, thousands), I have only finished a handful. There have been plans ever since I started blogging to talk about them, to read and review them, but this has so far not happened.

I was reminded of this recently when Dan blogged about his bookshelf, and in the comments I lamented that most of my books were in boxes (he suggested I just take a picture of the box). "That's it," I said to myself, "enough dawdling!" I looked through a small box of them and chose seven -- none of which I have read -- but which I think are interesting. Maybe this will give me the impetus to actually read some, but for now I will talk of their weird and wonderful subjects, their pretty and often breathtaking covers, and their all-round coolness. I hope you find them as fun as I do.

Comic Konga has begun!

I figured I'd start out simple with a one-panel. My first idea was to have the same idea done over three or four panels but I think the joke doesn't really need anything more than one.

This was done in pencil, coloured in inkscape and put together in the GIMP. Word balloons in Inkscape. It's a bit of a fractured process, I know, but I prefer the quick flexibility of laying down colour shapes in a vector program but need the layer manipulations of a bitmap one like GIMP to keep it looking natural.

(Yes, I know it's 4 am. Still technically Monday, though)

So the other day, in the comments section of The Future of Human Transportation, Spyder challenged me (and others) to a 'comic-off' -- a comics festival of sorts. We'd each do five comics over five days. I accepted of course, but work -- o wonderfully banal, low paying work! -- reared its head and I couldn't jump right into it. I figure this is a blessing in disguise for us as well as you, dear reader(s).

Being the delusional brandsmith that I am, I figured an august venture such as this should have its own silly name and stupid logo, so I rechristened it Comic Konga!... um, that's the second name I though of (Comic Orgy is something I'm reserving for another time, hehe). Read on for more astounding details!