We sometimes miss our childhood days, when we had nothing more to do other than playing and reading comics. We grow up reading Spiderman, Batman, Superman, and many other fantastic comics developed in the west. There have been some famous comic books from India as well, but so few that you can count them on your hand.

Nextwave Multimedia, which has been in the services business and has done a lot of games and animation for their clients in the west, decided to come up with a startup that will be based on creating original IPs (Intellectual Property) for comics. “We thought comic is the best way because if you look at most of the entertainment products, they have their origin in comics. Comics allow you to experiment with a lot of ideas at a low cost and once they are made they can be taken into 2D or 3D animated movies and even into games and feature films. So we wanted to create IPs based on Indian culture and make stories which are contemporary,” says PR Rajendran, CEO of Nextwave Multimedia.

This new venture of Nextwave Multmedia is called Comicshead and the company did a soft launch on November 27, 2009 at TiECON event in Chennai. Comicshead has already launched many comic series, which are now available on Ovi Store from Nokia, iTunes Store from Apple, and Android Store. These comics are available at $2 and the company will soon be offering many free comic series, like Rambow Ramu, in these stores. Comicshead was the first to launch a comic book on Mahatma Gandhi, which saw more than 500 downloads in the first five days of launch. This series of Gandhi, which has 13 chapters is already creating buzz globally.

Rajendran feels that mobile and Web are the most perfect platforms in today’s world to launch a product. Commenting on the importance of mobile he says, “We have seen that after two or three months of the launch of our comics, total free downloads have been something like 70-75k on all the platforms and countries, and that too without any promotion. Mobile is an excellent platform and there are already 15 million mobiles that are connected to the Internet in India.” India currently has 82 million mobiles which can access the Internet, and as 3G expands in India in the next 12 months, the number of Internet connected phones will increase as well.

Currently, there are five employees who are working full time in Comicshead, while more than 10 employees from Nextwave join in whenever they are available. They are concentrating on making as many original IPs as possible. “We are focused to bring out 23-30 good comic series in the next two years. Then we will want to select two of them to work with other production companies to make a 2D animated series. We also plan to work with gaming companies to develop games from our comics,” says Rajendran.
Comicshead also merchandizes for comics through T-shirts and mugs, and plans to make toys and small hand-held game devices based on comic characters. Comicshead not only offers the users good entertainment by providing comics, but also let you create your own comic using a Comic Creator tool. So unleash your creative side and get cracking to revisit those childhood days once again.