The comics adventure continues 😊 Yesterday, I decided to read ‘The Dark Jungle’ (‘La Giungla Nera‘). Story by Paulo Morales, art by Dante Spada. The book came out originally in Italian and I read the Tamil translation.
The story is set in colonial India of 1860 in Calcutta. A young British woman is talking to her friend. It is the middle of the night. She asks her friend to take care of her dog. She then goes to meet her lover. But at the meeting point, she sees something horrific, and she is kidnapped by some unknown assailants and she disappears. A young police inspector is summoned to his captain’s office in London. This young man is progressive and embraces new ideas and modern science to solve cases. He is sent to Calcutta. His captain in Calcutta asks him to take over this case. What happens after that forms the rest of the story.
I didn’t have great expectations out of the story. Many stories set in colonial India written by European authors tend to portray India as a land filled with snake charmers and sleazy thieves and thugs and elephants, with the occasional exotic beautiful princess thrown in 😄🤦🏽 Some people still think that India is like that 😄 So I went in without any expectations, but I was curious about the story. Once I started reading the story, I was pleasantly surprised. The story was gripping, I couldn’t wait to turn the page to find out what happened next, the depiction of Indians was realistic and good, there were good and bad Indians and there were good and bad British guys. There was mystery, detection, beautiful romance, heartbreaking horror, and surprising revelations. The bad guy in the story looked like Draco Malfoy. And the ending was beautiful and satisfying. It was exceptional. The book exceeded all my expectations.
The artwork was stunning. Dante Spada, take a bow! The use of light and dark and different shades of grey was brilliant. It was like watching a black-and-white noir movie. I think the artist used pointillism in many of the panels and probably throughout the book (sometimes it was hard to tell) and it was incredibly beautiful. (‘Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.’ – from Wikipedia)
There was a surprise for me in the middle of the story. Our young inspector takes the help of two people to solve the cases. One man is called Tiger Sandokan. Another is Sandokan’s friend Yanez. Sandokan and Yanez were two famous characters created by Emilio Salgari. He wrote a series of novels featuring these two, in the 1890s and early 1900s. These stories are very popular in Italy and they’ve been made into movies and TV series. The most popular of those TV series came out in the late 1970s, starring Indian actor Kabir Bedi as Sandokan. I knew about these two characters before, but I’ve never read any of their stories or watched the TV series before. So I was pleasantly surprised to make my acquaintance with these two here. Sandokan and Yanez were cool characters and the banter between them is hilarious. Their friendship with our young police inspector is also beautifully depicted. Never thought I’ll get around to reading a Sandokan story. Glad I did.
I loved ‘La Giungla Nera’, the Dark Jungle. It was beautiful, exceptional, and the artwork was stunning. Very pleasantly surprised. I highly recommend it. I’m not sure whether an English translation is available. It sometimes amuses me when an Italian comic is available in Tamil and not in English 😄🙈 If the English translation is available, hope you’ll pick it up and read it and enjoy it as much as I did.
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