But amidst these, whole lot of varied collections, something unusual made its presence felt. A whole series of comic books on Amitabh Bachchan! I bet today’s youngsters have not even heard of that and will find it hard to believe. Sounds incredible, but it was a reality somewhere in the early eighties. The comic character was name Supremo and was supposed to be the alter ego of Amitabh Bachchan.

The series published by Star Comics, a subsidiary of India Book House was conceptualised by Pammi Bakshi, the editor of Movie Mag, a film based magazine of the same publishing house. They were very popular during the 70s and 80s. Lacking in its original character line, the publication relied heavily upon the license to print comics of the very popular international comic characters like Superman, Batman, James Bonds and others. They also distributed the Tarzan and Tarzan’s son ‘Korak’ Comics published by Kiran Comics India, under license from Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc, USA. The star comics were published fortnightly ie, two issues in a month, making it 24 issues in a year. It was like a trend to publish comics in this manner those days. Most of the comic publishing houses usually followed the same frequency pattern.

The illustrations of the ‘Supremo’ series were designed by renowned art director Pratap Mullick, of Amar Chitra Katha fame. And the surprise of surprises - the script consultant of the Supremo series was none other than noted filmmaker and lyricist Gulzar.

Amitabh Bachchan, who changed the face of Indian mainstream cinema creating a mass hysteria with his anti-establishment character portrayals emerged as a cult figure in the eighties. His enormous fan following made the whole world stand up and take notice during his near fatal accident on the sets of Manmohan Desai’s ‘Coolie’, which movie-buffs will vividly remember. A whole nation with diverse culture, religion and beliefs prayed in unison for his speedy recovery during that time. His miraculous recovery also catapulted his star image that might have prompted the creation of the comic series which became an instant hit not only among children, but also among other age groups. On Amitabh Bachchan’s insistence, the comic book series was also reportedly sent to hospitals, welfare organisations and orphanages.

While I was toying with the idea of penning down some thoughts on this unusual comic book series, I bumped into some interesting facts about the whole concept from the creator herself. Pammi Bakshi had once wrote in a blog how the whole idea cropped up. And I quote: "One day, I saw some children playing in my building. They wanted to be superheroes — some wanted to be Superman and some Batman. But when Amitabh’s name was dropped, all of them started fighting as every child wanted to be Amitabh Bachchan. I was very stunned, as until then I had thought Amitabh was a rage among elders and college-going kids. Here, I saw that he had a huge effect on school kids too. So I realised we needed something for children." When the superstar was approached with the idea, Amitabh Bachchan reportedly agreed instantly setting a pre-condition that the comic character should not look like a caricature.

Then the daunting task in the creator’s own admittance was assigning the job to an artist. Pratap Mullick who was a celebrity by that time through his illustrations of Amar Chitra Katha was approached. After initial abhorrence of doing anything filmy, Mullick reportedly came up with eight to ten sketches. The superstar in Amitabh Bachchan had himself selected one among those for his superhero character. Though the look was designed on the lines of international superheroes, the conventional superhero couture of undies-over-tights had been done away with and instead Supremo has a piece of brown cloth draped coyly around his waist, held there by a hip-holster. Supremo had two sidekicks - Vijay and Anthony, the two names that became synonymous with most of the characters played by Bachchan on screen. However, these two characters were very much normal human beings without any weird costumes. And of course, Supremo had a pet falcon as his scout and guide, christened Shaheen - an obvious take from ‘Allarakha’ - the one used in ‘Coolie’, Amitabh’s blockbuster at that time. Supremo was also not assigned any super-powers. He had the combination of strength to defeat his human adversaries and intelligence to get out of traps laid for him. The adventures were mainly set when Amitabh Bachchan would be shooting in some location and he was approached by naive locals who take his screen image for real to save from some evil force. Amitabh would then don the mantle of Supremo and fight the evil forces for goodness to prevail.

Though the elegant Gulzar shedding off his grace came on board as script consultant, most of the stories were penned by actress Sudha Chopra who starred with Amitabh Bachchan in his movies like ‘Dostana’, ‘Kalaa Patthar’, ‘Silsila’, ‘Pukar’. The others were written by several freelancers as there wasn’t one fixed story writer. The publishers also used to take stories sent by readers.

On the coinage of the name ‘Supremo’, the creator Pammi Bakshi had an interesting tale to narrate. And I quote, "Amitabh was shooting for Pukar in Goa, along with Randhir Kapoor. When Amitabh would come on the sets, the whole of Goa would come to standstill. So, everytime Amitabh would arrive, Randhir would say Supremo has arrived. I liked the name and decided to call Amitabh’s comic character Supremo."

However, the comic series of Supremo that had a dream run for two years had to be shelved for various reasons better known to the creative team and the publisher. But the novel initiative gave birth to a trend that saw some cheap and alternative versions. Here is then a sneak take on some of them.

This particular series, was imitated and copied over in other states of the country, especially Down South, where Rajnikant, was portrayed as a special agent in a comic series in Tamil Nadu. While in Kerala, Mamooty, was featured in a similar type of comic series.

In a country, where movies and cricket redefine patriotism, can cricketing heroes be left behind? So, the next superstar to be featured in a comic strip was none other than Kapil Dev. Although, this was initially made as a three one-page advertisement articles for BSA SLR brand bicycles, the plans were there to be featured him as full-fledged comic character, closely following his real-life exploits on the cricketing field. The one-page advertisements were often featured in the back-cover of erstwhile Indrajal Comics (from the house of Times of India), very regularly. But the concept never took center stage and it petered out real quickly. Legendary tennis star Vijay Amritraj and ace shuttler and world badminton champion Prakash Padokone, better known today as the proud father of Bollywood damsel, Deepika Padokone also had a brief stint with the bicycle company and featured in some of the comic strip advertisements.

Next in toes was the legendary batsman Sunil Gavaskar. A brainchild of two accomplished journalists, Bharat and Shalan Savur, created a Cricket fiction (‘Cri-fi’ as they named it). The Little Master became the comic character, ‘Sunny the super sleuth’. The series was distributed by erstwhile India Book Distributors (IBD). Sunny was portrayed as a superhero who battled cricketers from Bandookstan, an imaginary country probably referring to Pakistan and England on the field and between games, took on evil magicians who lived beyond the outer range of the Himalayas. While some of his allies in the comics were named on the real Indian crickets, like Shashtri, Kirmani, etc, the foreign players were named differently, like Gotham for Botham, Usman for Imran and Bower for Gower. There were a total of three books released on this series, and after the initial euphoria petered out, the publishers pulled the plug out of the series; the fourth and the last in the series, was serialised in some newspapers across the country.

If filmstars and cricketers can make it into comics, why not a television star? Mukesh Khanna, known for his towering performance as Bheesm Pitamaha in the Doordarshan magnus opus ‘Mahabharata’ decided to turn superhero himself, through ‘Shaktimaan’. The concept was a direct imitation of the famed Superman character itself. Shaktimaan was pictured as a superhero having super strengths, fighting the evil of darkness, by harnessing the mysterious powers within a human body, by meditation and practice. Despite its borrowed concept and the visibly ageing Mukesh Khanna donning the lead role, the series was a hit among children and generated a huge fan following for the star, among kids, obviously. No wonder, Khanna decided to merchandise the brand name he garnered, by introducing Shaktimaan in comics, under his corporate entity ‘Bheesm International’. But it didn’t go well for today’s young readers, who prefers to be on the fast track and also comics have become obsolete these days.