Week 7 Reading Diary A&B: Back to the Future

For my reading this week I decided to knock out both halves of the Kaurava Empire Volume 1 in one day.

And I have to say, I was blown away. I did not know what to expect with this one (I must admit, I definitely judged the book by it's admittedly awesome cover) and boy was I intrigued from page 1.

This graphic novel took a totally alien approach to a two thousand year old text; it transplanted it to the distant future of sci-fi space battles and laser guns. It had never even occurred to me that something like this could be done, much less HAD been done!
The creativity behind this work was palpable. Most notably, the concept art was stunning. I think that more than anything is what won me over. I simply could not look away from the brilliant designs of the characters I thought I knew.

May I present epic space Bheema, for your enjoyment

And let's talk about the story. The graphic novel took a little mentioned character, Abhimanyu, and gave him the center stage. His character reminded me of Rama a little bit with just his sheer invincibility. I thought Arjuna was the strongest mortal in the Mahabharata, but boy was I wrong. Abhimanyu is even stronger (according to this reading)!

And that's why it BLEW ME AWAY when he died. Even though I knew it was coming from last week's reading, I had nearly forgotten it (Abhimanyu was such a side note to the main story). Wow, that seemed to very unlike the other indian epics we've read so far. To build up this all-powerful antagonist and then to just kill him off, and have the murderer be an inferior warrior who doesn't even feel the glory in his death? Poetic. Powerful. That was such a moving scene.