Out of the box

Who does not love to read comics and we all have our favourite comic heroes. How about comics served in quick “comic bytes” inside matchboxes, which the creators term as “tiny boxes of awesomeness guaranteed”. Open one and out comes a story which is quirky, weird and humorous — not necessarily in that order.

The brainchild of two writer/engineers Pratheek and Tina, the idea to create comics nestled in matchboxes took seed in 2013 at a book launch at a café in Kochi. Tina had the innovative idea of asking for a word from the visitors and then making a short three-paneled comic out of their words, putting it in a matchbox and presenting it to them after the event as a memento. But this idea did not work out as planned. Tina says, “The idea though remained at the back of our heads and two months later, we brought out the matchbox comics as a product of Manta Ray comics, which Pratheek was a part of, executing it in a bare two months’ time.”

The matchbox comic’s prototype was launched briefly at Mumbai Comic Con in 2013 and was a huge success. Later, Pratheek and Tina started their own company Kokachi and brought back all the rights of the comics they had published. Talking about the matchbox comics, Tina explains, “The comics have every subject under the sun and the only brief given to the creators was to create something humorous, quirky and weird. The current comics have 14-21 panels to fit inside the matchbox and Pratheek and I have written two stories.” They have plans to publish a collection of 12 books and 12 stories as an anthology series connected by a common theme “choice”. Incidentally, the couple have also worked on animation sequences in some recent films.

The couple’s own love story is like a fairy tale. Girl meets boy on a train journey, they get talking and discover two common factors – a love for writing and a shared birthday. Pratheek was in the process of starting his own publishing company and Tina,  an electronics engineer, and Pratheek, a mechanical engineer, talked about films and books. Journey over, they parted after exchanging numbers and then reconnected eight months later to wish each other on their birthdays. By this time, Pratheek had already started his company along with a friend and later, they got married with Tina joining Pratheek’s company after resigning from a multinational giant. Tina  has three adopted dogs and loves travelling.