Rare taste
writer: Ram V
artist: Philip Andrade
Writer: and world design
Publisher: Prosperity! studio
collect: Rare flavors #1-6
publication: August 2024
India is a food culture. From the poorest slums to the largest cities, every region has a culinary identity composed of its geographical and economic history. Street food is a staple in India in particular, and there are so many varieties that you can travel from one end of the country to the other and still discover something new every day. From pav bhaji on the streets of Mumbai to the intricately crafted sweet prasad of Delhi, Indian cuisine is the brainchild of artisans and reflects their socio-economic backgrounds, religious ideologies and family traditions. Like all human crafts, food is an art, both in the culinary preparation of the artist and in the judgment and appreciation of the audience. The art of food is co-constructed by this relationship that forces us to strive to understand each other. Of course, you can always consume it directly, but the fun is in the tasting.
This love of food, as well as the expression of a love of art and a celebration of those artisans whose crafts have been crushed under the feet of capitalism, is Rare taste. This book reunites Ram V and Felipe Andrade, who previously created one of the best comics of the decade The Multiple Deaths of Lyla Starr. Here again, they combine the grand theme of human purpose with Hindu mythology, taking the reader on a journey through the various dishes of Indian cuisine. Their combined efforts create one of the best comics of the year, an aesthetically and emotionally complex tapestry that helps us understand not just food, not just art, but the inherent humanity of the act of creation, and how or whether they can be reconciled with an automation , industrialization destroys the world.
Rare taste Rubin Baksh (actually the forest-dwelling demon Bakasura) convinces human Mohan to help him make a documentary about Indian cuisine. The two traveled the country looking for different stalls, food trucks and restaurants. Rubin’s demonic nature forces him to eat humans, ultimately leading to the two being hunted by demon hunters Dilshan and Dilkush. Each issue is named after a specific dish, and the narrative alternates between Rubin’s journey and the dish’s recipe.
V and Andrade’s choice of structure forces the reader to see the recipe not just as a list or steps, but as a story in its own right. As an almost formalistic exercise, the recipes are carefully spliced between scenes so that we might begin to question the reasons behind each ingredient as well as the history of the dishes themselves.
Key to this choice was the lettering work of Deron Bennett of Andworld Design. Each recipe and ingredient image balances the beauty between a treasured cookbook and a storybook: the points are clear and clear, but the shapes are whimsical and make the reader feel like they are being told these sacred messages, like magic. solemn.
Preparing a meal is about solving a puzzle, forming a unified whole that requires the cooperation of various ingredients and carefully measured impact. The end result is less important than the ability of the artist and the viewer to find the meaning created by the connections between each piece. As we read through these steps, we can stop and ask ourselves “How does this contribute to our final flavor? Where does each piece of the puzzle come from?”
But artists who embark on this journey must make some sacrifices, and so Mohan essentially enters into a Faustian bargain, trading his soul for the pursuit of meaningful art. However, the negative connotation of this exchange is not where V and Andrade go. quite, Rare taste It’s about the necessary sacrifice and labor inherent in the act of creation. Art is a reflection of our consciousness, so our pain, our history, our expectations are invested in the work. Our life experiences and lives are the flavors behind each dish, and the work required to create these meals becomes increasingly difficult as time goes by.
The concept is in stark contrast to previous collaborations between Ram V and Filipe Andrade, The Multiple Deaths of Lyla Starr. Where Leila Starr This is about God, this is about demons. One is about the nature of death and the other is about the nature of life. There are stars What began as a bureaucracy and carefully polished divine prestige eventually collapsed into reality, and Rare taste The opening scene immediately rejects this concept, Rubin is down and out and has no gravitas.
Together, these two books tell a story about how we find our humanity in our mortal attachments and artistic expression. Although with Rare tastewe are left in a more ambiguous position, one that commands us to challenge the way we live today and our relationship with art, a relationship that has been reduced to mere content, a relationship Rubin, despite his passion, feels guilty about .
Rubin’s opening pitch to Mohan was to produce the documentary and sell it to some big streamer. His main goal was to show the world something that represented the complexity and richness of what he had experienced throughout his life. However, the way out he chose ran counter to this goal. Or as Mohan puts it, “Sometimes people don’t care about taste…sometimes they just want to eat it and move on.” The tension between creating desire and creating experience plays out in Rubin and Mo’s relationship as they I became increasingly frustrated with the abstract ideas I was trying to build. Rubin lamented early on that his peers focused solely on frameworks and techniques without considering the emotional content and goals of the work.
Rubin is the essence of what any good artist needs: passion, life experience, a unique perspective, and the ability to consciously construct the world around him. However, this skill comes at a price. Like the streaming media he wants to sell documentaries to, capturing an act that is meant to fit into a culture that can only be consumed risks undermining the very culture he wants to promote.
So Mohan’s innocence, his desire to tell a story that would make his mother proud, is necessary to help us transform our skills and knowledge of the subject into something meaningful, rooted in human connection and love . Without the consumption of anything, there is no art, be it food or movies. All experiences condensed into stories lose a degree of dimensionality, and every chef works with the knowledge that their ingredients, skills and tools will one day lose their power. Yet we still do it because the love of art, the creation and experience of art, is how we survive, how we experience the meaning of life and our place in the world.
Art is therefore opposed to the consumptive nature of capital, which absorbs all ingredients and is divorced from the story behind labor. Food carts and traditional cooking methods are losing more and more ground as the desire for mass production overshadows the human stories we are all trying to tell; our love of food goes far beyond simple nutrition.
Again, fonts are important here. Bennett does not resort to the typical translation signals found in Western comics, such as bracketed text and notes telling readers “Translated from language X.” Instead, Hindi is written at length and the translation is presented like movie subtitles.
While this may seem like a small change, this additional layer forces the reader to make the effort to experience the language, to say the words in the balloon, and to know that although they are parallel to the subtitles, they are different sentences. We learn the meanings of these words, but we, like Rubin and Mohan, are tourists here and only have a rough idea of the meanings embodied by others.
Rubin and Mohan’s journey is one of witnessing, documenting and transforming their lives into an art that others can relate to. The consumption of emotional energy and desire to communicate has no ability to offset the energy that has been consumed. Instead, it’s about doing our best to twist what we can so that maybe the ghosts of our experiences might inspire others to question what’s on their plates. Maybe a strong enough flavor could remind us that food isn’t just for survival and art isn’t just for consumption. Rather, it’s about the taste, experience we have in the moment, and the joy we spend the rest of our lives trying to recreate.
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