Life has come full circle for Butterfingers, aka Amar Kishen, who began life as a character in a comic strip in Tinkle. Created by Thiruvananthapuram-based author Khyrunnisa A, Butterfingers went on to star in three novels and three collections of short stories before returning in a comic, Adventures in Texas and Other Stories (Penguin Random House).
“There are three new stories of 32 pages each in this 100-page book in comic format – one is a mystery, one is an adventure and the other is a sports-based story,” says Khyrunnisa.
The publishers were keen on a new book on Butterfingers and that is when they wondered if a comic could be created around 13-year-old Amar’s hyper adventurous life. Four of his novels were based around games such as football, cricket and badminton but each had an interesting innovative spin to the game and its rules.
When the author agreed to the idea of a different format for her character, they had to take permission from Tinkle, the first publishers of Butterfingers. As they had stopped publishing the comic strip in 2015, when the third book on Butterfingers had hit bookshelves, they had no issue with a new comic on his adventures. “They told me, however, that what had appeared earlier in their publication could not be used,” adds Khyrunnisa.
Since comics are a relatively new format for Penguin, they decided to keep the new Butterfingers as a surprise for readers. “Readers of Butterfingers were curious to know whether it would be a sports-based story or a collection of short stories,” says Khyrunnisa.
Penguin roped in illustrator Abhijeet Kini, who had done the original illustrations for many of the comic strips centred around Butterfingers for Tinkle.
The author says it was a lot of work as the illustrations and speech bubbles had to capture the essence of the story. Moreover, the story had to be turned into a script too.
Of the three stories in the book, one is based on an adventure that happened to Khyrunnisa in Texas when she visited the US.
“The story on sports has Amar participating in a marathon with his principal to raise money to tide over a financial crisis in the school. As usual, there is a bit of confusion and mayhem created by Amar,” laughs the author.
