Even we grew up reading Amar Chitra Katha (which comes to close to America’s Classics Illustrated) and enjoyed it a great deal and also learnt basic Indian history and culture from it.ย
This is only one side of the story. It is equally true that She appreciated phantom comics and Sri Aurobindo enjoyed Curly Wee (now available at SABDA). So these oral statements heard and quoted by someone with emphasis added by our mind should not be taken as ultimate advice or fundamental truths. Champaklal ji rightly points this out in his memoirs that at one point of time The Mother did not appreciate artificial flowers but after several years She completely changed in this regard. He rightly observes that perhaps the change was because the quality of flowers improved tremendously! Perhaps the same would be true of comic strips if you see the quality and content of the comics then and the changes that came about subsequently. Amar Chitra Katha is a much later thing. We cannot say that She passed a judgment on all comics for all times. The same you can see in Her comments on painting and photography. Things evolve, attitudes change and that is what matters in the end.
Having said that the one objection against these Katha comics and TV serials on spiritual books could well be that they fix our imagination in certain ways thereby limiting the truths and turning them into dogmas like associating divinity with dhoti and sari, tapasya with saffron clothes, meditation with cross legged posture etc which is indeed crude in a certain sense.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
