First off, I want to acknowledge Virgin for even having a line of comics about Indian myths and heroes. It's great to see something really different available in the US comic market, and these are all the more interesting for the fact that there are a ton of Indian talents involved in the books. This one is written by Arjun Gaind, with art by R.Manikandan, each of whom have done a couple of other miniseries for Virgin.
This book has its strong points, but it definitely has the feel of something done by a couple of creators who are still learning their craft. The dialogue tends toward clichés, the story is choppy (with too few pages per scene, as Gaind tried to cram as many years into the first issue as he possibly could), and there's a framing story that doesn't seem to add anything (unless Gaind has some big plans for it that he forgot to foreshadow).
The art works well-- the cityscapes look great, with nicely detailed skylines of domes and minarets. Manikandan has a good command of the basics, as well as room to grow in his craft. His visual storytelling is very clear, which helps to keep the choppy story from being difficult to follow. There isn't anything spectacular or, really, beautiful, in his drawings, but this is solid comic book art with competent inking and coloring that suggests a developing talent.
The story itself has the potential to be, well, mythic, which is probably not surprising considering that it's telling the origin of one of the Hindu varnas, or social classes. There's magic and gods and demons and swords and all that kind of fun stuff, but because only a little time is spent on each event, it has the feel of one of Edith Hamilton's 5-page interpretations of a hero's entire lifetime. We don't get inside anyone's head or get or get shown anything of emotional weight. The villains are barely more than one-dimensional, but we do get a hero with the arm of a tiger. It's cool-looking, and that counts for something.
Hopefully, the first issue is being used as a place to give readers all the background material they need to make the rest of the series make sense, and it'll settle down into a more solid story with some real character development and dialogue with enough depth that it takes more than a page to play out a scene.
