VIMANARAMA:

Burn, Bollywood, burn (Joshua Glenn, December 11, 2005, Boston Globe)

WHAT HAPPENS when one of today's top comic-book creators bones up on Islamic and Hindu theology and history? One word: ''Vimanarama," a three-part miniseries written by Grant Morrison, author of the revisionist Batman book ''Arkham Asylum," among many other groundbreaking projects, and drawn by Philip Bond. The series has just been published in one volume by Vertigo, an imprint of DC. When the science-fiction comic book was launched in February, Morrison said that after 9/11-in an attempt to ''comprehend the world's political and religious situation a little more clearly"-he researched the early history of Pakistan and its religious legends. In tales of the fabled Rama empire, said to exist 6,000 years ago, he stumbled upon ''vimanas," flying-saucer-like machines described in the Mahabharata, the ancient Indian epic. Aha!