Chandamama Nov 1980

2. The first edition of Chandamama was released in July, 1947. The founder editor of the magazine was B.Nagi Reddy who later became a leading film producer in South India. Chakrapani, a friend of Nagi Reddy, was the force behind magazine, and his vision, perception and understanding of the target readership brought name and fame to the magazine. Chandamama was first published in Telugu and Tamil (as Ambulimama) in July 1947. Kannada edition first appeared in July 1949 followed by Hindi in August 1949. Marathi (as Chandoba) and Malayalam (as Ambili Ammavan) editions appeared in April 1952 followed by Gujarati in 1954, English in 1955, Oriya (as Jahnamamu) and Sindhi in 1956, Bengali in August 1972, Punjabi in 1975, Assamese in 1976, Sinhala in 1978, Sanskrit in April 1984 and Santali in 2004. The Punjabi, Sindhi and Sinhala editions were published only for a short period. No English editions were published from October 1957 to June 1970. The magazine ceased publication in 1998, owing to labour disputes. However, the magazine relaunched a year later and continues to be published to this day. It is available in 12 Indian languages and English. For many decades, Chandamama's illustrators defined the look of the magazine. They included such names as M.T.V. Acharya, T. Veera Raghavan, who signed his work as Chithra; Vaddadi Papaiah, who signed as Vapa; Kesava Rao who signed as Kesava; M. Gokhale; and K. C. Sivasankaran, alias Sankar, who joined Chandamama in the year 1951, and continues to draw even now in 2011, in an unbroken association of 6 decades! Later artists such as Shakthi Dass; M. K. Basha, who signed as Razi; Gandhi Ayya, aka Gandhi; and P. Mahesh (Mahe), also continued the tradition into current times[2] . Initially, the covers were printed in four-colours, while the illustrations inside used line drawings. Each page of Chandamama has an illustration, although in the strict sense of the term, Chandamama is not a comic book, with the exception of the Chitra-katha column.