Amar Chitra Katha is the digest comic that taught several generations of Indian children their epics, saints and kings. Anant Pai launched it at India Book House in Bombay in 1967. A painted mythological scene sits under a vermilion masthead on a saturated marigold cover, and inside, ruled panels run on cheap pulp paper.

This system takes the cover as the page and the interior as the surface. Marigold is the ground, vermilion carries the title, and the blue and green of the early three-ink press runs hold everything else together, along with a hard black keyline.