''Detective Moochhwala'' is an eponymous Indian magazine

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

created by the well-known Indian cartoonist

Ajit Ninan Ajit Ninan (born 1955 in Hyderabad, India) is an Indian political cartoonist, best known for drawing the ''Centrestage'' series of cartoons in India Today magazine and ''Ninan's World'' in the Times of India. Ninan lives in New Delhi, where he ...

. The strip chronicles the adventures of Moochhwala, a fictional detective, and his dog, Pooch, who solve several crimes armed with high-tech equipment and a little

chutzpah Chutzpah () is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad. It derives from the Hebrew word ' (), meaning "insolence", "cheek" or "audacity". Thus the original Yiddish word has a strongly negative connotation but the form which entered English ...

History

The strip appeared in an Indian youth magazine ''

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, fi ...

'' (part of the India Today Group) during the 1980s and 1990s. The strip was notable for its illustrations, which were remarkably detailed and high quality for the time. ''Detective Moochhwala'' was a staple of children and youngsters in India for a number of years. The comic strip was stopped sometime in 1991, when the magazine underwent a renaissance and transformed itself into a more text-oriented version.

Characters

The main characters are Moochhwala the detective and his pet dog Pooch. The crime-fighting duo were sometimes referred to in the strip as "Mooch and Pooch", and managed to crack even the most difficult of cases. Moochhwala in Hindi literally means "man with a moustache". He is depicted as a pot-bellied, stubby-legged man with little hair, and a trademark inverted "V" moustache. Poonch in Hindi means "tail". Pooch was of indeterminate

breed A breed is a specific group of domestic animals having homogeneous appearance (phenotype), homogeneous behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same species. In literature, there exist several slig ...

, and possessed above average intelligence for a dog. Pooch is able to talk with other animals by using a device called the "Communico". Another notable feature of the strip was the names of Police Inspectors who came to clean up at the end of the strip; they always had very apt Hindi-English words.

References

Comic strips started in the 1980s Indian comics Detective comics Moochwala Moochwala {{Comic-strip-stub