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Abstract
Building upon the intersection of anthropology's and Indian comic books' focus on ‘culture’, this article addresses two questions: How do comic books in India represent culture? And, what insight about mass media, representation and interpretation can be gleaned with the comic book reader's emerging role of creator? To trace continuities and shifts in comic books' engagement with culture and to convey the ‘different scene’ contemporary readers' experience, this article focuses on the comic brands Amar Chitra Katha, Indrajal Comics, Liquid Comics and Vimanika. Indian comic books highlight distinct cultural globalization processes and social media networks as a space for history, and for pedagogy that teaches how to read comics and how to make comics.
Acknowledgements
A version of this paper was presented in 2005 at the South Asia Institute, University of Texas at Austin. In past years, several individuals related to the world of Indian comics engaged with me and shared their thoughts. In particular, I thank Aabid Surti for an informative conversation about his creation Bahadur and Karan Vir Arora for sharing details about his publication, Vimanika. For their generosity in permitting use of their images, I thank Aabid Surti, Pramod Brahmania and the management at Vimanika. Nia Parson, Sharada Sugirtharajah and Alok Sharma offered valuable comments for which I am grateful. Time constraints prevented a discussion with Nandini Chandra and I want to thank her for informing me of her recent article and for her support. I am grateful to Savio Joseph, Manoj Gujjaran and Savita Pai for their help with obtaining permission to use ACK Media images. Special thanks to Alok for permitting me to use the late Govind Brahmania's sketches of Bahadur and Bela. I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments and helpful suggestions. Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank the many bloggers who recorded their memories of the early years of Indian comics.
Notes
1. For a fascinating selection of comics in India see the Comicology blog: http://www.comicology.in/2009/04/media-article-disney-comics-bACK-in.html
2. For a perspective that critiques the culture concept, see Abu-Lughod (Citation1991). For a succinct summation of the debate, see Allison (Citation2000, pp. 5–9).
3. Each of these comic brands deserves attention. I do not discuss these brands in-depth due to space constraints. I am grateful to Alok Sharma for alerting me to the fact that Raj Comics' sales are larger than all Indian comic book brands added together. While researching for his documentary on Indian comics, Sharma observed that Raj Comics usually published 50,000 copies of their A-list characters (Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv and Doga among others) and 30,000 copies of their B-list characters (Bankelal and Parmanu among others). However, other comic brands barely crossed the 10,000 copies mark. (Personal communication).
4. Khanduri Citation2010a and 2010b.
5. Comicology blog.
6. Drawing upon Anne Rubenstein's critical reading of anthropological studies of culture and its impact on popular and official perception of the social role of comics (1998), I discuss links between anthropology, culture and comics in more detail in Khanduri Citation2010b.
7. Rofel's analysis highlights the contributions of postcolonial scholarship in formulating the multiplicity of modernity. Space constraints limit me from including a substantial body of literature on this subject.
8. These statistics are from a 2004 report cited in Nayar (Citation2006, p. 116).
9. Ahuja (Citation2007).
10. Rao (Citation2000).
11. Ahuja (2007). In various interviews Pai often recalls ACK's beginnings and the Vivekananda episode.
12. At the time I was in India for my fieldwork. Newspaper accounts and television coverage attested to the emotional response to Chawla's death.
15. Chandra (2008) has written in-depth about the diasporic market, which preceded the Kalpana issue. McLain's insightful discussion of the Kalpana issue situates ACK's script within the Virangana tradition of sacrifice (2009, p. 86).
17. Friese (Citation1999) details this dimension of Phantom comic books.
18. Comment by Comic World in http://indrajalbengali.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-i-read-indarjal-comics.html#more
19. In our 2003 meeting Surti informed me that he also worked with the artist Pratap Mullick for the series on Inspector Azad. Chandra (Citation2010) discusses aspects of Bahadur in comic realism.
23. Here I am drawing upon Shelly Errington's analysis of the commodification of art through categories such as authentic and primitive (Citation1998).
24. India does not match the numbers John Lent noted for East Asia (Citation1995). India's recent boom is connected to digital media and devices, especially cell phones.
25. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=avSQbBUEODks. In the US context, Schott (Citation2010) notes the role of the internet in the readers' interface with comics.
28. http://www.comixindia.com/blog/. In the US context, Schott (Citation2010, pp. 20–21) also points to the internet's role in diversifying fans' activities.
30. Rubenstein (Citation1998), Friese (Citation1999) and Chandra (Citation2008) discuss this problematic. I explore this theme in detail in Khanduri (Citation2010c).
31. McKinney (Citation2008, p. 4) elaborates on the recent debate regarding the re-issued TinTin in the Congo.