Indian Comics: Medium, History, GenrePia Mukherji

Published on 5 Apr 2022.

In 1936, a new comic strip superhero, the crime-fighting Phantom, was introduced to New York newspaper dailies by the King Features syndicate. The first Phantom adventure was scripted by a young Lee Falk,^[i] and ran serially for 38 weeks, from February 17 to November 7, as The Singh Brotherhood. These daily installments of heroic vigilantism were presented on a comics storyboard typically divided into six panels of black-and-white drawn scenes and narrative text that chronicled the Phantom’s encounters with the dangerous Singh cartel.^[ii] The opening sequence of the story presents a familiar New York crime-noir scene featuring gangster hideouts and heist-style capers. Fats Hogan and his gang attempt to kidnap the young explorer Diana Palmer as she returns from the South Seas with a valuable shipment of ambergris, and their plans can only go wrong, they fear, if a mysterious, spectral superhero intervenes to save the girl, the goods, and the day.

By the 1940s, The Illustrated Weekly of India had started serializing reprinted Lee Falk strip-stories as Phantom Sunday supplements, and in 1964, the Indrajal syndicate published the first ‘comic book’ compilation of the Phantom strip-narrative in Mumbai for mass circulation. They chose, as their first title, an adaptation of the 37^th Phantom Sunday supplement by Lee Falk/Wilson McCoy that had run for 18 weeks in early 1954.^[iii]

The readapted publication histories of The Phantom in these distinct comic cultures are interesting in that they illustrate a broader paradigm, that of the evolution of the early formats of the comics medium itself, the newspaper strip and the syndicated comics album as specifically modern and “mass” oriented products whose trajectories, however, developed within specific social histories. Jean-Paul Gabilliet’s authoritative cultural history of American comics approaches the advancement of the “two forms of modern comic art: the newspaper strip and the periodical comic book”^[iv] as related problems of definition and periodization; to determine if comics were indeed “born with the mass production of the American comic strip in 1896,”

[v]

Gabilliet proposes that we must first define comics art and narrative. What, then, are the comics? Emphasizing the link between the historical and the formal aspects in standard definitions of ‘graphic’ writing, comics scholars Beaty and Weiner notice that “those who see the graphic novel as the culmination of a long history broadly define the term as a collection of sequential, pictorial, symbolic or other images intended to tell us a story, communicate information or elicit an aesthetic response. Sequentially imaged narratives in different media from a wide range of cultures have been identified as precursors to (contemporary) graphic narratives.”^[vi] The definition seems close to Will Eisner’s description of the comics: “The format of comics presents a montage of both words and image, and the reader is thus required to exercise both visual and verbal interpretive skills. The regimens of art (e.g. perspective, symmetry, line) and the regimens of literature (e.g. grammar, plot, syntax) become superimposed upon each other …. In its most economical state, comics employ a series of repetitive images and recognizable symbols. When they are used again and again to convey similar ideas, they become a distinct language – a literary form, if you will. And it is this disciplined application that creates the “grammar” of sequential art.^[vii]. This basic ‘picture narrative’ theory indicates a vast inventory of formal pretexts of the comics medium that evolve from diverse iconographic traditions, histories and media.”^[viii]  Consequently, comics and graphics narratives, characterized by an intermedial structure combining words and images, have been studied either in terms of visual and verbal textualities, or in relation to social and popular cultural forms. Early comics research in the 1970s, particularly in France and Italy, analyzed the narrative features of comics using linguistic, structuralist, narratology and semiotic methods. Referencing the work of Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, comics have also been analyzed as mythological systems and archetypal values, and post-Marxist approaches to comics structures may be found in the work of Dorfman and Mattelart (1975) and Martin Barker (1989).^[ix] In an important transition to visual analysis, Thierry Groensteen published his seminal work Systeme de la Bande Dessinée in 1999, later translated into English and published as The System of Comics in 2007. Groensteen theorizes narrative meanings generated by the system of comics design: image, panel, framing, mise en scène. The study of comics as visual culture, as for example in the work of David Kunzle, typically combines art historicist approaches with a sociological or political contextualization. Recent comics scholarship^[x] that focuses on the visual and the pictorial element in medial narratives are particularly relevant when identifying graphic medial precursors to Indian comics in a variety of pretexts and historical proto-narratives: Bhimbetka and Ajanta cave drawings, folk narrative traditions such as Chitrakathis, Kaavad, Patachitra, Kalamkari, Patua and others. Simultaneously, theoretical attempts to develop a “modern comics book poetics, to do the media and its specificity justice” have also crucially emphasized “a broadened perspective that takes in technical and economic aspects that shape the media ecology of comics, and an approach to comics as a cultural practice.” ^[xi] How, then, has the “ecology” of the modern comics scene unfolded in India? How should we examine its specific negotiations with Western generic forms and publication genealogies even as we recognize its own distinct medial forms and contexts? Jean-Paul Gabilliet’s comprehensive study of the “forms of modern comic art”^[xii]  in the context of mass publishing and print cultures, describes “comics as a medium (defined by) a multiplicity of endogenic (aesthetic) and exogenic (technological, economic, social) factors.”^[xiii] Gabilliet’s constructivist method of comics definition helps us think about how postcolonial comics cultures coincide with the theoretical expression of a particular political category, that of “public culture” as a condition of modernity, in specific national contexts and political economies. A particularly relevant discussion of the visual modalities of the “postcolonial public” is summarized here: “Drawing on recent studies on South Asian public culture as a late modern formation distinct from western histories of  mass and popular cultures,” … current transnational comics scenes may be contextualized within “new public modernities”^[xiv] which particularly emphasize cultural registers such as the circulation of images, the political roles of visuality, “the importance of symbolic actions (and) the emancipatory dimensions of art, display and performance.”^[xv]

Abhijit Gupta’s periodization of the “postcolonial popular”^[xvi] describes the production of the Anglophone-Indian “literary” as a popular format in post-independence networks of publishing and distribution that comprise new markets, readerships and genres. In summary, it examines a modern production history of genres that moves from the “national,” then to the “metropolitan,” and eventually to a “globalized” popular. As a counterpoint to current American and Anglo-European scholarship that typically describe comics history in terms of a progression from a body of European pretexts leading to a largely American-influenced inventory of modern graphic cultures,^[xvii] the “postcolonial popular” offers an alternative approach to chart a specific comics genealogy,^[xviii] that of South Asian comics production, “historically, (as) periods of breaks and discontinuities: illuminating the points where patterns or relations are reshaped or transformed (within) inventories of popular culture ….”^[xix] This present brief summary of the institutionalization of Indian graphic writing is necessarily a partial gesture, and attends to the protocols and themes of the process, particularly those moments that unsettle the changing Indian comics scene. Such an evolving pattern of comics production balances two distinct modes of production in the broad trajectory: market-driven “national” and corporate comics production, and political, avant-garde graphic writing that often uses transnational or digital platforms of address.

Comics historians (O. P Joshi, Aruna Rao, Ritu Khanduri and Jeremy Stoll, for example)^[xx] have published systematic overviews of the post-independence Indian comics industry, identifying the stages and ideological shifts that mark its emergence and gradual establishment. A short summary of the course of Indian post-independence comics production would describe its unfolding, from imported American-syndicated comics strips in national and regional newspapers and magazines in the 1940s, to the comic-book magazine format pioneered by the Times of India’s Indrajal publishing house in the 1960s featuring American superhero fiction. With the publication of Anant Pai’s Amar Chitra Katha series by India Book House in 1967, a newly-inaugurated indigenous genre arrived, diversifying from nationalist and conservative history writing in ACK to the development of local super-heroic and comic character-based franchises by independent publishing houses in the 1980s, publications which sold alongside popular imported American and European comics serials and pseudo- educational children’s comics-magazines. Eventually, the industry shifted its cultural location to an established and contemporary Delhi-based graphic-novel industry — partly politically engaged, progressive, and experimental,^[xxi] and partly global-consumer-culture driven and market-oriented, selling exotica, orientalized mythology and localized-noir urban story-worlds via new technology platforms and international corporate collaborations.^[xxii]

Diptarup Ghosh Dastidar’s essay Prospects of Comics Studies in India usefully periodizes three distinct phases in Indian comic book history, even while identifying fissures in this linear trajectory: the “Age of Cartoons and Comic Magazines”; the “Age of Comic Strips, Syndicates and the Rise of Publishing Houses”; and the “Age of Digitization, Comic Book Anthologies, the Graphic Novel and Growth of Independent Publishing”.^[xxiii]  Dastidar’s essay identifies mid-nineteenth century Indian illustrated satirical magazines that published political caricature, editorial cartoon art, social commentary and literary satire in the style of  British and colonial satirical publications as  anticipating the modern comics phase in India. The distinctly politically engaged character of this genre is most famously exemplified in The Oudh Punch 1877-1936, a late nineteenth century satirical humor magazine inspired by the British Punch.^[xxiv] The editorial cartoons and social diaries of later generations of political and social cartoonists (R. K. Laxman, Mario Miranda, Manjula Padmanabhan) seem most directly connected to the work of these earlier precursors.

However, it can be argued that comics in the modern sense in India truly began as a literature for children. The intertwined histories of children’s picture books and comics has been documented by studies in American comics history. As comic strips began to be published in new picture-book formats between 1900–1950 in the American market, classic “kid comics” first made an appearance, sharing features from children’s literature, both “innocent and clever” in tone while “exploring the limits of imagination,” featuring character-driven humor, cartoon animal and child characters, visual comedy, superhero narratives, stories of action and adventure. Kids comics also become an area where social anxieties attendant on the dangers of subversive entertainment were displaced, and the need for schooling the child, and furthering her instruction and edification through popular culture were set as agendas whose objectives were ideological regulation, supervision, education. Such literature possessed “a double vision of childhood … simultaneously protecting children from adult knowledge while working to teach it to them.”^[xxv]

Chandamama, the first post-independence children’s illustrated magazine, edited by Kodavatiganti Kutumba Rao, started publication in 1947, with stories from Ramayana and Mahabharata and other “mythological and magical tales, often steeped in a sense of morality for the times.”^[xxvi] Chandamama’s enduring popularity and long and storied publication history distinguishes it particularly within a continuum of children’s illustrated magazines: early publications in Hindi or Urdu including the popular  Honhar and Baalak (1926), K. Shankar Pillai’s Shankar’s Weekly (1948) or later children’s serialized titles like Tinkle or Lotpot in the 1980s. Chandamama’s content and ideological bent stand as an interesting counterpoint to the emergent comic-strips serialization in the 1950s, and anticipate the comic book philosophies of the later Amar Chitra Katha book series.

In Indian comics production history, comic strips production emerged and then consolidated two categories simultaneously: auteur-headlined work and syndicate- circulated imported material. In the initial period of the 1940s and 1950s, syndicated strips from western comics production companies were serialized in weekly publications and daily newsprint in an evolving and market-driven publishing-house culture. By the 1960s, Indrajal comics, a Times of India (TOI) imprint of the King Features syndicate, serialized adventure-episodes featuring the Phantom, Mandrake, Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby. The focus on superheroics was a defining feature of this textual field, which gradually expanded from circulating western imports to a gallery of new, homegrown, and differentiated heroism. In 1962, Narayan Debnath’s Bengali gag strip Handa Bhonda made its debut in Sukhtara, as did his first Indian comic book superhero, Bantul the Great, in 1963. A decade later, in 1970, Pran Kumar Sharma introduced the problem-solving Chacha Chaudhary and his strongman side kick Sabu. From 1966, Abid Surti wrote strips featuring crime fighters Inspector Azad, Lukhudi, Inspector Vikram, and the iconic Bahadur for the TOI group.

Ian Gordon’s account of American comic strips gradually evolving into broadsheet compilations and stand-alone comic albums describes this trajectory within a specific cultural economy of growing urban literacy, transport networks, print technologies supporting newspaper and publishing industries, and consumer-oriented marketing.^[xxvii]  Early comic strip book compilations, supplements and magazine circulations were tied to market promotions for consumer goods, services and corporate advertisements. Give-away comic book compilations and digests proliferated as American syndicates published new titles (Famous Funnies, Popular Comic, Tip Top Comics) by recycling gag strips, melodrama strips, and adventure strips in a broad polysemic appeal across ages. It was only by the mid-1930s that new material started being created specifically for the comic album format in superhero titles that introduced the genre, pioneered by the syndicates Action Comics and Detective (DC) Comics.  By the 1940s, popular and sensational genres—crime, romance and horror—appeared in the market and a counterpoint to such assimilated comic book culture later emerged in the 1960s, as the subversive underground cult comics industry. In contrast, the emergence of new comic serial and album formats in India from the 1960s did indeed include comedic gag and adventure features and remained motivated by commercial objectives, but also created customized content, provided a platform for independent comic art, and seemed more self-consciously tied to social agendas of entertainment, instruction and nation building, while proposing appropriate models of post-independence communities and new ideologies of history and identity. The flagship Amar Chitra Katha series remains, of course, the exemplary model of such a specific politics of representation. The iconic brand, established in 1967 as an English language comic book series by Anant Pai and published by the Indian Book House, had a clearly-stated manifesto: to provide the young reader, at present too influenced by dominant narratives of western and colonial modernity, with a popular and readable history of the ‘Indian’ nation presented in a variety of mythological, religious, historical, biographical, and folk comic book stories. Imaginatively hand-drawn with attention to detail by talented individual artists and researched and scripted by a team of independent writers assembled by Pai, the “immortal picture stories series” increasingly became standard comics reading for a generation of young readers.^[xxviii] The extraordinary and still continuing appeal of this comic book series in both the nation and its diaspora deserves critical attention. The cultural ideologies of the Hindu nation, the politics of religious and caste representation, and the gendered aesthetics of sexuality, military and state power in the chitra-kathas have been examined in a number of engaged studies, including Nandini Chandra’s The Classic Popular, Amar Chitra Katha, 1967-2007 (2008), Deepa Sreenivas’s Sculpting a Middle Class: History, Masculinity and Amar Chitra Katha in India (2010), Karline McLain’s India’s Immortal Comic Books: Gods, Kings, and Other Heroes (2009), and more generally, in Roma Chatterji’s Graphic Narratives and the Mythological Imagination in India  (2019).

In the decades following the mainstream market success of the Indrajal and Indian Book House publishing corporations, newly-formed syndicates broadened the parameters of the Indian comics industry as it became more regional and less child centric, adding pulp and ‘sensational’ comics genres—horror, romance, supernatural fiction—to publishing inventories.  The comics scene increasingly shifted from Mumbai to Delhi, and eventually family-owned syndicates, Raj Comics and Diamond Comics, consolidated and survived the gradual slowing of comics production and demand by the turn of the century. Diamond Comics (established 1970) published original content in Hindi for the young reader, and reprinted titles from Indrajal comic serials and Amar Chitra Katha comic books well into the 1990s. Raj Comics (established 1986) published popular Hindi language pulp and sensational comics, and more interestingly, introduced a gallery of iconic superheroes to the Hindi comics scene: Nagraj, Super Commander Dhruv, Bhokal, Shakti, Doga, Parmanu et al.^[xxix] The sustained indigenization of the  superhero figure in Hindi comics published  by Raj Comics reminds us that the superhero narrative is a definitive comic genre, produced in both strip and album formats by both corporate and individual creators in distinct comic cultures. The narratives work with received conventions, characters and ideologies that draw on fixed templates. Mythologies of the comic book superhero feature familiar tropes: origin stories, superpowers, secret and dual identity constructs predicated on performance, costumes, and archetypal paraphernalia. The stories typically feature literary elements of fantasy, epic adventure, and science fiction; the politics of the comic superhero narrative challenge fixed perspectives, and can be read as either restorative or conservative. Superhero fictions speak to social anxieties at unstable socio-historical moments, and promise vigilante protection, responsible action and social justice. However, superhero ideologies have also been identified as reactionary, invested in maintaining existing status-quo gender and power relations by exercising forms of unexamined violence.^[xxx] The variety of superhero comic book characters in the Raj Comics archives particularly invites a close examination of the regional cultural politics and marketing of popular and pulp heroism in the comics industry during the 1980s and 1990s.

The category of mainstream superhero comics is of special significance in American comics book history in that it eventually functions as a transitional genre. After a brief pop-culture hiatus during the mid-century institution of comics regulations, the post-code resurrection of the superhero genre was initiated by a revisionist turn that pioneered the movement into the graphic novel genre. The work of Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrisson in the 1980s, for example, initially serialized and then compiled as graphic novel albums, recast the syndicate superhero as metafictional and auteur-created.^[xxxi] The arrival of the Indian graphic novel is more difficult to plot sequentially, and brings us to the problem of definition. What, then, is the graphic novel? The emergence of this new category of long form comic book indicates, broadly, a conceptual shift from the market-driven production and formula     –     driven conventions of graphic narrative and representational modes dominating popular comic culture. The graphic novel draws from a range of genres: memoir, reportage, social fiction, fantasy, eco-fiction, accounts of personal and public histories. In each generic case, distinctive political and ethical content, sophisticated visual idioms and complex aesthetic work typify the graphic format. In specific comic histories, the arrival of the graphic novel inaugurates a moment of “intense self- reflexivity, an immersion in history and post memory,” and the “artifact creates a dialogic response to the reader/viewer /witness, (as it reveals) a meshwork of politics, ethics, aesthetics….”^[xxxii] “The graphic novel is a contemporary response to ongoing comics history — (that challenges) the genre, the medium, and the comics reading public.”^[xxxiii] In the case of the Indian graphic novel in English, we continue to witness an evolving textual scene with a noteworthy range and remarkable aesthetic content, first inaugurated by the publication of Orijit Sen’s River of Stories in 1994. Sen’s pioneering auteur-created and stand-alone graphic account of the environmental politics underwriting the construction of the Narmada Dam stages some defining aspects of the new Indian graphic novel: political commitment, aesthetic self-consciousness, its support of creative collaboration, and its alliance with independent publishing. The Indian graphic novel is a millennial genre, a list of some exemplary titles points to the important work produced during a twenty-year period of creative composition: Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor (2004) and The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers (2007), Harappa Files (2011) and Doab Dil (2019); Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi Calm (2010); Samhita Arni’s Sita’s Ramayana (2012); Amruta Patil’s Kari (2008), Adi Parva (2012) Sauptik (2016), and Aranyaka (2019); Parismita Singh’s  Hotel at the End of the World (2009); Phantomville’s Kashmir Pending  (2007) by Naseer Ahmed and Saurabh Singh and The Believers (2006) by Partha Sengupta and Abdul Sultan; Appupen’s Moonward      (2009), Legends of Halahala (2013), Aspyrus: A Dream of Halahala (2014) and The Snake and the Lotus (2018). Imaginative use of aesthetic form and traditional artwork especially distinguish a certain subset of texts, for example graphic novels “hand-printed and published by Tara Press (that show-case) an indigenous approach to the art form; Chattigarhi Gond art-work in Bhajju Shyam’s The London Jungle Book (2004), Srividya Natarajan’s A Gardener in the Wasteland: Jyotiba Phule’s Fight for Liberty and Bhimayana (2011) and Samhita Arni’s Sita’s Ramayana (in Bengali pattachitra fashion).”^[xxxiv]

The ‘graphic novel turn’ in the contemporary Indian comics scene signals the arrival of a broadly-engaged and politically-motivated graphic writing that re-examines received categories of gender, nation, trauma, social violence and state power. The texts “contribute to the public cultural practices of the nation. (They) debate history and historical events like the Partition, social issues like caste, development and child abuse, document lives and satirize contemporary Indian life.”^[xxxv] The progressive commitments of this oeuvre orient it towards collaborative and independent publishing as ideological strategies against mainstream systems of production and marketing. Orijit Sen, for example, has consistently used self-conscious forms of creative collaborations as a condition of his craft as well as a form of ideological advocacy. His early People Tree initiative in the 1990s as an effort towards an equitable, collaborative platform for art, craft and design, and his founding role in establishing the Pao Collective to promote graphic writing, are both strategic moves. Comic book anthologies are, in this context, an important graphic format that advance the agendas of new Indian graphic novels. Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Partition anthology This Side, That Side: Restorying Partition (2013), Priya Kuriyan’s feminist anthologies Drawing the Line: Indian Women Fight Back (2015) and The Elephant in the Room: Women Draw Their World ( 2017), Orijit Sen and Vidyun Sabhaney’s First Hand anthologies and the anthologies published by the Longform and Studio Ekonte collectives are examples of collaborative work that enlarge the corpus. Dastidar’s essay describes the activism of Sharad Sharma, whose Grassroots Comics project anthologizes original graphic writing collected from children in rural locations. Gradually, in keeping with its alternative character, the progressive comics movement increasingly looks to independent venues of exchange (Comic Cons, Comics Arts and Indie Festivals organized in metropolitan areas by an emergent comics community) and independent digital platforms of comics production and publishing. Virtual creative and community spaces, webcomics, and digital reproductions of printed texts are everywhere on the world-wide net, while new studies on reading webcomics are emerging in the field of comics scholarship.^[xxxvi] Cyberspace becomes a democratic, open medium for political collaboration, community building, independent aesthetic enterprise; the digital graphic medium becomes of interest to contemporary ways of thinking about and theorizing comics.

Simultaneously, digital platforms also provide parallel and transnational forums for mainstream, assimilated, market-oriented comic book production. Comic book syndicates went digital when Diamond Comics, Raj Comics and Amar Chitra Katha were acquired by ACK Media in 2007, and digital texts of original print titles became serially available. Geodesic Information Systems created a digital archive of Chandamama titles which immediately became very market profitable. Today, new globalized syndicates such as Virgin Comics, Liquid Comics, Graphic India, and Campfire create digital platforms and new digital brands, and customize production to target diasporic markets, for example, in how they recycle mythological templates in a postmodern assembly of Indian mythological motifs and American corporatized and adventure-oriented superheroic graphics.

In conclusion, let us consider once again the first comic-strip superhero who established the initial imaginative paradigms of modern Indian comics culture. The backstory of the Phantom crusader’s spectral identity as the immortal “Ghost Who Walks” anticipates early defining archetypal features of the superhero genre pioneered by American comic books in the 1930s:  “extraordinary powers, an arch-enemy, a moral mission, a secret identity, a costume and an origin story.”^[xxxvii] However, even as such domestic conventions frame the seemingly archetypal superhero drama and establish its location within the evolving American comics scene of the 1930s, the mythology of the Phantom is uniquely infiltrated by oriental exotica and spectral strangeness. The scene is set in Java where the villainous Singh Brotherhood, as “men of the orient, who have their dangerous ways (with) quiet ropes and knives.” and the mysterious Phantom, disembodied, insubstantial, and ghostly, defamiliarize standard American comic conventions.

It is also exceptional in that the archetype takes shape within a history and a location that is distinctly Eastern, and employs orientalist and gothic visual grammars. The ‘origin story’ of the Phantom’s centuries-old career is framed within the present adventure in an unusual revelatory sequence as the Phantom’s own disclosure. “The scene, Diana, is 1525. Vasco Da Gama had discovered the water route to the East only 27 years ago! All England was stirred with tales of the riches of the fabulous East.”^[xxxviii] A young noble, Christopher Standish sets sail from London for the Indies, looking for adventure and his fortune across the uncharted seas. The ship is attacked “somewhere in the Bay of Bengal by the Oriental Singh Pirates.”^[xxxix] Sir Christopher is cast-away from his scuttled ship and his murdered father and crew, and reaches “a remote shore”^[xl] where he is cared for by a jungle pygmy tribe. He swears a solemn oath upon the found skull of his father’s assassin “against the Singh, against all piracy, greed and cruelty”^[xli] and pledges his descendants, for “as long as they walk the earth”^[xlii] to his mission in secrecy.  Four hundred and eleven years and twenty generations later, the Phantom still walks from his jungle skull cave, crusading against transformed Singh cartels in more modern times and prospects, finding his link here and now with a comic-strip style New York city scene.

In the silver age of American comic book super-heroism, Lee Falks’s Phantom remained a minor postscript. Overshadowed by the spectacular debut of Superman in Action Comics # 1 the following year, it is a footnote reference in most comics-genre scholarship. However, in the evolving field of comic studies, the Phantom myth, whose original coda includes a colonial sea adventure, oriental pirates, a jungle location and a spectral crusader, strangely connects two distinct comics histories separated by distance, period and readership: the modern American and the new Indian. In this sense, The Phantom is indeed a liminal icon, it “returns” to inaugurate complex histories of comics production, superheroic themes, and evolving comics ideologies in the modern Indian graphic-cultural imagination.^[xliii]

[i] Initially conceived as a revision of a medieval Arthurian figure, Falk’s second superhero creation followed the success of the earlier Mandrake the Magician.

[ii] These dramatic encounters feature adventures visualized against fantastic settings: the Singh hideout at the bottom of the South Seas or the Brotherhood headquarters on Mt. Trepnich, where The Phantom repeatedly confronts the evil Kabai Singh and his dangerous organization.

[iii] The revenge-adventure narrative introduces the current Phantom who arrives at the island headquarters of the modern Singh brotherhood to avenge the death of his father, the 20^th Phantom.

[iv] Gabilliet, Jean Paul. Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books. Translated by Bart Beatty and Nick Nguyen. University Press of Mississippi, 2005. xi.

Ibid., xi.

[vi]Beaty, Bart H. and Stephen Weiner, ed. Critical Survey of Graphic Novels: History Theme and Technique.      Salem Press, 2013. 3.

[vii] Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art. Norton, 2008. 2.

[viii]Tracing the evolution of the “sequentially imaged narrative,” Beaty and Weiner identify precursors that include “hunting narratives” and Paleolithic cave art featuring animal, symbolic and iconic figures, as for example, in Lascaux in southwestern France and Altamira in northern Spain, sequences of paintings on papyri and tomb walls in ancient Egypt, architectural friezes of mythologies in public and private buildings from classical Greece and imperial Rome, and early Christian story panels from the testaments engraved on the sarcophagi of the dead. “Two new methods sometimes used to tell stories through sequential images came to prominence during the European middle-ages: tapestries and stained glass depicting historical or biblical sequences. The astonishing Bayeux tapestry, for example, 230 feet of woven and intricately embroidered cloth, illustrates the Norman invasion and conquest of England in 1066.” Critical Survey of Graphic Novels: History Theme and Technique. Ed. Bart H. Beaty and Stephen Weiner. Salem Press, 2013. 4.

[ix] For a useful overview of comics studies trends, see Magnussen, Anne and Hans Christian Christiansen, eds. Comics and Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics. Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2000. 12-22.

[x] See, for example, Simon Grennan’s A Theory of Narrative Drawing. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017     .

[xi] Domsch, Sebastian. “Comics Terminology and Definitions: Introduction.” Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives, eds. Sebastian Domsch, Dirk Vanderbeke and Dan Hassler-Forest. Walter de Gruyter, 2021.

[xii] Gabilliet, Jean Paul. Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books, trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. University Press of Mississippi, 2005. xi.

[xiii] Ibid., xi.

[xiv] Appadurai, Arjun and Carol A. Breckenridge. “Public Modernities in India.” Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge. University of Minnesota Press, 1995. 1-19. 10.

[xv] Ibid., 3.

[xvi] Gupta, Abhijit. “Popular Writing in India.” The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, vol. II, ed. Ato Quyason. Cambridge University Press, 2011. 1023-1038.

[xvii] Comics scholarship on social histories of comic traditions that supplement semiotic and thematic criticism include the work of, for example, David Kunzle, Jean-Paul Gabilliet, R. C. Harvey, Bradford Wright, Bart H. Beaty and Stephen Weiner. The format of such analyses typically focuses on investigations of popular western print and newspaper comic texts at the turn of the 19^th century, the stand alone American drawn strips and the superhero genre of the 1930s, political comics in the Anglo-American and European 1940s tradition, the mid-century underground comic movement following the federal censorship code 1954, and Western autobiographics from the 1970s.

[xviii] While remaining mindful of post-independence regional language-based print cultures that challenge the notion of a single narrative history of Indian comic books, the scope of this study does not allow an examination of such parallel, diverse and related histories.

[xix] Hall, Stuart. “Popular Culture and the State.”  Popular Culture and Social Relations, eds. Tony Bennett, Colin Mercer, Janet Woollacott. Open University Press, 1986.22-50, 23.

[xx] See Joshi, O. P. “Contents, Consumers and Creators of Comics in India.” Comics and Visual Culture: Research Studies from Ten Countries, ed. Alphons Silbermann and H. D. Dyroff. K. G. Saur: 1986.   Rao. Aruna. “From Self Knowledge to Superheroes: The Story of Indian Comics.”  Illustrating Asia: Comics, Humor Magazines and Picture Books, ed. John A. Lent. Richmond.Curzon Press, 2001. 37-63. Stoll, Jeremy. “A Creator’s History of   the Comics Medium in India.” International Journal of Comic Art. Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring 2013, 363-383.

[xxi] Graphic novelists in this space include Sarnath Banerjee, Orijit Sen, Amruta Patil, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Naseer Ahmed, Samhita Arni, Parismita Singh,  and Appupen—to name just a few.

[xxii] See, for example, the corporate profile and online catalogues of Graphic India, Liquid comics, Campfire Graphic Novels. Find a list of contemporary comics publishing houses in India here: http://www.thetoptens.com/new-indian-comic-publishers-started-after-2006/.

[xxiii] Dastidar, Diptarup Ghosh. Prospects of Comics Studies in India. (Gnosis: Special Issue- March 3. 2019), 113-128. https://www.academia.edu/40883728/Prospects_of_Comics_Studies_in_India .

[xxiv] “This era begins in 1850, when the Delhi Sketchbook first came out and lasts until the early 1960’s, when we have a new trend of publishing houses being formed. The cartoons and caricatures belonging to this phase may very well be called precursors to the proper comics form, as they were mostly not sequential. The Delhi Sketchbook ran from 1850 to 1857 which had drawings and caricatures that criticized the political, religious or social beliefs of India (Chattopadhyay 1992). Then we have the Indian Punch (1859), the Kolkata fortnightly Indian Charivari (1872-1880), Awadh Punch, Delhi Punch, Punjabi Punch, Urdu Punch, Gujarati Punch, and the list goes on in a few other languages, Hindi Punch having the longest run among them from 1878 to 1930. The most famous comic magazine of the time was Basantak (1874-1876) edited by Prannath Dutta, which inspired the likes of Gaganendranath Tagore as well as Abanindranath Tagore’s Khuddur Jatra (Comic Diary Narratives). We also have comic magazines from Kerala in this phase like Viswadeepam (1939, in Calicut), Rasi (in Alleppey), Sarasam (in Changanacherry) and Narmada (in Kottayam) (Varghese 1992,) and the Tamil Ananda Vikatan (1926) published in Madras.” Dastidar. Prospects of Comics Studies in India,115.

[xxv]  Nodelman, Perry. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature. Johns Hopkins Press, 2008. 243, qtd.  In “Children and Comics.” Philip Nel. Comics Studies: A Guidebook, eds. Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty.      Rutgers University Press, 2020.     126-138. 130.

[xxvi] Dastidar. Prospects of Comics Studies in India. 116.

[xxvii] Gordon, Ian. Comic Strips and Consumer Culture 1890–1945. Smithsonian Institute Press, 1998.

[xxviii] ACK provided an important platform for first-generation writers (Kamala Chandrakant, Margie Sastry, and C.R. Sharma) and illustrators (Sanjeev Waeerkar, Ashok Dongre, Pratap Mullick. Ram Waeerkar) in the nascent Indian comics industry.

[xxix] See particularly the work of comics critics Ritu Khanduri, John Lent, Aruna Rao, Suchitra Mathur on Indian syndicate publishing culture and the India superhero. Also, for an account of vernacular superheroism, see Kaur, Raminder and Saif Eqbal. Adventure Comics and Youth Cultures in India. Routledge, 2019.

[xxx] See, for example, the discussion of superhero politics in Marc Singer’s “Superheroes” in Comics Studies: A Guidebook. Ed. Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty. Rutgers University Press, 2020. 213-227.

[xxxi] For an account of the revisionist superhero narrative and the inauguration of the graphic novel genre in American comics history, see Marc Singer’s “Superheroes” in Comics Studies: A Guidebook, eds. Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty. Rutgers University Press, 2020. 219.

[xxxii] Gillian Whitlock. “Autographics.” Comics Studies: A Guidebook, eds. Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty.      Rutgers University Press, 2020. 227-241. 229.

[xxxiii] Isaac Cates. “The Graphic Novel.” Comics Studies: A Guidebook, eds. Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty.      Rutgers University Press, 2020. 82-97. 90.

[xxxiv] Dastidar. Prospects of Comics Studies in India. 119.

[xxxv] Nayar, Pramod K. The Indian Graphic Novel: Nation, History and Critique. Routledge, 2018. 7

[xxxvi] See, for example, Dastidar’s essay Prospects of Comics Studies in India for a list of some digital titles and platforms. Also, more generally, Perspectives on Digital Comics: Theoretical, Critical and Pedagogical Essays, eds., Kirchoff, Jeffrey S. J and Cook, Mike P Cook. Macfarland, 2019, and Kleefeld, Sean. Webcomics. Bloomsbury Comics Studies, 2020.

[xxxvii] The Phantom, in fact, predates Superman. Jerome Seigel and Joseph Shuster’s collaboration on a prospective daily comic strip featuring the extraordinary messianic Superman and his iconic red and blue tights and caped costume was published in the first issue of Action Comics # 1 in 1938. This event is seen as inaugurating the superhero genre in the emerging comics – magazine industry of the period.   Within the year, costumed crime fighters became the “first character type” in comic books with an “extraordinary graphic and visual potential.” Classic first-appearances include “The Arrow” in Funny Pages #10 (1938), “Batman” in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939), and “The Sandman” in Adventure Comics # 40 (July 1939). Gabilliet (18 – 19).

[xxxviii] Falk, Lee. The Phantom:The Complete Newspaper Dailies. Hermes Press, 2014.

[xxxix] Ibid.

[xl] Ibid.

[xli] Ibid.

[xlii] Ibid.

[xliii] In the early years of the Indian comics industry, the imported Phantom was first introduced in the 1940s, in a comic-strip form, by The Illustrated Weekly of India which carried reprinted Lee Falk strip-stories as Phantom Sundays. The interesting history of the Phantom comic book publication by the Indrajal syndicate is summarized here:  http://www.deepwoods.org/indrajal.html, and includes a comprehensive index of all Indrajal Phantom titles.

Subsequently, the first regular series of Phantom comic books in India was published by the Times of India group Bennet and Coleman in  Indrajal Comics from March 1964 until April 1990.

Aruna Rao describes how in 1961 Anant Pai, employed by the Times of India publishing house, “noticed that the press was not being used to full capacity” and thus suggested that they print comic books. “Since imported comic books were popular, TOI decided to publish a comics series. Pai interviewed potential readers and recommended Lee Falk’s Phantom comics as the series to be published. He decided that the Phantom series set in steamy tribal Africa would probably be a good bet as the milieu might seem familiar to Indians.” (Rao, Aruna. “From Self Knowledge to Super Heroes: the Story of Indian Comics.” Illustrating Asia: comics, Humor Magazines, Picture Books. Ed. John Lent. Curzon Press, 2001, 37 – 64. 38.)

A total of 803 issues were published, more than half of which contained The Phantom stories. The first 32 issues of Indrajal Comics, published monthly, contained reprinted comic-strip Phantom stories, but thereafter, the titles alternated between various King Features characters, including Mandrake, Flash Gordon, and Buz Sawyer. The first 10 issues devoted 16 pages to The Phantom with story reprints edited to fit this format.

Beginning with issue #29, Indrajal standardized the conventional 32 magazine page format. The series switched to fortnightly publication from #35 in 1967. Because of the  Phantom’s close connection to India, the editors made several “politically correct” changes to places and names. Bengali became Denkali, home of the pygmy tribe, the Singh Brotherhood the “Singa” pirates, and Rama (the murderer of the 20th Phantom) became Ramalu. From about 1980, Indrajal began to produce their Phantom comic in at least a dozen Indian languages. Indrajal Comics changed to a weekly schedule from #385 Nov 1981 that lasted until 1989. The front cover design was also changed, with the introduction of the distinctive Indrajal Comics banner. In August 1989, the series briefly returned to a fortnightly schedule with 36 pages each, before the publishers decided to cancel the series in their 27th year of production. The last issue was published on 16 April 1990.

The well-regarded painted cover artwork for the first 50 or so issues was by B.Govind, with the back cover featuring a pin-up poster. Indrajal became a full-colour production from #8 onwards, with the Phantom’s costume being coloured blue for the first 10 issues in the series, but thereafter changed to the more traditional purple.  Ray Moore’s comic strip artwork was never popularized in India. Instead, the editors relied heavily on Wilson McCoy and Sy Barry stories, in addition to most stories from the American Phantom comic-book albums produced by Gold Key / King / Charlton. The Lee Falk/ Ray Moore classic “The Singh Brotherhood” was never published in India.

After Indrajal, publishing rights to The Phantom was then picked up by Diamond Comics and Rani Comics. Today, The Phantom is published in almost 20 different languages in a vast number of Indian newspapers and magazines. For the most part, Indrajal Comics, Diamond Comics, and Rani Comics all published reprints of Lee Falk’s daily or Sunday strips. In June 2000, Egmont Publications in collaboration with Indian Express Group (later Egmont Imagination), launched the first of a new series of English-language Phantom comics, reprinting original stories created by Scandinavian Phantom publishers.