An essay on Indian comics

Away for a few days, but here’s a link before I go: an essay I did for Caravan magazine on the indigenous comics scene, with Comic Con 2 as a peg. I like the way they have alternated the piece with four pages of illustrations by the very talented Harsho Mohan Chattoraj, who has worked on The Hyderabad Graphic Novel, The Rabhas Incident and Widhwa Ma Andhi Behen, among other projects (and whom I met at Comic Con).

Long though the piece is, it isn’t meant to be comprehensive – more like an experiential account by an outsider who knows very little about this world and is trying to understand how it works and the many issues facing it. There is so much happening in the field of Indian comics (though much of it hasn’t made it to mainstream publishing yet) that one feels quite overwhelmed – very exciting times ahead, I’m sure. There are many artists, writers and publishers whom I haven’t been able to cover here, but I hope to remedy that in the future.


Here's the link again. (Single-page version here. Next week I might put up a version of the full piece on the blog, with images from some of the comics mentioned in it. Many of them are easy to find online.)

[A few earlier posts on Indian comics and graphic novels: Kashmir Pending, Amruta Patil’s Kari, Ambedkar’s life in Gond art, Gautam Bhatia’s Lies, A Gardener in the Wasteland. Also this column I did two weeks ago]