The Plight of the Indian Graphic Novel

Nothing wrong in posting a 'story' that wasn't published.
So here goes....


I always thought that it would be cool to write an Indian superhero comics about, you know, a beautiful female. Even Umberto Eco tried his hand at a graphic novel in 2004 with The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. And so, after much thought (for I acutely lack semiotic knowledge), I created the concept and background with additional superpowers for this new super heroine. And I'd love to call it a “graphic novel”.

But, I guess, there’s a hitch. And it rides on twenty thousand thundering typhoons with plenty of blue blistering barnacles thrown in for pleasure.

There’s no problem with my reception of comics with McDonald munching male superheroes and their verily female Louis Lanes in Indian settings.

I like Pavitra Prabhakar(for those who have come in late― the Indian Peter Parker, courtesy Marvel Comics), for not having a proper spandex costume, but a dhoti. Though I wonder what happens when he cries and tries to wipe his tears.

OK. Let him swing from cobwebs spun on the Gateway of India and the not-so-esoteric-now Taj Mahal, and be forgotten, for we know we'll have the 'original' Spiderman 3.1, with a stupid dubbed version available in Bhojpuri. And I love the old classroom joke about the Phantom having to wash his striped diapers on Sundays. With no hitches about Diana having to mind that washing, child-caring and her United Nations job simultaneously. (Yeah, we all grew up reading the syndicated stuff ferried in from the 70s via Indrajal Comics). 

And even after I have come to know what it really means to reboot in the middle of important work (Boom! Bang! Shazam!), a Chacha’s brain, that “works faster than computers”, still runs the popular  show here (in those cheap ink-smudged prints of Diamond Comics). And unintelligible speech bubbles hover around the Chachi, albeit in slower DOS mode.

It’s always cool with comics. And with "Indian graphic novels". (Hold on. Huh?) 

And it’s coterminous with all your college lessons in political correctness, that there should not be mustachioed Indian rajahs, flying elephants, snake charmers and evil fakirs pleasuring sharp stereotypical nails in the comics we read as adults. Oh yes, goats, bullock carts, and holy cows. Or menacing befangled statues of unknown Indian goddesses with Cambodian faces lurking in the oriental dark while Batman battles a skimpily-clad Sandra Wu-San, also called Lady Shiva (!!!)...

Unknowingly, I have come to terms with superheroes with muscles bulging with overdoses of testosterone, women who as a rule are pigeon-brained like Bollywood lolls and with explosions and splashes of colour erupting from the material of the background that make Dali's dreamscapes a child’s scribble.

But how does one come to term with new age comics coming from India?

Just forget if you had a dislike for Betty, Veronica or Bela (Bahadur’s girlfriend). I was browsing through the images of The Snake Woman series, introduced by Virgin Comics India recently, when I noticed this strange process of reverse outsourcing― the oddities of anatomical exaggeration have been well learnt. Compare our Snake Woman (Jessica Peterson) with the Wonder Woman of DC Comics, and you’ll find both are excellent in exposing their skin, in costumes conveniently ripped open to show cleavage and time-tested lines and alchemy of 'artistic' finesse that people who think and imagine primarily with their dicks find excellent...

“Snake Woman is the re-invention of India's ancient Snake (Naga) legends,” says the Virgin comics web post, “in which the soul of the serpent reptile is reborn in the form of a sexy and unsuspecting heroine.” Let’s not discuss other Virgin titles as Devi or the Sadhu, for horrible is the word. The reincarnated memories of all Nagaraj comics and those horrid Sridevi films and their cute innocent wet sari slithering sequels curl back, in spite of the tremendous pain the pencillers and inkers incurred in their monitors and drawing boards(if any!)...

Are the Indian graphic novels, a symbol of something we are just on the verge of understanding, getting filtered through the same sensibilities?

An adolescent’s first encounter with sex, perhaps?

The best response to Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridors, what is passed off as the first Indian graphic novel, has only been my furtive recognition of “Hakim Tartoosi’s potency oil”. Milo Manara draws better than Sarnath, and doesn't have his pretensions..but no, no comparisons...

We are talking about the Baboo Bankim Chandra of the Indian graphic novel....

His second work, The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers, published recently by Penguin Books as “an irreverent tale of illicit sex and drunken religio- sity,” claims to go back to "explore eighteenth-century Calcutta, in scandals and vicious rumours"...And this is done with gross historical inaccuracies... where pictures lifted from advertisements published in late 19th century in The Friends of India, are passed off as Company-era stuff (it was in 1858, remember, when India passed under the Crown)...

The Indian press is all praise (they are for Shilpa Shetty and Rakhi Sawant as well!) for Sarnath, whose illustrations, simply put, are horrible! In some frames, you'll see that the artist in his hurry to fame has simply forgotten to erase his pencil-marks from paper... something I never found repeated in the comics and graphic novels he tries to emulate...

And even when you have plentiful instances of intellectual foppery and postcolonial spin offs, our graphic novelist writes 'Nuncoomar' like a pucca Company-era sahib (not for the flavour, mind it)—the anglicised name for 'Nandakumar', the capitulating Bengali brahmin framed and hung by Hastings in 1785...

In short, Sarnath preserves the currently fashionable tendency of preserving "angst-laden indianness'' for his urbane Western consumer.... He says local trains, tries drawing them, but ends up drawing the inside of a long-distance passenger train! The most repulsive part is when he reaches the burning ghats...if our artist had cared to check the actual ones, he would have found electric furnaces in Kolkata,those run even worse than pyres and with a squalor that overwhelms...

OK! Enough of that! Here’s the hitch I mentioned at the beginning...

I always thought “graphic novels” were all serious literature. But in India, you could be well bounded in a nutshell and count yourself a king of infinite space.

P.S. That's where lessons come handy!

3 comments:

. said...

Bravo! The first time i have read a truly sensible article on indian graphic novels. Having grown up reading the likes of Neil Gaiman, Eisner, Tintin, Asterix, DC and the likes and recently fell in love with craig thompson's 'Blankets' i have come to realize why they are really great pieces of art and literature and there is only one basic answer;
They love doing what they do and they work really hard for it.
On the other hand, most of the indian graphic novels like those of 'Sarnath's' ( I pity those who love his books because they probably haven't really read a good graphic novel till now) and the likes of Kari ( I have my issues with this one too) are just completed because they have to meet a deadline and the publisher's need to see some meat. By meat i do not mean skin and nor does it have any sexual connotation, but by meat i mean content.
There is no dedication (forgive me if i sound 80 years old, i'm in fact 21). Studying in an art school (or should i say 'Faff' school) since the past few years i have learnt that the only thing that truly speaks is your individuality and hard work and you can talk as much as you want to and impress a lot of people, but unless your final product makes sense and you have put your soul into it, there is no reason to be proud of it.
I do not understand how most of these so called indian technicians (I would call them that but not graphic novelists because well most of them CAN draw, but are mere technicians without any soul or content)start to think about making a novel? It's disheartening to see that there is no individuality.
However, i recently read 'Kashmir Pending' and i must say i was impressed with the story, however the flow somehow gets lost due to the lack of proper layout abilities. Even then, it is one of the better ones. Kari is disappointing. It shouldn't even be called a graphic novel in the first place.
We have a lot to learn from people like 'Gipi', 'Craig Thompson' , 'Eisner' , 'Moore, Sacco', etc.
I think we need to really start questioning ourselves before we can put the tags of graphic novelists or filmmakers or artists to ourselves. These are very heavy titles and can only be attached once the individual has earned it. Just because you're from an art school or film school does not make you an artist or film maker, it is your individual exploration and inner resonance that makes you one.

Peace.

buro angla said...

Thanks a lot, Anuraag. It has been 3 years since I put up this post, and you're the first to comment on it at a time when I have almost stopped blogging. But thanks again. :)

I have seen Kashmir Pending and it has taught me, of other things, the vices of the overuse of Photoshop. My views on the Indian 'graphic novel' scenario still remain the same, and nothing has emerged in the last few years to make me change my stance.

I feel that Indian comics artists need to draw from their own cultural spaces the elements of their story-telling. Our strength lies in that (see for examples, Orijit Sen's A River of Stories , created early in the nineties, or the more recent works on the Manipuri Meira Peibi by Sharad). A blind following of Alan Moore, Satrape, Craig Thompson, Dave McKean, Gaiman or David B might cause things to turn up worse, unless we see them not more as inspirational literature.

The tag 'graphic novel' is merely a marketing term. I agree with you 100% on that.

Unknown said...

Buro Angla
Great post about Indian graphic novels. I share your pain. Virgin was frankly barf-inducing, and poor old Pavitra Prabhakar suffered from too many drafts in the nether regions. No one so far has got it right with the possible exception of Appupen (have you seen his Moonward? Strongly recommended). I have been trying to get my own GN off the ground for several years now. Have to take leave from my job to finish it one day.
Don't lose hope!