Comics writer Somesh Kumar, who has been working on a 500-page comic set in small town Bihar, has finished 50 pages in less than two months...
Comics writer Somesh Kumar, who has been working on a 500-page comic set in small town Bihar, has finished 50 pages in less than two months, a feat that would have otherwise taken him a year. Illustrator Harsho Mohan Chattoraj is about a month away from completing his 100-page comic, while Appupen is making steady progress with his latest book.
With their calendars free thanks to the pandemic, comics creators in India have been breezing through their work, producing more than they usually would. But this brings us to an important question: who’s going to publish all these books? And where do we go from here as an industry?
But first, let’s back up to track the story so far:
A brief history of comics in India
I spent a large part of my weekend battling cockroaches and digging through boxes of comics I’d collected since I was six. There were newspaper clippings of Peanuts from the young world; issues of Amar Chitra Katha’s The Mahabharata; a number of yellowing Tinkles; and a whole lot of puffy Archies. But the ones that really grabbed my attention were the pulpy Lion and Muthu Comics I’d “borrowed” from barbers and tea shops – it’s not stealing when you’re six and don’t know better.
These slim, cheaply...
