Graphic jam: Look what’s tumbling out of comic books

* A boy takes to living in the family fridge; eventually starts a career as a lawyer; travels to Antarctica; finds a companion and settles in Siberia — finally living out of the box. That’s one of the short stories from the Zoo series by Anand Shenoy, 28. Launched in 2020, the comic has since been picked up by a US-based zine publisher.

* In Karejwa (2021), there’s half an hour to the end of the world. As a meteorite looms ever-closer, a little boy dashes to the market to fulfil his last wish. He wants to eat the famous Banarasi gulab jamun, the karejwa, one last time. This tender tale is based on a short story by Varun Grover, illustrated by Ankit Kapoor and edited by Sumit Kumar.
* In lush, scenic Kerala, a man leaves home in the middle of the night and heads to a secret island. There, he joins other desperate men in an addictive card game. He doesn’t know it yet, but he can’t win. That’s The Pig Flip, by Joshy Benedict, 50, which was picked up by HarperCollins India last year.
There is absurdity and hope, hand-painted art and vivid digital worlds, dystopias and satire, on offer in India’s independent comics.
The creators include artists and writers, animators and comedians, teachers and students. Some of these self-published titles are now being picked up by publishing houses in India and abroad.
The variety and scale of the stories alone represents a dramatic shift. Early indie comics in India took the form of the graphic novel, which is typically an extended single-instalment work tackling a serious theme.
India’s first full-length graphic novel, Orijit Sen’s River of Stories (1994), was an account of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. It was published using a small government grant (and reprinted by the small Chennai publishing house Blaft in 2022).
By 2004, Penguin Random House India had published Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor, on the lives of people passing through a nondescript bookshop in the heart of Delhi.
In 2009, Appupen’s Moonward introduced readers to his fantasy world of Halahala, with its weeping trees, robotic birds and surreal cities. His work was published by Blaft and would mark a turning point, as both creator and banner saw a market emerge for homegrown indie works, amid the popularity of his Rashtraman series of mock-superhero adventures set in Halahala.
In 2012, Abhijeet Kini launched Angry Maushi, about a Maharashtrian woman named Lakshmi who fights local corruption and environmental threats.
A year earlier, Comic Con launched its India edition. But the event would soon shift focus to merchandise and major banners. The cost of renting a stall would shoot up (it currently starts at ₹40,000, though there are a few free stalls for indie creators).
At this point, “we thought it would be beneficial to have a festival devoted solely to comics,” says Aniceto Pereira, 43, a writer and books editor.
Pereira joined hands with filmmaker and comic artist Bharath Murthy, creative director Kailash Iyer, and graphic designer and comic artist Chaitanya Modak, to launch Indie Comix Fest (ICF) in 2017, in Mumbai.
Indie Comix Fest (ICF) was launched in 2017, in Mumbai. It has since grown into an annual multi-city event. (This year, it is being held in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi and Kozhikode, in October). Prices remain low, at ₹500 to ₹750 for a table.
Events such as this one now act as a vital link between creators and their small but growing markets. In just one example, The Pig Flip was originally printed for ICF-Kochi in 2018. Benedict arrived with two sample copies, and left with 200 orders.
These events also allow publishers to assess the response to a work, and pick up titles or collaborate with their creators. Nikhil Gulati of Oddball Comics met a Penguin editor at ICF, which led to his first graphic novel, The People of The Indus: And the Birth of Civilization in South Asia (2022), created with American archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer.
Collaborations are now evolving to take their work to larger audiences. Sumit Kumar’s Bakarmax banner is working with Blaft to distribute comic-book titles to stores and secure greater visibility at literature festivals. The founders of Indy Comics Commune, a community of readers and creators in Kerala, are trying to do something similar with a venture called Comix Canal.
Meanwhile, in another sign of positive evolution, some standardisation is occurring too.
With burgeoning interest in the fest, ICF wants to make sure that comic creators, collectives and small publishers remain the focus of the festival. So an application process now filters out non-comic creators.
“In the end, we want the festival to be about stories that matter to their creators, whether they are personal or veer towards the absurd and imaginative, because there isn’t a lot of space for that in the mainstream,” Pereira says. “We’d like to ensure that there’s always a dedicated place for these stories, so that creators and their readers can find each other.”
Read on, then, for more on some of the most intriguing recent releases.
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The last bite
It’s the end of the world. There is half an hour to go before ITR-688, a meteorite dubbed the “death star”, crashes into Earth, ending life as we know it.
Pintoo is at home, waiting for his parents to take him to the market so that he can fulfil his last wish of eating the famous Banarasi gulab jamun called the karejwa.
The little boy is determined to eat the syrupy treat one last time.
The comic Karejwa, with its unusual plot and priorities, becomes a mouth-watering, gut-wrenching race against time, as Pintoo decides to make a run for it and head to the market alone.
As he makes his way through a very different Varanasi — one devolving into chaos, panicking, rioting and looting — the death star starts to loom larger and larger.
Will his last wish be fulfilled?
The 162-page work, based on a short story by the lyricist, screenwriter, stand-up comedian and filmmaker Varun Grover, 44, manages to be tender and political while highlighting the culture of an ancient city. It prompts the reader to ask themselves: If you could fulfil one last little wish, what would it be?
The tale was turned it into a web comic (available in Hindi, English, Hinglish and Urdu) in 2021, with art by Ankit Kapoor. It was edited by Sumit Kumar, founder of the Bengaluru comics and animation studio Bakarmax. A physical version was released this year.
“The print industry is not what it used to be, you know. So, obviously, you can’t get straight away into printing,” Kumar says. “But if you can prove an idea based on how well it does on the web, then as a small publisher, it starts making sense to print it.”
The story for Karejwa, incidentally, draws from one of the legends about the origin of the sweet. And it was born of Grover’s fear of death. “Whenever I am afraid of death, I eat something sweet so that at least my last morsel is delicious,” Grover writes in his author’s note, adding that whenever his mind goes there, “which is seven to eight times a day”, he is also motivated to finish his work, so that people don’t find pages of a half-written script under his pillow after he’s gone.
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Animal crackers
What is it like growing up with a brother who lives in the fridge? What if you wait a lifetime to say what you wanted to say, and then don’t get to say it? What kind of responsibility comes with owning a cloud?
Delhi-based Anand Shenoy’s Zoo series contains short stories told in comic form, set in an everyday with a surreal twist.
The artist turned to storytelling as a way to better express some of the absurdities of life as he saw them, he says. He likes placing his characters in uncomfortable situations, where they end up doing petty and questionable things.
And so the boy in the fridge story, My Cold Brother, goes through school, law school, becomes a lawyer, works at a dairy farm, buys his own fridge, even as his parents and sister get used to their son and brother living like this. Finally, through a pen-pal, he visits Antarctica, a place that is finally too cold for him. He settles down with this friend in Siberian Russia, from there he writes to his sister, who is happy he’s finally out of the fridge, but is left wondering: what was he really running from all this time?
Shenoy, 28, launched the Zoo series in 2020, with three to five such stories per edition. He prints about 500 copies of each issue and sells them online and at comic festivals.
The style of the art is raw and retro. “I felt my drawings weren’t mature enough for comics, but I didn’t want to wait until they were perfect, if they ever could be,” he says.
Now, a collection of stories from the first three issues of Zoo have been picked up by Bubbles, a US-based zine publisher.
“There aren’t as many physical outlets for books and magazines these days,” Shenoy says. “But the fact that the indie space is a small community helps in some ways. It’s not yet an ‘industry’ and that works for me because it’s easier to navigate.”
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Luck of the draw
Babycha has a bad habit. He leaves home in the middle of the night and makes his way to a secret island. There, he joins other desperate men in a card game that has everything to do with luck, and nothing to do with skill.
Babycha risks his marriage, the future of his unborn child, all of it, on the game. He can’t seem to stop.
The Pig Flip, by artist and animator Joshy Benedict, translated from the Malayalam by KK Muralidharan, is a 113-page comic born of a short story and an abandoned plan for a feature film. It was first published digitally by Manorama Online, in 2016.
Perhaps what stands out most about the book is the luscious watercolour art, which sets the grim tale against the sylvan beauty of Kerala.
The story was inspired by people in the village where he grew up, says Benedict, 50.
In 2018, he took the comic offline, printing two digital copies for display at the first edition of Indie Comix Fest in Kochi. He was inundated with orders and went on to print and ship 200 copies.
This year, The Pig Flip (a literal translation of the Malayalam name of the card game) was picked up and published by HarperCollins India.
His second comic was published online in 2017 by Mathrubhumi. In the same lush watercolour style, this one, titled Koprachevu (Storeroom for Dried Coconut), unravels a feud between two families.
Incidentally, just this week, Benedict won the National Award for Best Animated Short Film, for his silent short, A Coconut Tree.
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Weird and wonderful
Slipping on a banana and falling towards the ceiling. A face caved in from an anvil that fell on it the previous day; or an armoire that will the day after. A figure wrapped in a fog that travels with them everywhere.
Sex, body horror and violence take odd shapes in Cutting Season (2024), a collection of 16 short stories presented as a vibrant, pop-art comic.
Created by illustrator Bhanu Pratap of Himachal Pradesh, it plays interestingly with form. Dialogue is sparse, and sometimes absent. What there is, in terms of visuals and words, is abstract and open to interpretation.
“Cutting Season is mostly an outcome of my ongoing obsessions with the idea of the body and the self, how the two differ and how they are similar,” says Pratap, 37. “I don’t consider my work completely abstract… but more the kind of abstract that arises from the world not making sense.”
His style, he adds, draws from the Modernist and Surrealist movements, but also from old-school cartooning, which is its own take on the idea of the form.
The art, grotesque, macabre and riveting, has found its audience, in India and beyond. Fantagraphics, a legacy comics publishing house in USA, has begun putting out his work.
“I want to establish myself in a way where all I do are my own comics and paintings, but of course the market and economy don’t work that way,” Pratap says, laughing.
His next book is a larger project, but it’s a bit up in the air at the moment. “That’s also what makes it exciting,” he says.
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V for victory
In a parallel world — a capitalist “utopia” — the ESSS (Extremely Selfless Servants of Society) are planning a ground-up overhaul of civilisation.
Chintu, a “proud patriot”, is part of this vital mission to return the nation to its rightful wardrobe, the mighty V-shaped chaddi. He joined the esteemed ESSS as a little boy; it taught him how to be an unemployed but politically active warrior. It is a position he holds with pride, to the dismay of his wife Soumya, who struggles to support the family, and his son Sontu, who would like to put on more clothes.
What will Chintu do when it turns out that his wife is an enemy of ESSS? That is the plot of A Passionate Cog: Adventures Within the Machine (2024) by Krityam Jain.
“The situation in the country inspired me to write this book,” says the 22-year-old, who is studying animation in Mumbai.
It took him a year to finish the 160-page comic and pitch it to Shabd Publications, which released it in May. The art is in caricature form, featuring exaggerated features, wagging tongues, bushy body hair and generous waistlines.
The deal with Shabd has helped, and he has sold copies at Indie Comix Fest, he says. “Such events are crucial because they are one of the few places where your work can reach the people.”
He is already working on his next book. His dream is to do this full-time, “without the constant worry about covering my rent and basic needs”. “But even if that plan fails,” he says, “I know in my heart that I will keep making comics.”
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Be a man?
Mansoor, a husband and father, is haunted by the words of his father: “Mard bann (Be a man).” He hears them as he goes about his day.
He is gentle, emotional, sensitive. Even if he wanted to be his father’s kind of man, he suspects he would not be able to pull it off. What exactly does that make him?
The comic that explores this question, Mard Bann, is a 32-page ode to the beta man and the power of self-acceptance.
The bilingual comic (Dakhini and English) was created by Bengaluru artist Rahil Mohsin, 34, and children’s book writer and illustrator Alankrita Amaya, 34. (They are also husband and wife, and the team behind the online comics platform Hallu Bol.)
With work scarce in the pandemic, they decided to use the opportunity to create original and personal work, launched Hallu Bol and began work on Mard Bann.
The book has been more of a hit than the couple expected. They sold their first print run of 300 copies, mainly at offline events such as Indie Comix Fest and Comic Con, between August and December last year.
“There has been unexpected curiosity and interest from non-Dakhini speakers, who want to know the stories of this largely unexplored language and culture,” says Amaya.
This is heartening for the couple, who set out to create Mard Bann because they felt that mainstream representation of Mohsin’s community was inadequate.
The couple’s comics are meant to add layers and subtlety to the narrative, which is partly why there are bilingual. Every Dakhini line is written in Roman script, and translated into English.
Their first work is now in its second print run, and the duo is working on the second in the series: another story from Dakhini culture, but one they’re not ready to talk about yet.
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Force field
The story opens with a prelude on the battlefield: Two men, David and Goliath-like, in a face-off. They draw their swords; one decapitates the other. He is on a mission to conquer the world.
Cut to the present day, and the plot of Nirvana Chapter 1 begins. We meet Karma, a quiet teenager going about his introverted life when a rumour begins doing the rounds at school that he murdered his grandmother. He gets into a fight. He is being bullied and ostracised.
He turns further inward, and begins to explore ideas of evil on earth. He learns of ancient powers of good too. Could he harness these to find and fight the evil in this world?
Two volumes of Nirvana have been released so far, with a third underway. As with all manga, that showdown is a long way away.
The series has been created by twin brothers Abhishek Verma and Gaurav Verma, 18, who go by Abhirav, and is inspired by Japanese shonen comics (a category aimed at adolescent boys).
It is being published by Cosmics Entertainment, a small banner set up by Mohammad Shahbaz in Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, in 2021.
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A rude awakening
It all begins with a dream, and a timid, beaten-down employee at a mega-corporation. The goddess Kali comes to the man, DK Bose, in a nightmare, and tortures, punishes and terrifies him so deeply that he cannot fall asleep anymore.
Desperate, he picks up a brush and paints the deity he saw. He posts his work online, and then, for the first time in a long time, falls into a deep sleep.
He awakes to find that his image has awoken something in the women of his city of Talkata. Possessed by the spirit of his Kali, they are standing up to the men in their lives. His boss, under attack from an abused wife, demands that Bose delete the image.
Will Bose do it? Will it matter?
Jai Kali Android Wali is a 65-page comic by Pritam Das, an assistant professor of art and design at Inspiria Knowledge Campus in Siliguri. It was published in 2023 by Pagal Canvas, using funds from the Generator Cooperative Art Production Fund by Experimenter Labs.
It is a work of raw, vibrant, violent and surreal paintings steeped in shades of red and blue.
“Conventional comic frames felt limiting,” says Das, 36. So, across most of the work, he uses each page as one large, dramatic frame.
The story is inspired by his early work experiences, he says, from a biometric attendance system that made automated salary cuts if a person punched in late, to an incident in which a colleague was ordered to take down a nude painting they had posted online.
Getting the work published was difficult.
“I believe one of the main challenges of being a comic artist in India is the lack of awareness of and appreciation for experimental styles,” Das says. “As a result of this, publishers are reluctant to take a chance on an out-of-the-box narrative.” Without mainstream backing, people remain oblivious to much of what is out there, and so it goes, he says.