Comic Book Karma
Visual Mythologies of the Hindu Modern
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v4i2.177Keywords:
Hindu comic books, Contemporary IndiaAbstract
Virgin Comics, a transnational corporation with offices in India and the U.S., has tried to put its chosen medium—the comic book— to novel use. In 2006, Virgin (now Liquid Comics) began marketing titles that remobilize Hindu mythology for the global entertainment market. Paying particular attention to the series Devi (2006-), this article situates Virgin’s comics within several discursive and institutional conjunctures. First, I trace how Virgin’s chief “visionaries” sought to “modernize” the Indian comic. By bringing the vocabularies of Nehruvian developmentalism to bear on this popular cultural form, Virgin signals that in post-liberalization India the aesthetic has outpaced the industrial as the byword of global modernity. Second, I consider Virgin’s attempt to render the comic book a fully fungible medium, which facilitates the development and exchange of intellectual property across entertainment platforms. Newly dematerialized, Virgin’s ethereally cosmopolitan comics are nonetheless haunted by the material specificities of the postcolonial nation-state.
References
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Appadurai, Arjun and Carol Breckenridge. 1988. “Why Public Culture?” Public Culture 1: 5–11. doi:10.1215/08992363-1-1-5
Bajaj, Vikas. 2009. “In India, New Life for Comic Books as TV Cartoons.” New York Times. July 19.
Banerjee, Sarnath. 2004. Corridor: A Graphic Novel. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Boucher, Geoff. 2008a. “Alan Moore on ‘Watchmen’ Movie: ‘I will be spitting venom all over it,’” “Hero Complex,” L.A. Times Blogs, 18 September. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2008/09/alan-moore-on- w.html. Accessed 12 May 2009.
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Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Coburn, Thomas B. 1996. “Devi: The Great Goddess.” In Devi: Goddesses of India, edited by John S. Hawley and Donna M. Wulff, 31–48. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Devi. 2007-. Holmdel, NJ: Gotham Entertainment Group.
Dwyer, Rachel. 2006. Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema. London: Routledge.
Eisner, Will. 1995. Comics and Sequential Art, 2nd ed. Paramus, NJ: Poorhouse Press.
Hawley, John Stratton. 1995. “The Saints Subdued: Domestic Virtue and National Integration in the Amar Chitra Katha.” In Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia, edited by Lawrence A. Babb and Susan S. Wadley, 107–134. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Jain, Kajri. 2007. Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kapur, Shekhar. 2007. “Interview with Shekhar Kapur.” In Devi no.1, 15. Holmdel, NJ: Gotham Entertaiment Group.
Lent, John A. 1999. Pulp Demons: International Dimensions of the Postwar Anti-Comics Campaign. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses.
———. ed. 2001. Illustrating Asia: Comics, Humor Magazines, and Picture Books. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
“Liquid Comics Completes Management Buyout of Virgin Comics.” 2008. Liquid Comics Press Release. 24 September. http://www.liquidcomics.com/ press.html. Accessed 12 May 2009.
Lutgendorf, Philip. 1991. The Life of a Text: Performing the Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mankekar, Purnima. 1999. Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mazzarella, William. 2003. Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mill, James. 1840. The History of British India. 4th ed. Vol. 2. London: James Madden and Company.
McCloud, Scott. 1994. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Perennial.
McLain, Karline. 2009. India’s Immortal Comic Books: Gods, Kings, and Other Heroes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Narayanan, Vasudha. 1992. “Creating the South Indian ‘Hindu’ Experience in the United States.” In A Sacred Thread: Modern Transmission of Hindu Traditions in India and Abroad, edited by Raymond Brady Williams, 147–176. Chambersburg, PA: Anima Publications.
Pinney, Christopher. 2004. Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. London: Reaktion.
Prakash, Gyan. 1999. Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Prichett, Frances W. 1995. “The World of Amar Chitra Katha.” In Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia, edited by Lawrence A. Babb and Susan S. Wadley, 76–106. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2003. “Introduction.” In Beyond Appearances?: Visual Practices and Ideologies in Modern India, edited by Sumathi Ramaswamy, xiii–xxix. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Rai, Saritha. 2004. “Comic Books of the West Head East.” New York Times. 22 November, C6.
Rajagopal, Arvind. 2001. Politics after Television: Religious Nationalism and the Reshaping the Indian Public. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511489051
Rao, Aruna. 2001. “From Self-Knowledge to Super Heroes: The Story of Indian Comics.” In Illustrating Asia: Comics, Humor Magazines, and Picture Books, edited by John A. Lent, 37–63. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
The Sadhu. 2007–. Holmdel, NJ: Gotham Entertainment Group.
Sangari, Kumkum and Sudesh Vaid. 1990. Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Seetharaman, Suresh. 2008. Interview with author. Bangalore, Karnataka. 29 April.
Shah, Riddhi. 2007. “Comical Engineering.” Hindustan Times, July 22.
Thrill, Scott. 2008. “Liquid Comics Banks on Indian Epic with Ramayan 3392 A.D. Film.” The Underwire from Wired.com. 14 October. http://www.wired. com/underwire/2008/10/can-ramayan-rep/. Accessed 12 May 2009.
Van der Veer, Peter. 1994. Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wertham, Frederic. 1954. Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth. New York: Rinehart.
Wong, Karen. 2007. “Brand Ambassador.” The Standard (Hong Kong). November 19.
Published
2010-11-12
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Scott, J. B. (2010). Comic Book Karma: Visual Mythologies of the Hindu Modern. Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 4(2), 177-198. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v4i2.177
