When Sanid Asif Ali was invited to a library in Kochi a couple of years in the past to present a chat on comics, he was launched as an artist who would take the viewers right into a ‘world of laughter’. Ali will get it. “One of the first comics that most people in Kerala enjoyed is the classic Boban & Molly by the artist Toms, which is filled with humour and satire,” says the comics creator, who co-founded Studio Niyet, an unbiased comics publishing home within the metropolis, along with his spouse. “So, people have this association between comics and comedy.”
Last December, when he and Tony Davis, one of many organisers of Indie Comix Fest, went on a radio present to advertise the occasion in Kochi, the radio jockey was fascinated that her company weren’t stand-up comics. “This is the first time I’m listening to two people talking very seriously about comics,” the RJ advised them. “We then talked about books like Maus: A Survivor’s Tale [about author Art Spiegelman’s father Vladek, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe] and Persepolis [Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution] that deal with serious themes,” he says.
(L-R) Sanid Asif Ali, Tony Davis and Unkoolie
This realisation that comics will not be for laughs, however cope with robust, typically heavy, themes resembling sociopolitical satire, feminism, queer identification, sexual abuse, biography and extra, is slowly percolating. And that comics can transcend simply superheroes, particularly these from the Marvel and DC multiverse. Independent comic guide festivals are enjoying a big half on this.
Indie Comix Fest (ICF), an annual creator-run pageant of self-published comics begun by a small group of lovers from Mumbai in 2017, has now grown right into a nationwide phenomenon — with editions in Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, Kozhikode and Ahmedabad. “Unlike Comic Con, which is a buyer and merchandise-oriented event, ICF is for creators. The Kochi edition began in 2018, and last year we had over 36 creators participate,” says Davis, including that Bengaluru and Mumbai entice essentially the most variety of artists — with numbers going above 100.
Indie Comix Fest Kochi
Indie Comix Fest Kozhikode
The cognoscenti and the curious drop by in equal measure, and every is distinct. For occasion, Kochi attracts loads of younger IT professionals and individuals from movie and promoting; Delhi has extra college students strolling in, and a youthful set with a funds in thoughts. “Bengaluru has some good creators now like Sumit Kumar of Bakarmax and Rachita Taneja of Sanitary Panels, so it gives the city some heft,” says Bengaluru-based graphic novelist George Mathen, higher identified by his pen identify Appupen. “But Kerala is suddenly picking up. For instance, a community called Indy Comics Commune has meet-ups, 24-hour marathons, and comic farms [two-day events where artists get together to create a 12-page comic]. I hear ICF is also expanding to Thiruvananthapuram. I am expecting some nice things from Kerala.”
Appupen
| Photo Credit:
Sudhakara Jain
Tracking its historical past
Historically, India hasn’t loved a robust comic tradition — regardless of syndicated strips like The Phantom, Mandrake, and Flash Gordon being translated to Indian languages within the 50s, and the homegrown guide collection, Indrajal Comics, launching within the mid 60s. And although Indian comics loved their heyday within the 80s and 90s, with the likes of the favored Tinkle, Chandamama, and Amar Chitra Katha, know-how resembling tv, video video games and the web scuttled curiosity.
Indie Comix Fest Delhi
Buzzing creator scene
When I arrive in Kochi just a little earlier than Christmas of 2024, the Party Congress has simply concluded, and there are pink sashes in all places, tied to posts and across the trunks of coconut bushes. Stars of each denominations — Communist and Christian — mild up the night sky. They appear to interrupt up the town right into a collection of exact compositions, a sequence of panels, outlined by gutter areas and boundaries, like a web page in a comic.
As a creator, I’m drawn as a lot by curiosity to see how the market has developed as the need to current my very own work. As I take a look at the teeming crowds on the venue, Ali tells me that there was a drop in numbers because the 2023 version (which had over 46 creators collaborating). One potential cause: the rule that no merchandise may be bought. “We began the fest to promote comics, and we didn’t want that objective to be diluted,” shares Davis, explaining that creators hand out free merchandise with the comics.
Comics at ICF Kochi
I take into consideration my very own childhood: Amar Chitra Katha, Commando, Tintin, and after all, Indrajal. The concept that we may make comics ourselves was distant, although there have been examples resembling Tinkle and Bahadur. Then got here the wave of Indian graphic novels, the trendy canon of Sarnath Bannerjee, Appupen, and Amruta Patil. But now there’s this subterranean present fuelled by exchanges between the net and offline world. Ali, as an example, began off by placing up comic strips on Instagram. When Davis invited him to take part in Kochi’s first ICF, he steered that Ali may print and compile the strips. “I said no, I will bring out a 20-page comic,” Ali shares.
Visitors at ICF Delhi
At the fest, I arrange my inventory with good friend and fellow artist Kishore Mohan, with whom I’m collaborating on a graphic novel. We maintain a folder of our work-in-progress open on the desk, discreetly gauging individuals’s reactions as they leaf via them. For a author/artist, this sort of real-time suggestions is invaluable. At the subsequent desk is artist Roshan Kurichiyanil, an animation director and Kerala state award profitable youngsters’s guide artist, who has labored with shoppers the world over. Soon dad and mom with children in tow are snapping up his Taara of the Stars, a collection that includes youngsters embarking on fantastical adventures. My different neighbour is promoting a graphic novel written by humorist Varun Grover known as Karejwa; I benefit from our proximity to learn it — a rollicking trip about black holes and gulab jamuns converging in Varanasi.
Karejwa
Varun Grover
The artists on the fest are of each stripe: veterans with a barely jaded air, first-timers exhibiting their work with a mixture of delight and shyness. At one desk, two youngsters are racking up brisk gross sales with their hand-drawn, stapled ‘minis’ — ‘remakes’ of OTT reveals like The Penguin or video video games such because the Mafia, into which one of many artists has drawn himself as a personality.
A comic remake of The Penguin
At one other desk, visible designer Aparna Thankaraj reveals MissAndroid, with its iridescently colored pages, set in “a world where all the women are robots”. Mohith O., an architect, reveals his accordion-like building; the 2 sides have the identical story however with differing POVs. The extremely idiosyncratic nature of the fest signifies that non-standard codecs are the norm.
Mohith O.’s accordion-style comic
Aparna Thankaraj’s MissAndroid
Uptick in evaluation and critique
In the final couple of months, I’ve travelled to a number of comic occasions. IIT Hyderabad invited me to speak about comics and the town. Just a few days later, throughout city, I attended a global convention dedicated to graphic novels on the English and Foreign Languages University, the place Indian, American, Dutch and British teachers milled about and 32 panels with over 110 papers have been offered — all the things from “Batman’s a psycho” to “A Semiotic Reading of a Malayali Restaurant Menu card”. Even a decade in the past, once I’d began off, researching comics was one thing that occurred solely within the West, and creators labored in airtight isolation, faraway from this loop of research and critique.
Platforms for all ages
Creators agree {that a} sequential artwork renaissance is occurring throughout the nation. “It’s a compound effect,” feels Tina Thomas, who co-founded Studio Kokaachi, a visible storytelling studio in Kochi, along with her husband Pratheek Thomas. “When I was growing up, engineering and medicine were the only preferred choices. Now, education is diversifying and design is a big thing. Students graduating from the many design schools in India are finding lucrative career opportunities [in corporates, animation studios and the like].”
Tina and Pratheek Thomas
Movies, movie festivals, and artwork biennales are additionally including to the dialog, and altering mindsets. “The Kochi-Muziris Biennale, for one, has changed the way people perceive art and artists in the city. While earlier, they thought an artist had no future, now parents are recognising talent in their children and encouraging them to nurture it.”
A way of democracy is likely one of the foundations of indie festivals. For occasion, final 12 months noticed a trio of Class V college students exhibiting their comic alongside a 62-year-old creator at ICF Kochi, whereas their youngest has been a nine-year-old. “Such spaces are much-needed,” says Tina. She recollects when her husband Pratheek had taken Hush, a comic about youngster sexual abuse, to the primary version of Comic Con in New Delhi in 2011. It had bought out. “We had such high hopes [for the festival], but then it evolved into something else. Comic Con isn’t really helping comic creators, but promoting merchandise and the like.”
Studio Kokaachi’s Matchbox Comix
Stall prices are excessive, with premium locations within the entrance going for ₹70,000. “The small stalls at the back are what Indian comic companies can afford. By the time people reach there, they would have already spent all their money on merch, with nothing left for comics.” While Comic Con does provide free stalls, it is just for individuals who can take part in all 5 cities. A writer can afford the deal, however not an indie creator — with flight tickets and lodging including to the funds. “At ICF, you can choose the city you want to show at, and at ₹750 for a stall, it’s affordable. The only criteria is that you have a comic, even if it is just four pages,” she says.
Bengaluru Comic Con 2025
Mainstream vs. indie
Today, comics open loads of doorways. “I write for films now, and my first screenplay was announced a year ago. It’s all because of our comics. In fact, [director] Mani Ratnam got in touch with us to do the animation for OK Kanmani because one of our Matchbox Comix creators recommended our work,” Tina says.
But the door stays closed with regards to mainstream publishers. “Most don’t want to invest in graphic novels because they believe it is a niche medium, and will not attract too many readers. The cost of production is high [since it is in colour and needs special attention because of its panels and placement], and books will be priced higher because they have to factor in the cost of drawing,” she says.
Studio Kokaachi’s Mixtape comics
Small zines aren’t picked both as a result of these would get misplaced in large shops resembling Crossword. For an artist to create a guide of 150 pages, they must put in a minimal of two years. And there isn’t a assure that on the finish of it, they are going to be picked up! “Working with mainstream publishers on a graphic novel, your advance will be abysmal. They won’t do any marketing for you,” provides Delhi-based writer-illustrator Anupam Arunachalam. “They are not used to editing comics, so you won’t get much editorial help too.”
Guide for creators
Appupen is hoping to bolster the market and encourage creators with a brand new collaborative enterprise: a web based platform known as Comix Canal the place anybody can join and promote their comics. Co-founded by him, Unkoolie and Ruth Wick, it at present hosts over 50 indie comics, from over 20 artists throughout India. “Festivals happen for a single day, but what about the rest of the year?” Appupen asks, whereas Unkoolie says that the concept was “to create a system which allows creators to be paid more without compromising on their rights over the work”. A publish on the platform’s Instagram web page breaks down why comic artists don’t receives a commission a lot, the pitfalls of mainstream publishing, and why they don’t plan to scale up, ever. “It’s when it scales up that it will become a Comic Con. I don’t want the con, just the comic,” he laughs. On the platform, he’s hoping to encourage creators to pay as a lot consideration to the textual content as they do to the pictures, and assist new creators.
‘Self publish or perish’
American comic guide creator Becky Cloonan has the quote printed on the again cowl of her books. And many creators in India agree with it. It’s not solely manufacturing prices, but additionally plotlines that may maintain publishers away. “You don’t get to see a lot of personal stories in mainstream comics. Or [if they make it], they are tangential or entangled with some big historical event, like Maus or The Arab of the Future,” says Arunachalam. “But at the comic fest, you get small, personal stories — not only autobiographical, but also unusual.”
Of course, there are exceptions. Joshy Benedict, an animator and comic guide creator from Kozhikode — whose movie A Coconut Tree received the National Award for Best Animated Short Film final 12 months — bought a guide cope with Harper Collins after he participated in ICF. He wrote and hand-illustrated The Pig Flip in 2013, however as soon as completed no writer needed it. “In 2018, ICF asked me to bring the book to the festival. When I told them I didn’t have a physical copy, they asked me to bring two digital prints. So many people showed interest that I had to get their addresses, print more copies, and send it to them,” he says with fun. As curiosity picked up, somebody steered he get the guide translated into English and method publishers once more. This time, HarperCollins picked it up.
The Pig Flip
“Things are changing today, but it is slow,” says Benedict, who has one other graphic novel out in Malalyalam known as Koprachevu. “People have to see comics and graphic novels like they would regular novels. In Japan, everybody reads manga; that should happen here too. And more festivals like ICF will help in that.”
Joshy Benedict
“[In Kerala] people rush to places where literature is being discussed. We love art, we read a lot. However, comics were not considered a literary medium because no one attempted to tell a serious story through it. But recently, [with exposure] people are exploring it as one. The medium now has to be pushed more, has to be experimented on more.”Roshan KurichiyaniArtist and youngsters’s guide creator
Roshan Kurichiyani (left) and fellow comic artist Mohith O. at ICF Kochi
Back in Kochi
In the week earlier than ICF, the handful of fine printers within the metropolis are flooded with work. “All the creators are there; it almost becomes like a meeting place,” says Tina. She talks about artists gathering round offset printers, swapping tales, and staying all evening to get their books prepared. And on the pageant, the place books are priced between ₹100 and ₹600 (a uncommon few go as much as ₹1,500), they promote shortly, artists’ e-pay apps beeping with notifications.
As the fest winds down, with empty tables denoting sold-out artists, I ponder if the saturation of digital media right now has led to a form of backlash — a necessity for the physicality of issues. “Absolutely,” says Ali. “People came to my stall and just smelled the book for a minute. They just crave that, the look and feel of a book.”
Jaideep Unudurti is a author and graphic novelist.
Published – March 21, 2025 03:58 pm IST
