Comic Kaun?

Remember the green guy throwing snakes on goons and a guy in yellow and blue dress doing daredevil stunts and saving the city? No, then you are definitely not from 80’s. You are either a 90’s kid or surely a millennium kid.

If you ask any 90’s kid about comic books, most of them will have faded memory; some will have no memory at all. But ask any 80’s kid about it, they will boast about it like telling a war story as a war veteran. Comic book for any 80’s kid was a thing of possession but not for the later generation. The later ones, 90’s kid got introduced to new media platforms, such as satellite TV and internet and when they further grew up they got the Facebook and Twitter’s virus. As for the later generations, I guess they have only heard of comics as historical thing. All they know is Doraemon and Pikachu. 

The trend is entirely different in the western world. Even after being much ahead in technology and media content availability, their comic industry has not lost the readers in a considerable manner. May be because of the appearance of their idols on the silver screen or in an animated avatar but the industry has managed to retain the audience. 

According to a popular daily, the comic industry in India is reviving. The sale has now increased from 50000 to 5 lakh. Yeah, the numbers are good comparatively but with more than a billion people, of which 31% living in urban areas, the sales numbers are quite disappointing. The players of the Indian comic industry are trying hard to revive it. In doing so comic-con India has also started taking place in different cities of India but if you ask any random guy about it, only 2 out of ten will say, ‘yeah I heard about it’ others will think of it as comic kaun? What is that?

At the recently held comic con event in Bangalore, the attendance was enormous but the reason behind it was primarily, free entry. The event was supposed to be for the Indian comic industry and its characters but the participants were mostly dressed up as the western characters such as Captain America, Batman, etc. One even came dressed as Gabbar Singh but nobody bothered to know why he is dressed as Gabbar who has no significance in the comic industry. The crowd was not at all bothered about the launch events of Indian comics or any of the related stuff. They came, they saw and gone. That’s how the thing is. Comics in India have failed in retaining the audience, primarily because of the lack of coordination with other media platforms unlike the west.

However, the future for the Indian comic industry does have some silver linings as with already increasing sales figure, the companies such as Raj comics and Diamond comics have already made e-comics available. They are also planning animated series of popular characters like Chacha Chaudhary, Super commando Dhruv and Naagraj and with Pioneer filmmaker Anurag Kashyap announced a film based on our beloved dog masked hero Doga, the future does look promising. It’s better late than never for the comic industry.

Let’s just hope that the glory days when Wham Bham, Chattak and rat-tat tat sounds enjoyed in a literary manner comes back with a bang. 

- Ajit Kumar Lal