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Kaur, Raminder and Saif Eqbal. Adventure Comics and Youth Cultures in India. London, New York: Routledge, 2019. 
Added by: joachim (12/6/19, 11:08 AM)   Last edited by: joachim (12/6/19, 11:13 AM)
Resource type: Book
Language: en: English
ID no. (ISBN etc.): 9781138201880
BibTeX citation key: Kaur2019
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 Categories: General
Keywords: Adventure comics, India, Interculturalism, Superhero, Youth culture
Creators: Eqbal, Kaur
Publisher: Routledge (London, New York)		 Views: 44/859
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Abstract
This pioneering book presents a history and ethnography of adventure comic books for young people in India with a particular focus on vernacular superheroism. It chronicles popular and youth culture in the subcontinent from the mid-twentieth century to the contemporary era dominated by creative audio-video-digital outlets.
The authors highlight early precedents in adventures set by the avuncular detective Chacha Chaudhary with his ‘faster than a computer brain’, the forays of the film veteran Amitabh Bachchan’s superheroic alter ego called Supremo, the Protectors of Earth and Mankind (P.O.E.M.), along with the exploits of key comic book characters, such as Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv, Parmanu, Doga, Shakti and Chandika. The book considers how pulp literature, western comics, television programmes, technological developments and major space ventures sparked a thirst for extraterrestrial action and how these laid the grounds for vernacular ventures in the Indian superhero comics genre. It contains descriptions, textual and contextual analyses, excerpts of interviews with comic book creators, producers, retailers and distributors, together with the views, dreams and fantasies of young readers of adventure comics. These narratives touch upon special powers, super-intelligence, phenomenal technologies, justice, vengeance, geopolitics, romance, sex and the amazing potentials of masked identities enabled by navigation of the internet.

Table of Contents

List of Figures (ix)
List of Plates (xi)
Acknowledgements (xiii)

1. Action India (1)
2. The making of modern mythologies (18)
3. The golden age of the Indian superhero (46)
4. Gendering graphics (63)
5. A haven of super creativity (83)
6. The fantastic familiar (101)
7. The state of the nation (116)
8. A forensics of evil (131)
9. Readers’ worlds (152)
10. In one of my dreams, I defeated America (173)
11. Future presents (196)

Glossary of key Indian adventure comic book characters (216)
Index (221)


  
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