Comics and the Global South
Methodologies from and within Majority Worlds
Andrea Aramburú (Editor), Dibyadyuti Roy (Editor), Joe Sutliff Sanders (Editor)
Leuven University Press, 2026
online at
The year 2024, shortly before this anthology on comics and the Global South went into production, marked an unprecedented moment in global electoral history, with a record-breaking number of voters participating in general elections across 64 nations, surpassing any previous democratic exercise in human history (Ewe 2023). Amongst the dominance of data- and algorithm-driven (mis)information, toxic political debates, and polarising social media discourse during these global exercises of adult franchise, which threatened to eclipse individual and collective agency, there was a decisive re-emergence of visual storytelling, particularly comics, as vital cultural territories of meaning-making. With 70 percent of the top...
Comics, with their rich transcultural history as both an art form, a medium, and a cultural product, reflect and shape the evolving dynamics of culture, politics, and society. Hence, they offer a unique lens to explore complex cross-border interactions. This chapter examines the Global North and South dichotomy through the lens of Hong Kong comics.
Although the term Global South lacks a single definition, the United Nations uses it to describe less economically developed countries predominantly located in the southern hemisphere, contrasting with the developed nations mainly in the Global North (UNCTD 2018). This term, which replaced "Third World" after...
Piracy is the elephant in the room when discussing comics distribution for large portions of readers living in the Global South. This article seeks to grapple with this topic first by contributing to a discussion on intellectual resource imbalances between North and South. The academic system is inherently unequal between North and South. The most prestigious academic publishing houses are thought to belong to the United States and Europe, premier amongst them university presses. The subscription system for journals is priced in high sums of dollars and euros, particularly difficult to sustain for universities of the South, and impossible for...
A predisposition to visual storytelling has always been part of Asia's cultural and historical legacy. Caricatures have been a continuing presence in the Asian art traditions, and hence the ingredients of comic art were long present in Asia (Lent 2015, 11–12). By citing examples from Japan and India about the art that existed in the continent, Lent further adds that "ancient murals, sculptures, painted scrolls; woodcuts and other drawings and picture books did indeed contain one or more of the elements of cartooning, such as caricature, satire/parody, humour/playfulness, and narrative/sequence" (2015, 10). From engravings found in prehistoric caves to...
In 1975, The Adventures of Tintin arrived in India as a translated series in a regional magazine of Calcutta, Anandamela. The Bengali translation of Tintin became a cultural phenomenon for generations of comics enthusiasts in the city. The Bengali Tintin is not merely a literal translation of Hergé's work; it has shaped the narrative within the socio-cultural context of Calcutta. In a discussion on regional comics of Bengal, it is observed that the "sophisticated Bengalis regarded gneri-gugli as lowly food that poor people scrounged from riverbanks, giving Haddock's outburst a piquantly Bengali punch while preserving the crustacean flavour of the...
In the remediated graphic representation of Kabir's "I cannot be a devotee when I am hungry," artist Sekhar Mukherjee develops a fold-out fixed inset of the collection (2023, 152–53; Fig. 5.1). This fold-out resembles a three-part horizontal scroll with every part separated by a white border. Instead of making the three parts separate entities to form a sequence, it illustrates a single moment where the poem about dearth and famine finds itself inside the speech balloons. The speech balloon strangely resembles an empty human stomach hinting towards numerous stories of famished conditions we encounter on every page of the...
In early 2000s, with the rise of left-wing governments, public policies promoting historical reparations led to a significant increase in access to universities and cultural funding for Black and marginalised communities all over Latin America. In Brazil, this political shift diversified the aesthetic landscape of Brazilian culture, foregrounding Afro-Brazilian, Indigenous, and peripheral narratives and visual forms that had long been suppressed. However, with the far-right resurgence in late 2010s, this pluralistic aesthetic was pushed back: symbolic codes favouring whiteness, heteronormativity, and conservative ideals regained dominance in public discourse and cultural production. In Brazilian capitals, specifically in 2013, a popular movement...
In the inaugural volume of Ms. Shabash—published on International Women's Day in 2015 by Bangladesh's Mighty Punch Studios—the titular character and superhero alter-ego of journalist Shabnam Sharif successfully thwarts a daring robbery attempt. However, instead of public acclaim, she is unexpectedly besieged with marriage proposals from invasive male fans and seemingly well-intentioned elderly women. As the suspended-in-air Ms. Shabash politely but assertively brushes away these approaches by noting, "I have to get back to my day job," readers are immediately made aware of the normative attitudes and gendered anxieties that attempt to confine postcolonial female agency within restrictive...
Rigidly imposed definitions and assumptions have at times framed discussions of what constitutes comics and comics-making in Aotearoa New Zealand and, in so doing, excluded marginalised communities from the conversation. Accepting such views verbatim closes off the potential to expand the art form and recognise the interesting work being done by creators who exist outside narrow definitions.
Examining the background to comics in New Zealand shows why a lack of bicultural competency might lead to both the co-option of Māori themes, stories, and motifs by non-Māori comic makers and the exclusion of meaningful discourse that links comics and traditional Māori...
Manga and anime have acquired extensive global visibility in the 21st century. Popular anime titles are streaming on OTT platforms (Netflix, Crunchyroll), and the fandom is participating in enthusiastic digital exchanges. Several manga otakus¹ are not just mere consumers, but active partakers of the creative process. Alvin Toffler coined the portmanteau term "prosumer" in his book The Third Wave (1980), referring to the production by a consumer. The notion has reverberated within the realm of manga fandom. Creatively endowed fans often yield original texts that can be identified as ONJ (Original Non-Japanese) manga. The opus of ONJ includes OEL (Original...
In 2014, Ricardo Caro Cárdenas found in the Presbítero Maestro cemetery in Lima, Perú, the grave of Joaquín Jayme, a freed slave. The grave bore the following inscription: "Born in Africa. Died on September 12, 1870. At 94 years of age" (Arrelucea Barrantes et al. 2016, 42).¹ It was rare for Afro-Peruvian individuals who had been enslaved, even those who had acquired their freedom prior to the abolition of slavery, to be buried with a name and surname in a cemetery. More commonly, the anonymous bodies were deposited in a shared grave. Jayme was possibly amongst the group of Africans...
Dadaab is host to one of the world's largest and longest-standing refugee camp complexes.¹ Located in north-east Kenya in the Garissa County, the camps were constructed in 1991 as a "temporary" shelter for the thousands of Somali refugees fleeing the civil war, which bears the indelible mark of the region's former colonial powers who imposed boundaries that became the fault lines for conflict. While humanitarian funding for Dadaab has declined, alongside threats of imminent demolition, the camp and its residents—who cannot be repatriated due to ongoing conflict—remain there indefinitely. In this space, women face enduring challenges in maternal...
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