“After all, I’m just a peasant dog!”: Chronicling the Graphic Veneration of Karna in Rik Hoskin’s Karna: Victory in Death

 “After all, I’m just a peasant dog!”: Chronicling the Graphic Veneration of Karna in Rik Hoskin’s Karna: Victory in Death

Rashmi Sharma

The graphic novel presents a unique “multiliterac” experience interfacing multiple sites of literate practices. - James Bucky Carter in Building Literacy Connections With Graphic Novels: Page by page, Panel by Panel (2007).

Comic books or their glossier version, graphic novels, have demonstrated the potential to work synergistically among various media cultures. They are tenants of profound reach as evidenced by their circulation not only as paperbacks but in digital media too. They have long been viewed as a manifestation of popular culture and are studied widely for the variety of expressive themes they exhibit. McAllister (1990) placed the gibbous comic book industry within an overall framework of cultural influence and argument; suggesting they are not only a reflection of culture but also possesses the influence and potency to alter it through the power of narrative and image they wage. The nostalgic representation of the Vedic, Puranic culture which has found refuge in these caricatures has lately made them an instrument which not only reinforces the group identity of the nation but also reminds the readers of their cultural remnants which comes to them blended with an English linguistic tradition. While graphic novels are increasingly being studied as agents of social change, or at least to have that potential, other scholars have taken more critical approaches. According to Nicholson (2008), comics can also create pervasive ancestral and ethnological stereotypes that resonate over decades. In such caricatures, the dynamics of place, history, and message is addressed through a social constructionist thought, which seeks to “preachify” the narrative. Such substantive approach allows for the review of visual and written material on a more profound level.

In terms of framing an artistic, cultural-nationalist dynamic, social constructionist theory and the cultural nationalistic dynamic that accompanies it has some utility. Graphic renditions in comic books beget mental pictures for an audience and those images over time tend to become naturalized as a moralizing objective reality. This further informs the ways individuals interact about the theme and subject over time. These reading behaviors are perpetuated until the construction becomes the pervading and dominant norm (Berger and Luckman, 1966). This provides a symbolic reality for the social world the subject ( in this case the predicament of Karna in the epic Mahabharata) inhabits. The symbolic reality of mythic hero Karna exists, though as an animation in the enhanced-fictional comic world. Regardless, this alteration of the animated world could lead to an altered mythic reality. According to Jorgensen and Phillips (2002), knowledge is not an objective truth. It is a product of categorizing the word into diverse artifacts of discourse. Worldviews and identities in the new media realm change overnight, much less over time. This authorizes the view that knowledge is not a potent reality but is contingent on malleable social discourse with resiliency and pliancy. Discourse as a form of social action plays a part in producing the social world which is lithe and flaccid, thus easily manipulated. There are links between knowledge and collective process, and knowledge and action are complementary and integral to each other (Burr, 1995). In terms of social constructionist thought, the social world is paramount to the value individuals place on their self and how this investment in the social world is returned in the graphic one. Mahabharata as a cultural template is infinite. The profusion of sentiments, prolific iterations of heroism and representations of the complexities of heroism and cowardice makes it fertile to procreate multifarious narratives. This “understanding of place” majorly impacts the “marketplace of ideas” (Lin, 2005). In the exploration of social constructionist theory1, and the canon of comic books and culture lies the genesis of Rik Hoskin’s graphic novel as a cultural nationalistic dynamic.

The graphic novel under scrutiny, Karna: Victory in Death, is replete with cursory elements of the crusade of an outcast in a socially-precarious though visually-enhanced, reality. The comic books have always used the character as an apparatus, a catalyst to define new parameters for the way cultural mythos and lore are engaged by the general audience. A new insight about mass media, representation and interpretation can be gleaned with these emerging graphic narratives of a reader’s emerging role as not just a commentator but also as a creator, his distinct affinities and fancies have now come into play. To trace continuities and shifts in comic books’ engagement with culture and to convey the different graphics contemporary readers’ experience, it is imperative to trace the trajectory from the antiquity of Amar Chitra Katha to empirical Vimanika comics before resting on Hoskin’s graphic novel. These distinctly Indian graphic novels not only highlight the distinct cultural globalization processes which they consolidate but also depict the social media networks as a space for history and mythology to amalgamate.

Although culture, superheroes, and mythology have always been deeply engrossed and submerged into one another, India’s new generation comics have brought in another player --digital media. The comics scene today includes superheroes reimagined, transnational collaborators, manga stylistics, comic books-based animation films and vice versa, and interactive fandoms. Aficionados include both growing youth, as well as adult readership, which makes them an avenue to analyze this graphic culture as “convergence culture” (Jenkins, 2006).

Though comic books, be it the languid American comics strip or the sublime Japanese manga, have always been a somewhat global medium; they have carved very different indentations in the cultural ecologies of every region where they thrive and this proliferation   “rarely translate well” (Rubenstein, 1998: 7). Rick DeMott invokes a precept pronounced by Shekhar Kapur, co-owner of Gotham Comics, who conceived his collaborative initiative with the spiritual healer and medical practitioner, Deepak Chopra, as a response to this endemic graphic culture: “Comics are becoming the new pop art. The new pop communication. The new drug. This is not just comics, but a breathtaking new multi-media format. Comics are the new culture” (DeMott, 2004).

Fig. 1. The above figure shows the front covers of Amar Chitra Katha (Taken from http://ackguide.blogspot.com/2015/06/guide-karna) and Vimanika Comics (Taken from  https://www.readwhere.com/comic/vimanika-comics/The-Sixth-00/The-Sixth-01/39951), based on Karna. Notice the difference in stance of the character -- from anguish to defiance.

This spurred a zealous enthusiasm among comic connoisseurs after a period of slack and pausation especially between 1997 and 2003. Vimanika Comics is inspired by this gusto and alacricity.  Named after Vedic text Vimanika Shastra (i.e., a treatise on aeronautics), these comics have envisioned a new graphic sensibility (see Fig. 1) and are testimony to the kaleidoscopic iconographic landscape in India, whose genesis scholars trace through the popular Amar Chitra Katha (1976–present) comic books, which are rapidly changing. Scholars blame this flux on liberalization of India’s economy in the late 1990s, which led to the advent of emergent technologies and transnational production networks in an earlier indigenous homegrown turf.  This facilitated transnational business and artistic collaborations, leading to a bulging market of graphic novels and digitized print comics. This also indicates a burgeoning visual literacy for these graphic caricatures, whose enthusiasts are both young and adult readers. Even Amar Chitra Katha, in fear of becoming redundant, has also re-invented itself by morphing into digital comics and exploring animated graphics, in the valid belief that the cosmopolitanism of this stylized “digital interface might provide a new lease of life” (Khanduri, 2010: 187).

It is imperative to acknowledge that Amar Chitra Katha will never cease to be a cardinal pivot, providing “creative, social and capitalist logic for comic publishers and readers” alike (Ibid.). Both readers’ and creators’ engagement with comics as culture offer an original expanse and extent to “think through the ways in which dominant frameworks of race, gender, and Hindu culture are re-interpreted” (Ibid.). Litterateurs have often critiqued Amar Chitra Katha’s “overarching Hindu framework” which is conducive to marginalizing other lesser predominate “cultural experiences” (Ibid.). There exists a “duality between textual analysis and readers’ reception” in the comic book culture which “echoes a persistent anxiety” about the convivial and entertaining role these comic compendiums have played (Ibid.). The diasporic audiences and diverse ethnology, coupled with “transnational production, further extends the use of culture as focal concept for addressing comics” (Ibid.). The digital media production, reception and mediation has made it more divergent and variant. The unprecedented engagement among readers, as well as producers, through blogs and fan sites attest to the calibration of the World Wide Web in facilitating this instantaneous circuitry and nexus. Comic book readers now “have an interesting array of roles: they review comics, engage with other fans and submit their own artworks and scripts” (Ibid.). Through their “acuity, analysis and immediacy” and “mediated by the internet, as part of fan network, readers publicly share their insights and are attuned to comic trends and its diverse history in India (Ibid.).  This makes these digital interfaces an essential “ethnographic site for studying India’s comic book culture” (Ibid.).

Comics literacy is vital to be able to understand and enjoy these graphic art forms. When the “traditional text literacy and visual literacy are combined” the amalgamated concoction is the “unique multimodal literacy of comics” (Carter, 2007: 27). The untrustworthy relationship between word and text in graphic novels has been and will inevitably continue to be in constant mutation and fluctuation. Conventionally, texts have increasingly gained “prominence and complexity in relation to images,” and graphic novels often “concretize this literary ambiguity” (Martin, 2011: 172). But, lately, the deliberate employment of the “absence of text to heighten graphic impact” has been made discernible especially through use of a full page (Ibid.). Graphic novels have never deferred from playing an effervescent role ever since their iconoclastic inception. But this iconoclasm does not cease to operate in thematic exposition, but also preoccupies itself with the nature of the art itself. Elucidating upon the agency of graphic novels², Roger Sabin has written:

... comics are a language: they combine to constitute a weave of writing and art which has its own syntax, grammar and conventions, and which can communicate ideas in a totally unique fashion. They point, for example, to the way in which words and images can be juxtaposed to generate a mood; to how the amount of time that is allowed to elapse between images can be used for dramatic effect; to the way that cinematic cutting can be used for extra movement; and to the fact that, ultimately, there is no limit to what a comic can do other than that imposed by a creator’s imagination (Sabin, 1996: 6–7).

The phenomenal growth of graphic novels attests to an “increasingly visual orientation due to the internet” and an “increasing interpenetration of popular culture and high culture” (Martin, 2011: 178). Because of its “increasing sophistication and stylistic innovation,” the graphic novel has refused to be treated with intellectual disdain and scholastic disregard (Ibid.). Peter Schjeldahl summarized the graphic novel’s cultural position succinctly and inimitably, even a bit reprobrately:

...it commonly indicates that an artistic breakthrough, having been made and recognized, is over, and that a process of increasingly strained emulation and diminishing returns has set in. . . But if the major discoveries of the graphic novel’s new world of the imagination have already been accomplished, its colonizing of the territory, like its threat to foot traffic in bookstore aisles, has only just begun (2005).

Now that the efficacy of graphic novels has been sufficiently corroborated, let us dwell on “the function and potential of images in explorations and deconstructions” that these narratives undertake (Tahneer, 96). Rik Hoskin’s graphic novel is a humanistic rendition bereft of godly halos along the lines of Shakespearean rational villains, i.e., Karna as an agent of political and moral chaos with no regenerative virtues and strong, uninhabited will, and intense hatred. The greatest in the pantheon of tragic heroes, Karna has always been heralded as a titan whose righteousness is not the will of God or Fate, but his own rationality and sense of identity. This sentiment was commensurate in Sivaji Savanta’s Mrityunjaya, the Death Conqueror: The Story of Karna (1989), Govinda Das’s Karna on Trial: A Scrutinizing Look at the Karna’s Values, Skills, Character and Purpose (2017), which claims to “cast away myriads of misconception about the enigmatic hero.” Even Kavita Kane, in Karna’s Wife (2012), could not resist to indulge in glorifying this stoic, destroyed by Providence hero. Here it is not only pre-destination but also man’s degeneracy is being revelled as rationality.  There is stubbornness in these narratives to ignore the consequences of reason gone awry. Though villains often demonstrate great intellectual and psychological depth, their sleazy rationality is extolled, blinding them to the dangers of deception and greed. The tragic hero often shows deficiency in some vital areas of human understanding which eventually brings forth their destruction and consequent salvation; it is the enormity of personal injuries they inflict which gives power to their villainy, much like Iago and Edmund. They are neither a diabolical instrument nor the emblem of divinity of man; Vyas still denies them the gambit of forgiveness and mercy which these graphic renditions are now bestowing.

The sequential art form of these graphic novels allows for “unique and often provocative ways of exploring the constructed binaries between the sacred and the profane, the religious and the secular, the faithful and the faithless” (Tahneer 96). The dynamism of the image is very much grounded in the ambience it exudes. And it is this very “maneuverability of the image,” and the frame of reference alongside the word, that makes comics a functional and a propitious medium for the “dissemination and the deconstruction” of such intrusive ideas and themes they exuberate. These graphic retellings of the Mahabharata are often presumed as translation or even restatements of the original text, “expanding on its source even while maintaining a certain loyalty to it” (Tahneer, 97). Andrew Tripp argues that such symbolic depictions of gods and demi-gods in comics allows for multiple and fluctuating “understandings of the divine” which further calibrate the status of the deity idols being invoked (Tripp, 2010: 117), thereby demonstrating how graphic narratives are worthy carriers to convey and transmit sacrosanct, religious beliefs while inviting readers to “question more conventional, iconographic images of the divine” (Tahneer 97). Any “pre-determined notions of whether these texts should be considered sacred or profane in the world of sequential art” have crumbled and find no mention in the “gospel of comics reading” (Ibid.).

Exposure to such ambivalent arcs, which makes the reader acquainted with the “greyness of morality and the temporal and interpersonal subjectivity of heroism,” fuel an urge to question the morality of heroes or, in this case, anti-heroes and not succumb to overzealous bigotry (Weston, 2015: 229). Graphic novels force readers to question the legitimacy of the righteousness and the moral downfalls of the hero’s actions and intentions, jeopardizing the concept of heroism. Though in fantasy, readers are acquainted with the “complexity of the moral decisions” as confronted by the protagonists, one is forced to indulge in an “appraisal of the scrupulousness of the actions of the exemplar. Belk commented on this tendency, saying,

“Heroes and villains [ ...] are social types by which we pass judgements on ourselves. They express cultural values by representing that which the society reveres as being admirable and desirable as well as that which the society fears and considers to be deviant” (Belk, 1989: 414).

It is quite presumptuous to assume that such superhero narratives frequently force idolatry of heroes, which they graphically idolize upon their readers, but, instead, preoccupy themselves with highlighting the moral dilemmas of taking justice into one’s own hands. In Karna’s predicament, it was seeking justice for oneself, a quest of redeeming oneself. Karna’s aggression or feelings of outrage and unjustness are his alone. Karna’s mythic social reality may prevail upon us to seek to undo the perceived social wrongs. But, the complex moral life led by our protagonist may find resonance but will find no sustained replication. Karna of  Amar Chitra Katha is vastly antithetic and disparate to Hoskin’s Karna.

Mahabharata in Hoskin’s narrative, has assumed a “generative role of the mythic imagination” (Curtis, 2019:  2). It may also be alleged that Mahabharata possesses what Umberto Eco³ called “hunger for redundance,” where it would rather stagnate as a frozen lore rather than succumb to temporal progression (Eco, 1972: 21).This is corroborated by   Lévi-Strauss’s maxim that myths are “machines for the suppression of time” (Lévi-Strauss, 1955: 45), for both banausic and chronological  continuity would alienate the superhero’s asperity from its historical context. Albert Doja, in contrapuntal analysis, shows that rather than suppressing the Lévi-Strauss’s historic view of myth, it must be allowed to dissipate by the explication that lies within the conundrum itself. He writes:

[...] myths generate the appearance of stability, an illusion of timelessness that cannot be affected by changes in the world, but they do so by means of their ceaseless transformations which, from the analyst’s point of view, mark their very historicity as objects[..]. myths are themselves historical products that carry[...]the traces of what they seek to erase, that is, their own former states. Therefore, if we accept that myths are operating to suppress time, we can look to the very myths themselves to tell us what historical events and processes they might be seeking to obliterate (Doja, 2008: 334).

If this be the case, then Mahabharata is merely picking up where it left off. Its resurrection as a confluence of impressions, suppositions, and deliberations has not robbed it of its convivial equilibrium. It may come across as a bit diffident but has not completely been expunged. It delicately comes about a set of fragile “meanings, values, purposes and goals generated by its stories that will respond to the things, forces and relations” that we come across. It is the “telling and retelling of stories that maintains the particular interpretation of things that we call our world” (Curtis, 2019: 6).

Fig. 2. Three different graphic renditions of Kunti abandoning Karna.⁴

In Fig. 2 the poignant episode of Kunti abandoning baby Karna has been rendered in Amar Chitra Katha, Vimanika Comics, and Rik Hoskin’s graphic novel, respectively. Whereas the Amar Chitra Katha and Rik Hoskin’s portraiture is focused on Kunti’s precarious predicament, only Vimanika Comics rendition convenes on Karna’s plight. It is only in this episode of renouncement of Karna by his mother wherein lies the beginning of abomination and humiliation that tormented him for life, and he spent a lifetime fighting against. Whereas the Amar Chitra Katha rendition acts as a foreboding of subsequent negation of Kunti to acknowledge Karna at the weapons trial competition (discussed later), Hoskin’s caricature is a presage to Karna’s glory and splendor. Only in Vimanika Comics’ depiction is the one acknowledging that an umbilical cord has been severed, motherhood has been sullied. Kunti’s pathetic visage as reflected in the waters of river Charmanavati and her open hands are an emblem of his desperateness and hopelessness. Baby Karna reaching out for his mother looks melancholic and sorrowful, his despondency only heightened by his naivety and innocence, in contrast to the blissfully unaware gleeful depiction in Amar Chitra Katha.

Both the artistic styles and narrative voices in Vimanika Comics and Rik Hoskin’s graphic novel exult Karna as a demigod, whose stature nurtured hardship and misfortune that plagued him throughout his life. The amalgamation of the mythology of a superhero and the folklore of Mahabharata has constituted a metamyth of Karna’s saga. This further substantiates the reclamation that Mahabharata is a “universal human heritage” (Claverie, 2019: 977). Roskin’s graphic rendition, while claiming a mythic status for Karna, also seeks his legitimization as a superhero, a paladin for the weak and the outcast. In a DC Marvel ushered superhero culture, where superheroes are correlated to mythological or folkloric characters and heroes from ancient Greek, ancient Roman, English, or Anglo-American narrative traditions, it is highly singular and extraordinary to see juxtapositions and analogies drawn with non-European or Orient figures. Hoskin’s visual narrative is brimming with the same literary elements as the traditional text from which it has been spawned. It satiates with “equal literary merit, and can be used to build background knowledge and foster intertextuality” (Carter, 2007: 22).

Fig. 3. A full page of illustrations depicting Karna’s reverence for his father, Lord Surya.

Hoskin’s novel falls back on an established edict of sequential art i.e., of a full page spanning image, which is extensive not only in its artistry but is also relevant to the plot and plays a vital role in connecting the image to the thought, which may or may not be connected to language. Whereas, in Hoskin’s narrative, there is reliance on melding between image and language to convey the sentiment, the Vimanika Comics rendition has a deliberate deficiency of text which allows the visual image to convey the predilection of affection. The image decimates and crumbles in the reader’s psyche and any text may seem like an aberration.

Similarly, Karna’s both gallantry and his loyalty to Duryodhana (Fig. 4 and Fig. 5) are granted full page illustrations which retains the temporal qualities of the ensuing narrative, but the “weight is tilted” towards the exulted illustration, because both its “connection to other panels and the narrative is left out of sight” momentarily (Cortsen, 2014: 398).

Fig. 4. Karna’s luminance is in stark contrast to the anarchy and chaos of war he is waging on behalf of Duryodhana. This is a dark indictment of his devotion to Duryodhana and a reprieve to his nobility and virtue.

Fig. 5. Though being subservient to Duryodhana, Karna’s dominion is undeniable.

The full page panel is a prolonged, protracted moment on which the illustrator wants the reader to linger. Amar Chitra Katha provided no such predilections. Such a full page serves as a “minuscule temporal stepping stone” that serves to help the reader along the real engagement with the narrative. The full page’s duration may be “ambiguous,” but it allows for a “sense of time that stretches somewhere between an instant and eternity” (Cortsen, 2014: 400). The gradual and fragmented posture of speech elucidates this further.

As with its sequential art predecessors, the graphic novel is a proposition of the combined forces of image and word. Images are not “illustrations that simply repeat or amplify text, but rather carry information” which is not revealed verbally by a character (Goldsmith, 2010: 4). Similarly, the verbal- textual content provides information omitted in the image, it is not to be appropriated as a caption. Similarly, there are pages in Roskin’s graphic novel that are designed to lure the reader’s eye immediately to the center, but there are pages of dissipated images that impede the same physiological pull. In both instances, “this refocusing of the typical reading path” carries a message related to the engagement with Karna’s narrative (Ibid. 5).

In Fig. 6, Karna’s derision at the hands of Guru to the Pandavas, Dronacharaya is intensified by the callous taunt of “peasant dog” and a disdainful reckoning of  “You shall never be a warrior!” Karna’s stature increasing diminishes in each successive panel, so much so, that in the last it is completely obliterated. Whereas in Fig. 7, Karna’s revivification is the exclusive focus, where he rebuts the ridicule melted out on him with his own rancor and angst. He introduces himself as a “peasant dog” that has come to redeem himself. The mockery that was meted out to him is inverted by his show of brilliant display of archery. The scorn and sneer that derided him ultimately makes his vindication more illustrious and magnificent. Such character enhancement is vastly attainable in graphic narratives.

Fig. 6. Karna’ s humiliation at the hands of Drona is a turning point, both in narrative, as well as in the protagonist’s life.

 

 

Fig. 7. Karna’s redemption comes with more virulence and anguish for the protagonist.

The acclaim the graphic novel has garnered does not rest on its visual appeal alone, but also, because its glossy images convey to “our gut in a way that mere text does not,” and hence has a “visceral pull” i.e., “the occlusion of aesthetic space” which  plays out in our gut (Goldsmith, 2010: 6). To state it coincidently “we feel what we see and we feel it personally” (Ibid.). The graphic literature allows the “distance between the verbal content and our inner sense of space” to collapse (Ibid.). The “personal space” a reader inhabits, as well as any preconceived conceptions he may have for the text (in this case, Mahabharata), disintegrates and shatters through the “virtue of what we see” (Ibid. 7).

Karna’s story, be it in Amar Chitra Katha or Hoskin’s graphic novel, closely pursues the traditional narrative of Ved Vyas. It does not delineate from the continuum of the epic. Rik Koskin’s graphic novel, like others in its genre, is a “format rather than a genre, a container rather than a type of plot” (Ibid. 8). Mahabharata as a vessel is all encompassing to various textures and patterns that it has spawned. The distinctive imagery, symbolism, and style of these graphic narratives are distinctive, but a protraction of what began centuries ago. Roland Barthes,⁵ a French aesthetics and semiology scholar, spent much of his mature academic life working in Japan, wrote extensively and imploringly on the uses of image in thought and communication, culture, and identity. The vision and imagination as sanctioned by Mahabharata are receptive access points between the reader and the graphic world,  one inextricably relying on the other in an eternal confabulation.

It is natural that the reader’s predilection for mythology and folklore makes him tendentious to such graphic narratives. Sachin Nagar’s artwork is more naturalized and uses bright, intense hues to add luminosity to Karna’s caricature. The Amar Chitra Katha renditions may appear subdued and subtle in comparison. Hoskin’s images have an ocular tension with its effervescent images. The blurred details lend a contrasting flatness. The coloring is not bounded,  enhancing dimensionality, denoting a dense edge and contouring (See Fig. 4 and Fig. 5).

Whereas, in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7, the white field provides a respite to the straining eye and allows the reader to focus on the characters and plot and not be dazed by the visual artistry. Both the simple images which invite a reader’s imagination to add the furnishing of minute detail, as well as the elaborated visuals that incorporate vast amounts of depiction of detail, create a myriad kaleidoscope that is encased in Hoskin’s graphic narrative. This dramatic culmination serves both an aesthetic and literal purpose. Mahabharata may be a self-contained chronicle, but it has transversed a long path before finally dwelling in Hoskin’s fable. It is agnate to Walter Benjamin’s famous discussion in The Storyteller, where he resounds that the storyteller clings to the story he tells in the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel. In the case of Mahabharata, these fingerprints are of Vyas, which are indelible in Hoskins’ narrative. The fusion of Mahabharata and graphics is not because of their synergy or their intertwined trajectory, but because they have traveled a beaten path, and weary of their long excursion, have found a common resting place. Their gregarious nature revealed to them that they were always meant to be together. Marco Arnaudo has ciphered the conjugality of Mahabharata and Graphics skillfully, stating,

“[They are] ...a collective narrative millions of pages long that has developed over several decades, and, as a result has taken a particular path, encountered particular challenges, and articulated certain responses in a way that has no parallel in any other form of modern narrative” (Arnaudo, 2013: 4).

 

Endnotes

1. Mahabharata, with its ideas, assumptions, and social constructions, is an artifact of socially-mediated discourse. Its knowledge and dialogues are inherently dependent upon communities of shared intelligibility and vice versa. They are governed by normative rules that are historically and culturally situated. As a result, it never claimed that the “behaviors,” “events,” or “entities” which it occupies are largely circumscribed by culture, history, and social context. Therefore, a social constructionist perspective, as opposed to a constructivist perspective, will always locate its meaning in an understanding of how ideas and attitudes are developed over time, within a distinctive social, community context. Mahabharata has evolved in the space between people, in the realm of the natural world where it dances the common dance on a colloquial tune.

2. For a concise and authoritative history of the comic genre, see Roger Sabin’s Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels, especially the introduction (“Not Quite Art”) and chapters 1 (“The Pioneers”) and 7 (“A New Mainstream”). See also, Danny Fingeroth’s The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels, Chapters 1 and 2, and Stephen Weiner’s Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel, Chapters 1–7.

3. Ian Gordon,  in Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon (2017), makes the important point that Eco “reduces both history and time to the singular” (16), ignoring both other forms of narrative time and the complex relationship between Superman in the comics and his other manifestations in newspaper strips, animated cartoons, and the radio and TV series. Again, it is important to challenge Eco here, who claimed that the temporal structure of Superman comics limited him to small and isolated acts of virtue, when the first 12 Superman stories in Action Comics clearly connect to form a clear demand for programmatic reform.

4. Roskin’s graphic novel was accessed in a cbr format at https://getcomics.info/other-comics/karna-victory-in-death-2017/. The paper includes relevant screenshots of the same.

5. Roland Barthes did not implicitly address comics, but observations, queries, and meditations; however, he does infer on the connections among narrative, image (especially photographic ones), and cultural expectation in Empire of Signs (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983) and Image Music Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978).

 

References

Arnaudo, Marco. 2013. The Myth of the Superhero (J. Richards, Trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Arora, Karan Vir. 2013. The Sixth: The Legend of Karan (Issues 1–6). Chandigarh: Vimanika Comics.

Barthes, Roland. 1982. Empire of Signs. New York, NY: Hill and Wang.

Barthes, Roland and S. Heath. 2009. Image, Music, Text. New York, NY: Hill and Wang.

Belk, Russell. W. 1989. “Effects of Identification with Comic Book Heroes and Villains on Materialism among Former Comic Book Readers.” Advances in Consumer Research. (16: 414–419).

Benjamin, Walter. 1968. “The Storyteller.” In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt. H. Zohn, Trans.) New York: Harcourt, 83–109.

Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday.

Burr, Vivien. 1995. An Introduction to Social Constructionism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Carter, James Bucky. 2007. “Introduction -- Carving a Niche: Graphic Novels in the English Language Arts Classroom.” In Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel, edited by J. B. Carter, pp. 1–25. National Council of Teachers of English.

Chandrakant, Kamala. 1972. Karna: Brave, Generous, Ill-fated Prince. Mumbai: Amar Chitra Katha.

Claverie, Elisabeth. 2019. “Folklore, Fakelore, Scholars, and Shills: Superheroes as Myth.” Journal of Popular Culture. 52(5: 976–998).

Cortsen, Rikke Platz. 2014. “Full-page Insight: The Apocalyptic Moment in Comics Written by Alan Moore.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 5(4:397–410). (https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2014.913647)

Curtis, Neal. 2019. Superheroes and the Mythic Imagination: Order, Agency, and Politics. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. (https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2019.1690015)

DeMott, Rick. 2004. “Spiritualist Chopra and Director Kapur Form Comic Book Company. Animation World Network. (http://www.awn.com/news/business/spiritualist-chopra-director-kapur-formcomicbook-company)

Doja, Albert. 2008. “Claude Lévi-Strauss at His Centennial: Toward a Future Anthropology.” Theory, Culture & Society. 25(7–8: 321–340). (https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276408097810)

Eco, Umberto. 1972. “The Myth of Superman.” Diacritics. 2(1: 14–22). (https://doi.org/10.2307/464920)

Fingeroth, Dan. 2008. The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels. Rough Guide Book.

Gergen, Kenneth J. 1985. “The Social Constructionist Movement in Modern Social Psychology.” American Psychologist. 40(3: 266–275). (https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.40.3.266)

Goldsmith, Francisca. 2010. “What’s Special About Graphic Novels: A Background for Readers’ Advisors.” In The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Graphic Novels, edited by F. Goldsmith and R. Klein. American Library Association.

Gordon, Ian. 2017. Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Hoskin, Rik and Sachin Nagar. 2017. Karna: Victory in Death. Campfire.

Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press.

Jørgensen, Marianne and Louise Phillips. 2002. Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Khanduri, Rita G. 2010. “Comicology: Comic Books as Culture in India.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 1(2: 171–191). (https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2010.528641)

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1955. “The Structural Study of Myth.” Journal of American Folklore. 68(270: 428–444). (https://doi.org/10.2307/536768)

Lin, Nan. 2005. A Network Theory of Social Capital. In The Handbook of Social Capital, edited by D. Castiglione, J. van Deth, and G. Wolleb, pp. 28–51. New York: Oxford University Press.

Martin, Elaine. 2011. “Graphic Novels or Novel Graphics? The Evolution of An Iconoclastic Genre.” The Comparatist. 35(170–181).

McAllister, Matthew P. 1990. “Cultural Argument and Organizational Constraint in the Comic Book Industry.” Journal of Communication. 40 (1:55–71). (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1990.tb02251.x)

Nicholson, Joanne A. 2008. “Calling Dick Tracy! Or, Cellphone Use, Progress, and a Racial Paradigm.” Canadian Journal of Communication. 33(3: 379–404). (https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2008v33n3a2062)

Oksman, Taneli. 2011. Review of Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 2(1: 96–98). (https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2011.578421)

Rubenstein, Anne. 1998. Bad Language, Naked Ladies, and Other Threats to the Nation: A Political History of Comic Books in Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Sabin, Roger. 1996. Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels. London: Phaidon Press.

Schjeldahl, Peter. 2005. “Words and Pictures: Graphic Novels Come of Age.” The New Yorker. Oct. 10: 162–168.

Schulte, William and Frederick S. Nathaniel. 2019. Black Panther and Black Agency: Constructing Cultural Nationalism in Comic Books Featuring Black Panther.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. (https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2019.1569081)

Syma, Carrye. 2010. “Review of Graphic Novels and Multimodal Literacy: A Reader Response Study.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 1(2: 227–228). (https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2010.526378)

Tripp, Andrew. 2010. “Killing the Graven God: Visual Representations of the Divine in Comics.” In Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels, edited by A. David Lewis and C. Hoff Kraemer, pp. 107–120. London: Continuum.

Weston, Gavin. 2013. Superheroes and Comic-book Vigilantes Versus Real-Life Vigilantes: An Anthropological Answer to the Kick-Ass Paradox. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 4(2: 223–234). (https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2012.682624)

 

Rashmi Sharma is an assistant professor in English at University Institute of Liberal Arts and Humanities, Chandigarh University, Mohali, Panjab, India. She completed her Ph.D. on the “Multimodality of Graphic Representations of Mahabharata” and its multivalent iconographic dialogue. Her area of research includes digital mythology, comics and graphic novels, and other new media interfaces, especially in the context and contour of Indian mythology.

 Editor's note - this essay was accepted for IJOCA 27-2, and edited by John A. Lent (JAL) and Mu Lin.