How to create a successful Indian comics publishing scene.ByBharath Murthy

November, 2009.

This essay is a presentation of my views on the comics medium in India, and my solution for thegrowth of the form. These ideas are the result of the last few years spent trying to understand themedium. My background is in painting, (I studied painting in college) and I want to create as well as publish comics successfully to the end of my life. These views come from this commitment to theform. I also studied film making, and strangely enough, I had an opportunity to make a feature lengthdocumentary film in Japan about its vast self-published comics (doujinshi) culture. I learnt about themanga industry and found out why it is the the most successful comics industry in the world. I metmany manga authors, publishers, printers, readers and realized how little westerners and Asians like usknow about Japanese manga. Before making this film, I also sniffed around a little bit into the Indiancomics scene, having received a grant from the India Foundation for the Arts, Bengaluru, to studyIndian comics. I wrote a 5000 word essay about Indian comics which is to be published in Margmagazine. While doing this, I started a discussion forum on the Internet called Comix DiscussionBoard of iNDIA (CDBi)http://www.comixindia.com/cdbi .What follows is a 'fact finding report', and the 'recommendations' of this report on how we can have fun, make money and generally enjoycreating and consuming comics in India.

Why black & white is better than colour for comics printing:

Colour printing began during the late 19

century, but picked up only by the 1930s. Colour comic strips appeared in American Sunday supplements pretty much the same time as comic stripsthemselves. The newspaper form gave birth to the modern comic strip as we know it. By the 1930s, 32 page comic books appeared in American news stands in 4-colour printing. This is the format of American comic book that continues to this day.From the websitehttp://www.dereksantos.com/comicpage/pregold.html:

In 1933, after seeing the Ledger syndicate publish a small amount of their Sunday comics on 7 by 9 inch plates, an idea hit upon two printer employees. Sales manager Harry L. Wildenberg and saleman Max. C.Gaines, employees of Eastern Color Printing Company in New York,saw the plates and figured two of these plates could fit on a tabloid pageand produce a 7 1/2 by 10 inch book when folded. Gathering 32 pagesof newspaper reprints including Mutt and Jeff, Joe Palooka, and Reg'lar Fellas, they created Funnies on Parade. This was the first comicproduced in a format similiar to modern comics. Looking to test their product, they published 10,000 copies to be given out as premiums byProctor and Gamble.Impressed by this success, Gaines convinced Eastern Color that hecould sell thousands of these to big advertisers like Kinney Shoe Stores,Canada Dry, and Wheatena to be used as premiums and radiogiveaways. Because of this, Eastern followed by printing FamousFunnies: A Carnival of Comics and later Century of Comics, bothcontaining Sunday newspaper reprints. M. C. Gaines was able to sellthese in quantities of 100,000 to 250,000 copies. Century of Comicswas the 2nd comic book and the first 100 page comic.

One fact is significant here. The first comic books were reprints of Sunday strips that firstappeared in the low quality newspaper format, where they met with initial success. The first monthlycomic magazines were anthologies and appeared in 1934. They all had 4-colour printing. In 1935, National Allied Publications, later renamed DC Comics, was the first publisher to print originalmaterial in the 32 page monthly comic format. It was in this format that superhero characters came to be in 1938, beginning with Superman. From then, till now, 2009, 71 years later, the format has been thesame. 4-colour printing has become synonymous with superheroes and with the comic book formitself.In India, colour printing got associated with comics by following the American example. It gaverise to the notion that comics MUST BE in colour, and the idea that Indian comic readers will not buycomics unless they are in colour. These notions are common among Indian comics publishers.However, we've had our fair share of successful b&w comics and 2-colour comics (way cheaper thanfull 4-colour printing). For example, Mayukh Choudhury, Narayan Debnath, Toms from Kottayam,Diamond comics magazine (all Pran comics in b&w), the comics in the now extinct 'Target' magazine,and countless other short comics in magazines.The model for comics production in India is the American DC/Marvel Comics model. Thisinvolves an assembly line setup, with employees working on a monthly salary or per project. In other words, a factory. This style of production is suited for large volumes. Artists are paid average salaries(unless their reputations precede them) and monthly colour comics are produced for news stands. Butcolour poses a problem here. If high quality colour comics are to be produced, the cost shoots up toomuch. Colouring takes the longest time to do in the production process. As a result, the narratives haveto be short, so that they can be coloured on time. 32 pages a month, at high quality, is a very toughtarget to achieve. At low quality, it is easier, but doing colour and doing low quality is not such a greatidea.

Price Comparison of comics:Comic no. of pagesPriceinRs.Qualityof colorprinting

Raj Comics (India)9640lowTinkle Double Digest(India)9475low-mediumVirgin Comics (India)3230highOne volume of 'Sandman'(DC Comics, America)258782highTintin comic (Europe)62380very high

One volume of 'Buddha' (Black &White comic, Japan)429295-n.a.-

From this simple comparison, it is clear that colour comics are expensive to produce and buy, andthe higher the production quality, the lesser the number of pages offered, restricting narrative length.The best value for money is provided by the lowest quality colour printing, and full black & white printing.2

What about European style colour comic 'albums'? They are the luxury goods of the comicsmedium, much like other over priced European luxury items. The most expensive comics are Europeanones. A 62 page Tintin album costs Rs.380 on the ACK website. Too expensive even for me. Theinteresting thing about Tintin is that the initial few stories was first produced in b&w and serialized in a b&w comic magazine. Only later was it collected, redrawn, coloured, and released as a book. Even thedirect-to-colour albums were serialized as pages in magazines. Ananda Bazaar Patrika has released afew Tintin style albums, a 38 page full colour book costing Rs.40. Recently, Puffin has published a fewcolour comics first serialized in newspaper supplements, a 48 page album costing Rs. 99. Comicsalready have a restricted audience, and further restrictions due to high cost is sure to kill the medium.The high cost of European comic albums has ensured that so much of their great comics remainunavailable in the English language. In England, however, there has been a b&w cheap comicmagazine tradition, and one will recall that Alan Moore's 'V for Vendetta' for example, was first published in a b&w comic magazine, and so was 'From Hell'.So, we've covered Europe and America, and seen that colour comics dominate and are expensive products, thereby restricting audiences and also narrative length, eventually stifling the medium. Whatremains to be studied is Japanese comics, called 'manga'. Japan happens to be the world's largestcomics producer and consumer. It seems that they draw comics as effortlessly as the rest of the worldwrites text. What is the secret of the stupendous, unimaginable success of manga? Is there a lesson in itfor us Indian comics creators and publishers?

The secret of the success of Japanese manga:

When I went to Japan to make a film about self-published Japanese comics sub-culture, (whichis larger than the commercial American comic market), I realised how little Indians like us know aboutmanga. First of all, manga is not a particular style of drawing faces and figures. The big-eyed faces popularized as 'manga style' is only one among a whole spectrum of styles, from hyper-realism toextreme abstraction. MANGA is simply a general term for 'Japanese Comics.' Manga narratives cover every possible genre that exists on planet earth in both fiction and non-fiction, and they have created avery unique genre that exists only in manga called 'Yaoi' or 'Boys Love.' Wiki it for more info. Andcontrary to notions, there are quite a few manga which are printed in full colour. However, most mangaare black & white. Part of the reason manga is so misunderstood is because most manga remainsuntranslated. What we read in English is the tip of the iceberg. But another reason we misunderstandmanga is because we have a preconceived idea of what comics are and what they can do.The secret of Japanese manga is their method of production, and its got nothing to do with thequality of the content. The quality of content, as we shall see, is automatically ensured by healthycompetition that emerges from their method of production. The entire most successful comics industryin the world rests squarely on

CHEAP B&W MAGAZINES

produced week after week. The high-end'books' that appear in Indian bookshops are only reprints of the most successful stories from the mangamagazines. Virtually ALL manga stories first appear in the manga magazines. And you have to seethem to believe the kind of low quality product they are. Hardly any ink is used! Its worse than photocopy resolution! And that's what most people read and enjoy. The well-printed book manga is asort of bonus for the author who has proved successful in the magazine form. I still don't know how the publishers get their feedback on popularity, but fan letters and self-published comics featuringcharacters from mainstream commercial manga are two of them. Surveys are also done, but I don'tknow details about that.Because of the magazine form, because its b&w, and because its printed cheaply, comics areaffordable by everyone. Even a high-end 'artistic', 'serious', 'intellectual' 'literary', 'graphic novelesque'3