When I was a girl just beginning to read books in English as I went to an elite English Medium school, television was absent and Internet, the cell phone and OTT were dreams we did not have any idea of, our father banned comics from our home.
“No comics,” he said in his stern voice which was otherwise very gentle and we, very obedient kids, gave back the comic books we had borrowed from school friends who had more lenient fathers. I would steal envious glances at my classmates who pored through comics hidden under their long exercise books but it never occurred to me to cross the forbidden red line.
Once, when my father was in a lenient mood, I asked him what was wrong with reading comics. “Your English will be completely destroyed,” he said, adding that it stripped the reader of his/her imagination which he/she gets from written stories and grew up with a major portion of their imaginative gifts destroyed beyond repair through bad illustrations and terrible dialogue balloons to show what the characters are saying.
Years later, when I was allowed to choose my own reading, I literally binged on Richie Rich and Archie Comics though I really found them quite childish and simplistic. The Phantom series I could not make much of.
Now, more than five decades later, I find my graphic artist friend Pinaki De inviting me to an exhibition of comics in Kolkata in from 8th November 2025 to Sunday, 7th December 2025 at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture alongwith his collaborator and friend Sujaan Mukherjee who is also the Senior Curator at the Birla Academy of Art & Culture.
The exhibition brings together some of the most exciting and well-known comic creators from India and abroad, to focus on the aspect of craft. It will feature originals, prints, installations as well as drafts and sketches.
Says PInaki, “Comics have been regarded for a long time as a somewhat frivolous form. In India and elsewhere, particularly when we think of post-millennial comics, we see an explosion in terms of themes, visual styles, and techniques. We wanted the exhibition to reflect that excitement—to both take stock of all that has been going on, and to imagine ways to carry it forward.”
He has a solid command over every form of fine art so what he says has to be taken seriously. He is a graphic designer-illustrator who regularly works for renowned publishers across the globe. He is the winner of the PublishingNext Prize in 2017 and 2019. He won the prestigious Oxford Bookstore Bookcover Prize in 2017 and finished runner-up in 2021.
His Ph.D. is in comics theory. Pinaki is one of the editors of the prestigious comics’ anthology ‘Longform’, published by HarperCollins in 2018, and Penguin in 2022 and 2025, respectively. He is also the Indian comics advisor of Mangasia, the biggest-ever exhibition on Asian Comics curated by Paul Gravett for the Barbican, London.
Sujaan Mukherjee completed his PhD as a SYLFF fellow at Jadavpur University and his postdoc at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, as an Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellow. A two-time India Foundation for the Arts grantee, he has published on a range of subjects, including the visual arts, across popular platforms and academic journals and books.
We have moved far away from the Richie Riches and Archies of the world. These comic characters have now got a new life through animated channels of stories. Comics are regarded as an art, a craft, a science, a cultural text and of course a unique kind of literature. In his paper, Comics: An Artifact of Popular Culture, (Shodha Prabha (UGC CARE Journal) Vol. 48, Issue 01, No.4 : 2023) Taiyab Kapasi writes:
Comics have always been an integral part of popular culture. They function as popularculture’s artifacts. Through its multimodal medium and sequential art, it communicates,engages people, and tells interesting stories. They have become part of our daily life asthey are widely published and available in various forms such as newspapers,magazines, graphic novels, and online platforms, etc. Many comics have also been adapted into movies, web series, video games, etc., which confirms their relevance,significance, and popularity. Comics have played a significant role in challenging societal norms, promoting social justice, providing representation for marginalized communities, and offering a unique perspective on the world. shapes popular culture, contributing to our understanding of society and its complexities.
In the curatorial note, the organizers state: “Comic artists in India, and elsewhere, have pushed the boundaries of this dynamic form to engage with narratives of all shapes and sizes. But it’s not just about the narratives, is it? There is significant rigour in creating images that enchant us through their play of scale and perspective, the choice of colour or its refusal, the boldness or the vulnerability of the line. Then there is the handling of time—the search for an inner rhythm between word and image.” The note goes on to add: “Comic art today transcends the printed page to embrace public spaces, as well as digital media. Without making any encyclopaedic claim, this exhibition opts for a specific focus to delve into the nuances of the craft. We are extremely grateful to all the participating artists, without whose vision, time and effort, this exhibition would not have been possible—and to the team who made it happen.”
“For several decades, the Birla Academy of Art & Culture has been a vibrant space for varied artistic practices. ‘The Craft of Comics’ is a step in a new direction for us but, at the same time, it is an exhibition that is deeply aware of the much-loved, living traditions of visual story-telling that have existed in the sub-continent for centuries,” said Sujaan Mukherjee.
Among the artists featured in the exhibition were – “Amruta Patil, Appupen, Argha Manna, Chitra Ganesh, Ikroop Sandhu, Ita Mehrotra, Joshy Benedict, Orijit Sen, Priya Kuriyan, Sankha Banerjee, Sarbajit Sen, Sarnath Banerjee and Vishwajyoti Ghosh.
The Atlas - comic by Chitra Ganesh at the exhibition