Comic Gags and the Mahabharata War. (July 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chatterji, Roma
• Is Part Of: Society and culture in South Asia. Volume 1:Number 2(2015:Jul.)
• Page Start: 127
• Page End: 146
• Publication Date: 2015-07
• Subjects: Mahabharata -- comics -- narrative universe -- manga -- storytelling; Sociology -- South Asia -- Periodicals; Ethnology -- South Asia -- Periodicals; South Asia -- Social life and customs -- Periodicals; South Asia -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; 301.095405
• DOI: 10.1177/2393861715583788
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2393-8617

Abstract

Taking the view that the Mahabharata is a narrative universe rather than just a text, this article explores a new comics experiment that creatively inserts a story within that universe. Using a modified manga style of comics storytelling Shohei Emura and Vidyun Sabhaney provide an alternate telling to the Great Mahabharata War using the canonical tropes and technical devices such as panel size, page layout, word–image relationship and so on that are made possible by the comics style of storytelling. A focus on genre and structural form enables an entry into the sensibility of the great epic, its problematisation of conventional codes in a way that is true to the comics genre of slapstick humour and critical inquiry.