Success, Publishing & Indian Comics
Bharath Murthy This piece is a presentation of my views on the comics medium in India, and some of my ideas for the growth of the form. These ideas are the result of the last few years spent trying to understand the medium. 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 the form. I also studied film making, and strangely enough, I had an opportunity to make a feature length documentary film in Japan about its vast self-published comics (doujinshi) culture. I learnt about the manga industry and found out why it is the the most successful comics industry in the world. I met many manga authors, publishers, printers, readers and realized how little westerners and Asians like us know about Japanese manga. Before making this film, I also sniffed around a little bit into the Indian comics scene, having received a grant from the India Foundation for the Arts, Bengaluru, to study Indian comics. I wrote a 5000 word essay about Indian comics which was published in Marg magazine in 2009. The same year, I also started an independent comics magazine called COMIX.INDIA (www.comixindia.com). What follows is a ‘fact finding report’, and the ‘recommendations’ of this report on how we can have fun, make money and generally enjoy creating and consuming comics in India. Why black & white is better than colour for comics printing: Colour printing began during the late 19th century, but picked up only by the 1930s. Colour comic strips appeared in American Sunday supplements pretty much the same time as comic strips themselves. 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 website http://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 page and produce a 7 1/2 by 10 inch book when folded. Gathering 32 pages of newspaper reprints including Mutt and Jeff, Joe Palooka, and Reg’lar Fellas, they created Funnies on Parade. This was the first comic produced in a format similiar to modern comics. Looking to test their product, they published 10,000 copies to be given out as premiums by Proctor and Gamble. Impressed by this success, Gaines convinced Eastern Color that he could sell thousands of these to big advertisers like Kinney Shoe Stores, Canada Dry, and Wheatena to be used as premiums and radio giveaways. Because of this, Eastern followed by printing Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics and later Century of Comics, both containing Sunday newspaper reprints. M. C. Gaines was able to sell these in quantities of 100,000 to 250,000 copies. Century of Comics was 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 first appeared in the low quality newspaper format, where they met with initial success. The first monthly comic 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 original material 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 the same. 4-colour printing has become synonymous with superheroes and with the comic book form itself. In India, colour printing got associated with comics by following the American example. It gave rise to the notion that comics MUST BE in colour, and the idea that Indian comic readers will not buy comics 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 than full 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. This involves 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. But colour poses a problem here. If high quality colour comics are to be produced, the cost shoots up too much. Colouring takes the longest time to do in the production process. As a result, the narratives have to be short, so that they can be coloured on time. 32 pages a month, at high quality, is a very tough target to achieve. At low quality, it is easier, but doing colour and doing low quality is not such a great idea. Price Comparison of comics: Comic no. of pages Price in Rs. Quality of color printing Raj Comics (India) 96 40 low Tinkle Double Digest (India) 94 75 low-medium Virgin Comics (India) 32 30 high One volume of ‘Sandman'(DC Comics, America) 258 782 high Tintin comic (Europe) 62 380 very high One volume of ‘Buddha'(Black &White comic, Japan) 429 295 -n.a.- From this simple comparison, it is clear that colour comics are expensive to produce and buy, and the higher the production quality, the lesser the number of pages offered, restricting narrative length. The best value for money is provided by