India's Immortal Comic Books Gods, Kings, and Other Heroes [Paperback]

Combining entertainment and education, India's most beloved comic book series, Amar Chitra Katha, or Immortal Picture Stories, is also an important cultural institution that has helped define, for several generations of readers, what it means to be Hindu and Indian. Karline McLain worked in the ACK production offices and had many conversations with Anant Pai, founder and publisher, and with artists, writers, and readers about why the comics are so popular and what messages they convey. In this intriguing study, she explores the making of the comic books and the kinds of editorial and ideological choices that go into their production.

McLain (religion, Bucknell Univ.) did exhaustive research on this topic, and here she captures the essence of India's most popular comic book series, 'Amar Chitra Katha,' known for its entertaining and educational renditions of Indian history, religion, and mythology. . . . This study is welcome both for the author's care with her subject and for its affirmation that the comics can be an important mediumin this case, one that helped define Hinduism and Indianness to younger generations of Indians. . . . Recommended.January 2010

Acknowledgments
Notes on Style

Introduction: Comic Books that Radiate a Spiritual Force
1. The Father of Indian Comic Books
2. Long-Suffering Wives and Self-Sacrificing Queens
3. Accurately Sequencing Goddess Durga's Mythology
4. The Warrior-King Shivaji in History and Mythology
5. Muslims as Secular Heroes and Zealous Villains
6. Mahatma Gandhi as a Comic Book Hero
Conclusion. The Global Legacy of Amar Chitra Katha

Notes
Bibliography
Index

What McLain repeatedly heard from ACK [Amar Chitra Katha] readers is that the comic books seemed to almost radiate a spiritual force. In many households, other comics were seen as a waste of time and discarded, but ACK was preserved carefully. Grandmothers covered them with those brown wrappers used to cover school textbolӓ