ABSTRACT
From his southern production house in the French colony of Pondicherry, Chinnaswami Subramania Bharati's cartoons banked on narratives from Hindu mythology that came with a vociferous critique of British colonial rule to the point of demanding political freedom. Formerly with Amar Chitra Katha, cartoonist Pran was prominent among those who helped break the monopoly of syndicated adventure comics from the west. Indian characters and plots in early adventure comic books were tamed to suit a more reserved temperament, favouring the use of intelligence to conquer threats, and only depicting 'sanctioned violence' as in battles retold from history, myth and legend. New vernacular publishing houses had set up in the 1980s to first produce what came to be called 'pocket novels' – that is, books around 6 by 4 inches in size, cheap to produce and small enough to be inserted into the pocket.
