ABSTRACT
A police inspector is shot dead by a horde of gangsters whilst his son, Vinay, who went out to help him, loses consciousness in front of a sacred statue of Shankar after himself being struck by a bullet. The creation of Parmanu is in vein of a long run of super-heroes who through the use or misuse of atomic powers find themselves attributed with extraordinary abilities. The temptation is to continue to analyse these comics with comparative reference to western comics such as those of Superman, Batman and Spider-man, but in doing so, a hierarchical ontology of original and copy, identity and imitation, creation and corruption is implicated. Eurocentric legacies impel the development of discursive approaches which enable an appreciation of post-colonial cultural productions without seeing them as shadows of a master print. Indian adventure comics have met with little scholarly theorisation, which is in marked contrast to the plentiful attention meted to the comic book series Amar Chitra Katha.
