ABSTRACT
It is often cited that India has the world's largest population aged 10–24, and that since the 1990s in particular, it has had a thriving youth culture. An extensive focus on the features of Indian or desi superheroism is well overdue. Basing her work on Amar Chitra Katha, Karline McLain expands the list to six characteristics for the new-age superheroes, maintaining that they hold true for the Indian case with minor additions or substitutions as the case might be. While comic books are a definitively modern form of communication reflecting global trends in graphics, aspects of modular modernity exist only as hints and hybrid transformations within their pages and among their creators and readers. Fieldwork for the book was conducted from 2010 until the present day in annual bouts of month-long fieldwork with producers, distributors and readers, with an earlier period of research that goes back to a year in 2006. The chapter also presents an overview of this book.
