From ancient myths to ‘Indo-manga’: Artists in the Global South are reframing the comic

(Press-News.org) Since their so-called “Golden Age” in the 1940s, comics have often been treated as a universal visual language: stories told in panels and speech bubbles that function much the same wherever they appear.

Now, a new volume of comics studies is challenging that assumption. Comics and the Global South brings together work from Latin America, Africa, Asia and beyond to argue that comics from these regions need to be read on their own cultural terms. Doing so, the book suggests, will unsettle long-held Western assumptions about what comics are, and who they are for.

The book, which will be available for free online, includes case studies from India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Kenya, Māori communities in New Zealand, and Somali refugee camps, among others. Rather than just documenting diversity, it shows how comics across the Global South have been used to resist oppression, recover “lost” histories, and assert the identities of marginalised groups.

Co-editor Dr Joe Sutliff Sanders, a comics specialist at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, said: “Comics have a much more varied cultural history than we tend to think, partly because we keep measuring them against a very narrow Anglo-European idea of what they are.”

“I grew up with Western comics that I absolutely love – but if we can only imagine comics in the terms of what a handful of big publishers tell us they should be, the artform will atrophy. Comics don’t have to be the things you buy in comic shops in London or New York. They can be something different.”

Comics and the Global South grew out of a 2022 Cambridge conference which explored the countercultures the art celebrates. It was co-edited by Sanders, Dr Dibyadyuti Roy (University of Leeds) and Dr Andrea Aramburú (University of Manchester). “The three of us found that we had common ground in our shared approach to comics as sites for understanding visual storytelling across diverse social and political contexts,” Roy said.

Sanders has described comics as “the artform of people that are generally heard from less”. Because they are cheap to produce, easy to circulate, and popular with people who do not necessarily read other books, comics have a long tradition of being used to challenge power and channel the cultural expression of poor and minoritised communities.

Each chapter in the book focuses on a particular region or tradition of comics production, while also advancing a specific interpretative approach.

Brazilian scholar Leticia Simoes, for example, uses a malunga methodology to examine comics by women in South America. The term malunga originally described the bonds formed between people forced together on slave ships. Simoes adapts it to examine how shared experiences of trauma, racism and displacement can generate solidarity among marginalised groups of women, which they then express through comics.

Her analysis includes the work of Brazilian artist Marilia Marz, whose disjointed, collage-like images reflect how Black women in Brazil often piece together their identities from fragmented moments; and Chilean cartoonist Amanda Baeza, whose comics imagine alternative worlds in which female characters escape cycles of abuse. Simoes calls these practices escrevivência, or “write-existing”: storytelling that asserts women’s needs and identities through a shared cultural language.

Other chapters show how comics creators tap into local traditions. In eastern India, artists are adapting Patachitra – a centuries-old form of scroll painting – into new kinds of visual storytelling. In New Zealand, Māori creators are reworking pūrākau – traditional creation narratives – into comic and picture-book hybrids that reimagine these legends in modern form.

A distinctive case is the emergence of “Indo-manga”: comics by Indian artists who use the conventions of Japanese manga to speak to local audiences and concerns. Examples include Yakshi by Parvaty Menon, which follows the adventures of a bored Gen Z demoness who is perpetually glued to her smartphone; and the Nirvana series by Abhiray and Abiresh, which retells ancient tales as a modern action comic, but incorporates subtle nods to the everyday experiences of Indian youth.

The book also shows how comics have been used practically to empower marginalised communities. In Kenya’s vast Dadaab refugee camp, where Somali refugees have been living indefinitely since the 1990s, comics have been part of a drive to lower unusually high maternal and neonatal death rates.

The issue was found to be linked to a ban on traditional “birthing attendants”, who play a crucial cultural role during and after childbirth. In a study reported in the book, women collaborated on comics depicting their experiences and the work of these attendants. The comics are now being developed as training resources for midwives and humanitarian workers, encouraging maternity care that respects local knowledge.

The book’s editors hope to encourage a new wave of scholarship on comics in the Global South. “There is already a lot of passionate, intelligent critical engagement with these comics, but much of it has been waiting to enter the global conversation,” Aramburú said.

Sanders added: “Of course I’d like everyone who loves comics to read this, but I really hope readers, students and fans in the Global South to use it. Hopefully it will deepen their enjoyment of the art, and at the same time encourage them to challenge some of the assumptions that still dominate comics culture in the West.”

Comics and the Global South is published by Leuven University Press. The digital edition will be free to read online.

END