The long and short of it

“Imagine the food cycle prior to the Industrial Revolution… Now we eat package design, but eat shit!” A comment such as this in Longform: An Anthology of Graphic Narratives, Volume 1 reminds us that comics can be a wonderfully irreverent medium. The anthology, edited by Sarbajit Sen, Debkumar Mitra, Sekhar Mukherjee and Pinaki De, offers a varied collection of comics — both in terms of style and content — and is thematically open. And, of course, often irreverent.

It also has interviews with, and notes on artists such as Satyajit Ray, Stephane Barroux and Christophe Badoux, which give the book a comforting magazine-like feel and lead the reader to discover new as well as established storytellers differently. A valuable aspect of this anthology is the wide variety of countries, cultures and contexts it holds within it — India, Bhutan, South Korea, France and Iran. Few independent collections published in India have endeavoured to invite comics from so many places for one publication, and that is a commendable vision.

The contributors are a mix of artists with a strong grip on their medium and beginners taking tentative steps towards it. This volume of fictional comics adds a few fresh voices to the work happening today.

Illustrator and animator Upamanyu Bhattacharya’s The Delta is perhaps one of the most cinematically charged pieces in the book, with superb illustrations to boot. It tells the story of a boy who lives on an island where a corporation is trying to build a special economic zone, despite resistance from the indigenous people there. The story is both about the boy’s fate and how the powerful manipulate events and accounts of history to get what they want. Bhattacharya executes this story with a rare combination of detailed illustration and graceful graphic storytelling. There is one exceptional page of a storm (see image) in which he has, with great success, balanced several techniques all at once — splitting the page to convey opposing characters, allowing the reader to complete an image in their head, characters popping out of a panel to convey the intensity of their feelings and an inversion of colours to communicate a quiet, silent moment.

Animator Mukherjee’s The Magical Kitchen of Maria Alfonso Caramelo Lobo is dramatically different in terms of style, but equally captivating. It tells the story of Auntie Maria who is, in the words of the author, “a food fairy whose mission was to serve all the migratory birds in Ahmedabad… from her tiny magical kitchen La Bella”. It talks of her journey from Goa and her fight against the moral police to become a Freedom/Humanist Chef — a unique role that she is trained for by her twin uncles, who mix lessons about human rights, secularism and history into their recipes. It is told with a touch of magic realism,with elements such as flying pigs, design schools imagined as UFOs, and a climactic showdown between Maria — clad in an armour of cutlery — and the regressive food mafia.

These come together to tell a story that one can relate to in our dark times, but also one whose main character gives us hope.

Nikhil Chaudhary’s Saline Intrusions is a detailed reportage-style comic about salt pans in east Mumbai. The author — who is also an architect and urban planner — traces the story from the 1600s through the colonial period, post-Independence and down to the present day. This timeline is interspersed with conversations with Gopiji, who works on these pans today. Visually, it is an interesting story because it mixes reportage-style storytelling and cartoon-style metaphors to give the bigger picture in a memorable way. For example, the banning of construction is depicted as a judge slamming his gavel onto an excavator machine. Using these tools, Chaudhary manages to talk about migration, the history of salt in India, and the greed that consumes government, companies and builders, in one breath.

Stories such as Journeys , by Avirup Basu, Swamped , by Anirban Ghosh, and Travel Book , by Parsua Bashi, do something that is a speciality of the comics medium — they give readers an insight into people’s everyday lives and, in doing so, subvert dominant narratives. In Travel Book , Bashi, who studied graphic design at the University of Tehran, breaks stereotypes on how to dress if readers are planning to travel to Islamic countries; with gentle sarcasm she also reminds readers of their ignorance and misconceptions.

Swamped follows a transgender woman as she confronts her boss about his discriminatory practices. Her anger at daily exclusion is symbolised as her hair, which is also the point of conflict with the employer. In the end, her hair overwhelms the entire city.

LongformAn Anthology ofGraphic NarrativesVolume 1VariousHarperCollinsComics₹1,499

If one is to measure the success of an anthology by the diversity of its content, the new artists it gives a platform to and the variety of comics storytelling techniques and styles it displays, then Longform Volume 1 is a success.

It also puts forward poignant and reflective stories. However, some narratives and art would have done better with a feedback process or a rigorous editorial line — especially as anthologies for such a nascent medium are also meant to nurture future talent. A focus on technical aspects such as image-resolution in some cases would have rounded off this otherwise well-produced book.

Nonetheless, the stage is set for comics readers to look forward to Volume 2 and the stories it will bring.

Vidyun Sabhaney is a Delhi-based writer, editor, and illustrator of graphic narratives and comics

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